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Authors: Eric James Stone
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of the attendees would already be approaching decoherence in the local bars.
But this wasn’t a panel. There was only one man on stage, and after a moment I recognized him from the research I’d done for this mission: Parham Rezaei. His bio said he had studied at Oxford, and he spoke with a high-class English accent.
I pulled out my program and examined it. To my chagrin, I realized that the lecture was, in fact, today. When Edward had told me the lecture was tomorrow, it had still been Thursday for him, but already Friday for me.
Fortunately, no harm done. The lecture would last another half hour, so I settled in a seat on the back row and started scoping out ways to approach the stage.
I was sort of half-listening to the lecture when I caught him saying something about memory.
“…memory of observing the wave function to collapse at that point in time,” said Rezaei. “However, from the point of view of a second observer not privy to the original observation, the wave function does not collapse until the first observer has reported the observation. The question then becomes, was there a quantum superposition of the first observer’s memory? To use Schrödinger’s famous cat, did the first observer have both the memory of a live cat and the memory of a dead cat until he spoke with the second observer, at which point one of those memories disappeared?”
I felt a sudden thrill of hope. Rezaei was talking about memories disappearing. It wasn’t exactly the same as what happened with my talent, but it seemed like it might be related. If he really was a genius about this stuff, he might be able to explain why my talent worked, maybe even find a cure for it. In addition to planting the tracer on his shoe, I would have to figure out some way to talk with him for a bit.
Unfortunately, his lecture didn’t go into any more details about people forgetting stuff due to quantum mechanics. But I was able to follow the gist of what he was saying. Basically, it was that the probability wave functions that governed things at the atomic scale also governed things at the macroscale—the scale of objects we could see and touch. Even human beings. But since an average human being consisted of about seven billion billion billion atoms, each with its own probability wave function, calculating the probability wave function of an entire human being was far beyond the capacity of the most powerful supercomputer in existence.
The bit about seven billion billion billion atoms reminded me of the CIA technogeek explaining how the quantum key worked, but that had involved only eighteen billion billions, which was apparently not beyond today’s technology.
As the lecture wound to a close, I rose from my seat and walked down the side of the room until I was as close to the stage as I could get without actually clambering up onto it. I was hoping that when he was done he might come down to shake hands with people in the audience or something.
Rezaei got a standing ovation when he was done. But he didn’t come down off the stage. Instead, two men with dark suits and physiques that might as well have been neon signs saying “Bodyguard” joined him onstage and then escorted him through a curtain in the back.
I hoisted myself onto the stage and then followed at a brisk pace through the curtain and out into a backstage hallway in the bowels of the Palazzo dei Congressi. The three of them were twenty yards away, headed toward some elevators at the end of the hall, so I quickened my step, aiming to catch up about the time they reached the elevators.
When I was still ten yards back, one of the guards turned his head to look at me. He slowed, and I figured my plan of casually riding the elevator with them wasn’t going to happen.
“Dr. Rezaei,” I said. “I’m Brandon Andersen with Quantum Tech Today . Could I ask you a few questions?”
Rezaei stopped and turned to face me. The other bodyguard did likewise, saying something in
But this wasn’t a panel. There was only one man on stage, and after a moment I recognized him from the research I’d done for this mission: Parham Rezaei. His bio said he had studied at Oxford, and he spoke with a high-class English accent.
I pulled out my program and examined it. To my chagrin, I realized that the lecture was, in fact, today. When Edward had told me the lecture was tomorrow, it had still been Thursday for him, but already Friday for me.
Fortunately, no harm done. The lecture would last another half hour, so I settled in a seat on the back row and started scoping out ways to approach the stage.
I was sort of half-listening to the lecture when I caught him saying something about memory.
“…memory of observing the wave function to collapse at that point in time,” said Rezaei. “However, from the point of view of a second observer not privy to the original observation, the wave function does not collapse until the first observer has reported the observation. The question then becomes, was there a quantum superposition of the first observer’s memory? To use Schrödinger’s famous cat, did the first observer have both the memory of a live cat and the memory of a dead cat until he spoke with the second observer, at which point one of those memories disappeared?”
I felt a sudden thrill of hope. Rezaei was talking about memories disappearing. It wasn’t exactly the same as what happened with my talent, but it seemed like it might be related. If he really was a genius about this stuff, he might be able to explain why my talent worked, maybe even find a cure for it. In addition to planting the tracer on his shoe, I would have to figure out some way to talk with him for a bit.
Unfortunately, his lecture didn’t go into any more details about people forgetting stuff due to quantum mechanics. But I was able to follow the gist of what he was saying. Basically, it was that the probability wave functions that governed things at the atomic scale also governed things at the macroscale—the scale of objects we could see and touch. Even human beings. But since an average human being consisted of about seven billion billion billion atoms, each with its own probability wave function, calculating the probability wave function of an entire human being was far beyond the capacity of the most powerful supercomputer in existence.
The bit about seven billion billion billion atoms reminded me of the CIA technogeek explaining how the quantum key worked, but that had involved only eighteen billion billions, which was apparently not beyond today’s technology.
As the lecture wound to a close, I rose from my seat and walked down the side of the room until I was as close to the stage as I could get without actually clambering up onto it. I was hoping that when he was done he might come down to shake hands with people in the audience or something.
Rezaei got a standing ovation when he was done. But he didn’t come down off the stage. Instead, two men with dark suits and physiques that might as well have been neon signs saying “Bodyguard” joined him onstage and then escorted him through a curtain in the back.
I hoisted myself onto the stage and then followed at a brisk pace through the curtain and out into a backstage hallway in the bowels of the Palazzo dei Congressi. The three of them were twenty yards away, headed toward some elevators at the end of the hall, so I quickened my step, aiming to catch up about the time they reached the elevators.
When I was still ten yards back, one of the guards turned his head to look at me. He slowed, and I figured my plan of casually riding the elevator with them wasn’t going to happen.
“Dr. Rezaei,” I said. “I’m Brandon Andersen with Quantum Tech Today . Could I ask you a few questions?”
Rezaei stopped and turned to face me. The other bodyguard did likewise, saying something in
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