Emergence Read online

  Further, subtle investigations—Jenkins was a hero after all—had uncovered a little more, and there was too much at stake for her to ignore her initial gut instincts. They’d served her well in the past.

  She looked back at Jenkins. Is there a link to GF? A secret?

  Chapter 25

  On Friday morning Bob worked his way down the campus corridors clutching a few print-outs he’d made at home detailing Jeff’s online activities. The corridors were crowded with students moving between classes. He grumbled to himself as he pushed through the would-be graduates. His thoughts flitted between: it’s their fault, I’m a senior professor, and the more self-admonishing, I did time my arrival badly.

  Eventually, he got to the sanctity of his office and took stock. Although he’d never heard of G60, working with the MOD would be good for making connections. He threw his papers on to his desk and walked over to his personal coffee machine. Double shot.

  After his caffeine fix, Bob opened up his email and started to type an email to Jeff (copying Jeff’s Boss, Sophie Raymond, Head of Metallics).

  Subject: Strength Modelling

  Hey Jeff—Your name came up in conversation earlier this week as someone who may be able to help. Can you spare me (and the Organics team) about an hour of your time, please? We’re doing some spider-silk strength modelling and want to run through the calculations just to make sure we’re not setting up any false assumptions. Just a quick bit of peer review please.

  Bob Reaple

  Bob was pretty sure Jeff would have the required knowledge, or at least enough to make the request seem natural. Jeff wasn’t the leading expert on strength modelling but he would be sufficiently competent to peer review a few assumptions and equations. Plus he knew Jeff would be pleased to mix with his department, as Organics was the current hot ticket. And, of course, I’m on the cross-university funding review board.

  A few minutes later he had his reply. Jeff would be over in the early afternoon. He took a book out of his bag and placed it strategically on his coffee table. Nothing too obvious, but this may get him thinking.

  After having spent the morning at Mike’s discussing the experiment set-up, Jeff walked into the university campus at just after 2pm. He paused for a few moments to chat to Jim, on the reception desk, but then continued through the corridors, stopping at his own office long enough to drop off his rucksack and pick up a book on strength modelling.

  Paging through the book to refresh his memory, he continued on to the Organics department and knocked on Bob’s door.

  ‘Come in.’

  As Jeff walked in, he took a moment to look around; the walls were covered with citations, official-looking photos, and academic certificates. It was clearly the office of a senior professor.

  Bob got up from behind his desk. ‘Thanks for making time for me. Please, take a seat.’ He indicated to a couple of comfy chairs in the corner of the room.

  Jeff’s eyes lingered on the walls a few moments more, there was a photo of Bob meeting Stephen Hawkins and another with the current Archbishop of Canterbury. Eclectic mix, but nothing wrong with his self-image. Jeff sat down and Bob took the chair next to him.

  As he continued to sweep the room for interesting items, his gaze stopped on the book on Bob’s coffee table, Shadows of the Mind by Roger Penrose. Jeff jerked a little. Mike had mentioned it that morning—something about a new way of looking at brains.

  Bob picked it up. ‘It’s a bit radical, not really mainstream biological thinking, but it’s Penrose’s thoughts on the possible differences between big computers and human brains. Heavy stuff: academically, metaphorically and physically.’ He hefted it back onto the table. ‘I’m probably taking a sabbatical in the next few years to do some investigation into the fundamentals of computation.’

  Jeff nodded, uncertain. He hadn’t expected this. He waited.

  Bob continued to talk. ‘So…‌organic materials…‌We’re doing the whole spider-silk review again. Mostly for a nature documentary, but funded by a couple of industrial companies. We need someone neutral to review our biaxial tensile test. Could you give me a few hours a week for the next month?’

  Jeff was momentarily lost in thought, looking at the Penrose book, but as the request registered he snapped back to the present and nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you want to borrow it?’

  ‘Ah, no thanks. But I agree it is an interesting subject.’ Jeff paused. ‘Mike Littlejohn and I are doing a little extracurricular investigation ourselves.’

  ‘I know Mike reasonably well, we sit on a few committees together. Anything I would have a view on?’

  ‘I’m not sure, we’re doing a bit of informal research.’ I can’t say anything. ‘Nothing worth bothering you about.’

  ‘What sort of investigation? Brain power, consciousness, AI computer modelling?’

  Jeff looked around, his stomach was now doing somersaults. He was trapped. This guy controlled a lot of budget, and a lot of popular opinion amongst the other professors. Should he lie or risk appearing to be a whacko?

  The silence stretched a little. ‘Nowhere near that conventional. It’s an informal investigation into mind control.’

  ‘Mind control?’

  Need to bluff it out. ‘Telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jeff forced a chuckle. ‘I can’t really tell you why, sorry. It’s an informal look into possible reasons behind some people believing they have unusually good luck.’

  Bob smiled. ‘Is it for one of those awful television programmes? Well I can’t judge you, I’m taking money for the spider silk. Your secret is safe with me…‌So what do you actually mean by mind control, then?’

  ‘Just…‌controlling things with your mind.’

  Bob held Jeff’s gaze. ‘Mind control…‌It’s a broad subject with whackos at both ends and not much science in the middle. But there was a paper written in 1988 by Professor Choots in this university, back when it was a Poly.’ He went to his computer and started typing. ‘Give me a second, I’ll find the summary.’

  Bob scanned the screen and summarised. ‘The gist of the paper was there were three buckets you had to consider.

  (a) Genuine mental powers causing a physical effect,

  (b) Some type of instantaneous transfer of information into your brain so you think about an event, not before it happens, but before you actually see it happen,

  (c) Misprocessing of memories in the brain so you think you’ve seen something later than you actually did.’

  Jeff paused to take this in. ‘That sounds about right, certainly the third one is basically a derivation of déjà vu, right? Anyway, for your information, I’m interested in option A.’

  ‘Aren’t we all? I’d love to be able to wake up in the morning and magically conjure up good weather and a healthy spine. But, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re a nut!’ He smiled and winked. ‘Have you done any testing so far?’

  ‘I have no idea how we could test any of it. So far, all I’ve done is kick a few ideas around with Mike.’

  ‘Well, to get you started, off the top of my head, I would say if you assume some people have genuine mental powers then your options would be…‌your brain physically emits a particle to interact with the outside world…‌God knows what type of particle.’ Bob paused for moment. ‘…‌or some type of influence over random events, and that could be anything…‌but we’d have to start looking at quantum mechanics. There’s enough uncertainty there to come up with some hokum.’

  ‘Any pointers?’

  ‘None with any formal scientific credibility, but Copenhagen has a role for an observer and Many-Worlds lets anything happen.’

  ‘I don’t really remember that part of my degree. What about the Many-Worlds?’

  ‘Do you want me to teach you the 2nd Year syllabus? Or do you want to understand how it could be twisted to allow people mental powers?’

&nb
sp; Jeff squirmed.

  Bob relented. ‘The Many-Worlds hypothesis states that at every event (whatever it may be) the universe splits to create new downstream universes in which each possible outcome of the original event happens. So if we postulated that your brain allowed you to choose which downstream universe you swept into, you’d effectively be choosing your future, and choosing the outcome you wanted…‌this would break pretty much every physical law we know.’

  Some of this chimed with Mike’s musings from the morning discussions. Jeff wrestled with his desire to take out a notepad and write down Bob’s information. Act casual, just try to remember it.

  An alarm on Bob’s desk rang and he stood up. ‘Sorry, Jeff, but I’ve got an appointment. Thanks for agreeing to look at my tests. And I actually would be very pleased to talk more about your experiments…‌if you want?

  Jeff stood up. ‘Sure thing, perhaps next Wednesday evening in the pub?’

  They shook hands and Bob walked Jeff to the door. ‘The Many-Worlds is a moral minefield.’

  What does that mean? Jeff murmured a goodbye, and left.

  After the door closed, Bob returned to his keyboard and typed up his notes for James Chambers. He’s either very naïve or a criminal genius.

  Chapter 26

  At 10am on Saturday, Louise’s self-imposed intensity was ratcheted up to eleven. She paced around the kitchen glancing alternately at her wrist watch and the clock on the wall. ‘Jeff! We’re going to be late. Get down here!’ Louise was barely hanging on to reasonable language and considered actions. For fuck’s sake. ‘Jeff! Come on!’

  Jeff came down the stairs. ‘Sorry. I can’t find the laptop thingy.’

  ‘The one I asked you to find last night?’ Louise shook her head, muttered expletives under her breath, and opened the front door.

  ‘Mike will have one.’ Jeff locked up and managed to get to the car just as Louise was pulling out into the road.

  ‘Sorry, Louise…‌but I was working last night.’ Louise didn’t answer. She chewed her lip and studied the traffic. Jeff silently flicked through a pile of papers. ‘Mike and I will run a prototype test today. We’re using his garage.’

  Louise continued to stare directly ahead. ‘I have lined up interviews with a few crash survivors for tomorrow and Monday. I’ll see if I can convince any of them to come to the tests on Wednesday evening.’

  ‘What time are you meeting Bullage?’

  This got a reaction. Louise turned and stared at Jeff, but he smiled and she couldn’t stay angry. She grinned. ‘I’m pretty sure the restraining order is still firmly in place. But I have three other people…‌genuine miraculous crash survivors from the last five years.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes until Jeff broke the silence. ‘Don’t you think if Project Hedgehog had made any significant advances then it would have been leaked in the last 50 years?’

  ‘Not if they’re ashamed of what they achieved, or ashamed of what they had to do in order to achieve…‌whatever they achieved.’

  They drove for a few minutes and, on arrival at Mike’s house, found him smiling on the driveway. ‘Welcome to Chez Mike. Are you ready to earn yourselves a Nobel Prize?’

  Louise climbed out of the car. ‘I’m after a Pulitzer, but I’ll make do with a Nobel if it’s all that’s on offer.’

  Mike led the way to the garage. Once inside he was forced to walk around two heavy wooden benches to the back wall, where lines of immaculately labelled boxes sat, equally distributed across the shelves. Louise nodded in appreciation and gave the rest of the garage another look. The floor was spotless, and the wooden panels on the door frames were painted beautifully. Mike is meticulous.

  ‘Now, you need a DC power supply for a MacBook?’ Without waiting for an answer, Mike selected one of the boxes and, after a minimal amount of rummaging, brought out the right piece.

  Louise walked over to Mike and accepted the lead. ‘Thanks.’ She shot a withering look at Jeff and then pointed at the benches dominating the central floor space. ‘So, Mike, what’s all this?’

  ‘Just our work area for the impending tests.’ Mike picked up a wooden box from one of the benches. ‘I’m not sure how much Jeff has told you about the experiment design. Basically, each participant will have a box. We wanted to make the subjects subconsciously influence the result of a random 50-50 event.’

  Jeff stepped forward. ‘Like the subliminal advertising they used to have in cinemas, we tweak the subconscious using faint lights on the surface of the box. To make the participant want a certain result.’

  ‘Pedantically speaking it’s not quite want. It may be more accurate to say expect. The lights can be configured to either give a shape reminding the observer of a head or a tail.’

  They dimmed the lights slightly and ran a test with Louise. She matched seven matches out of ten. Mike spoke. ‘Not amazing, but we tested this yesterday with a much higher sample and we were getting seven to eight hundred out of a thousand. Do you want to try another nine hundred and ninety times?’

  Louise shook her head. ‘I’ll take your word for it. Okay, we can trick the participants into thinking about a particular result. What happens next?’

  ‘There’s a simple mechanism which re-tosses the coin when you shut the box; just a metal spring flipping it.’ Mike opened and closed the box a few times showing the coin being tossed.

  Louise watched as Mike and Jeff shared a look. What now?

  Mike held the box just under Louise’s nose. ‘Just before you open the box, you cannot know if it is heads or tails…‌right?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Mike opened and shut it a few times. Each time Louise saw the head or tail of the coin as the box was opened. ‘So when the box is closed, quantum mechanics says it is both heads and tails…‌until it’s opened and we see the coin.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘Schrodinger’s Kitty!’ Mike paused. There was a chuckle from Jeff.

  Mike waited for a few moments and then continued. ‘We know, well, we assume, the lights will alter the subconscious. Therefore, if the results come out skewed from a 50-50 split we can infer that the subconscious affects the coin-tossing results.’

  Louise nodded slowly, turning over the experiment design in her head. ‘Why not just show them the lights and get them to toss the coins themselves?’

  ‘We’re pretty convinced the experiment needs to have a single instantaneous observation of the result to keep it clean.’ Mike paused. ‘There’s nothing in classical physics to give us any hope here, but the uncertainty principle gives a bit of wiggle room.’

  Louise smirked. ‘My hope stems from the fact that scientists always seem to be entirely certain about why something is impossible, right up to the time it happens.’

  Mike frowned. ‘Maybe historically, but it was generally more a cultural inertia rather than a deficiency in the craft of science.’

  Louise nodded; she’d been lectured by Mike on the public mistreatment of scientists a few times. Generally after too many glasses of red wine, and heaven forbid you got him started on the subject of Alan Turing. It was the one time that Louise had seen Mike actually lose his temper.

  Mike turned to Jeff. ‘So what about Bob Reaple?’

  ‘I don’t know, he seemed genuinely interested…’

  Louise cut Jeff off. ‘So will the police be if they think I’m trying to steal military secrets.’

  Mike waved his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘It seems that Jeff is stuck betwixt Scylla and Charybdis. You never know, we might get something useful from him.’

  Louise shook her head. ‘We have to keep this tight.’

  For the next few hours, they tested the various boxes that Mike had made, including the connections to the laptops and the programme Jeff had written to collate and analyse the coin-tossing data.

  By the middle of the afternoon Louise felt the set-up was good enough to risk bringing in some test subject
s. Now all they had to do was get those subjects.

  While Louise and Jeff were at Mike’s garage, Jeremy Benedict slowly drove past their house on Exeter Road. He parked and had a snoop around the outside of the front of the house. A few moments later the curtains from the next door house twitched and he made a hasty exit. Nothing achieved from his point of view but, within a few minutes, there were 15 mini-bots inside the Harding house.

  Chapter 27

  Jack woke up on his sofa in the pitch dark. He lay for a few moments just breathing slowly, getting his bearings. He remembered lying on the sofa mid-evening; he’d been exhausted; but he wasn’t sure how the lights had been switched out. Trying to get back to sleep would be futile now—his adrenaline was already surging, even though nothing had happened.

  Resigned, Jack got up and stumbled around the room, narrowly avoiding knocking over an expensive vase that Sarah had given him earlier in the year. He managed to find the light switch. It was 3am, pretty much the worst time to wake up; his body felt as though it had had a full night’s sleep. He considered watching a film; a stack of Blu-ray discs lay on the carpet under his television. Wandering over, he sorted through them, but found he didn’t have the required enthusiasm even to select one.

  He dimmed the light and lay back down on the sofa—adrenaline raging. His mind was racing.

  As his attention was drawn away from the interior of his lounge, Jack became aware of noises outside. He could hear the wind howling and barking in the distance. He got up and looked behind the curtains. There was a little light from London’s always-on ambient light reflected off the bottoms of the clouds. The trees at the back of the garden were swaying; the wind was strong. He peered intently towards the trees. Is there something out there? He drew back from the window and paced around the room. After a few moments he returned to the window and looked again. Nothing had changed. Jack thought he saw a different movement from the back of the garden, and again he stared, but nothing emerged. Am I imagining it? There was another unusual movement. But after a few moments it turned out to be just another bush, so he turned away from the window and walked around the room again.