hidden there that he hadn't noticed before.
'Okay, okay,' Phillip interrupted. 'That's far enough for a second. Mr. Montana, would you mind stepping outside please? We will call you back in a bit when we can. Just wait outside.' He nodded and an aide beside him led me to the door.
'Carrie, see that Mr. Montana here is taken care of please. We will call for him in a bit,' the aide told the young lady at the desk outside the SCIF door.
'Sure thing, Bill,' she said. The aide returned through the SCIF door back to brown-nose, uh, support his boss, and I was beginning to worry if my future was going with him. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked so many questions.
But, there was a senator in there? Who was this Phillip fellow and who were all of those people in there? The most intriguing thing was that emerald cube that had data 'falling' through it and the ever-changing continuously encrypted data. And just what in the hell did the senator mean by 'those damned things could be eavesdropping on us'? What damned things? I was beginning to think that not only was I falling deeper into the rabbit hole, but that I was on the other damn side of the planet from the looking glass as well.
I sat there in the reception area of the conference room, the SCIF, for some time and nobody came for me. After about an hour and a half I was getting nervous, anxious, and I was afraid I would get depressed if something didn't happen soon. Another hour later the door opened and the senator and his staffer came plowing through the lobby, signed out, and were out the door. But they jabbered the entire time.
'Bill, get me a meeting set up with the 'sissy' tomorrow. I don't care if they have to fly in from the far side of the Moon. I want them here tomorrow. I mean it. Senators you hear me, not staffers.'
'Yes, Senator. I'll make sure of that.'
'I'm here to tell you, Bill, this is bad news . . . bad news. I never believed the threat was this big. The general needs more men and money and by God she better get them for all our sakes!' They finished signing out of the SCIF and trailed off down the hallway still jabbering.
Fifteen minutes later Larry came and got me. 'Okay, Steve, you can come in now, but son, please, for your own sake, just keep your mouth shut and only speak if you're asked a question. You with me on this?' He patted me on the shoulder and fiddled with his tie as he always does.
'Okay, Larry. Sorry, I hope I didn't cause problems.'
'Only for yourself, son.' He pressed his hand against my back and led me through the SCIF door.
'Mr. Montana, we appreciate you having patience with us today. Please be seated.' Phillip nodded to a chair.
I tried to make myself comfortable.
Dr. Daniels was at the screen, 'So anyway, we think the material these orange things are made of is something like lithium niobate and perhaps some KD star P in the I/O port portion in the center. The black bands between the gaps are probably some sort of an optical phenomenon, but without breaking the thing open there is little way to tell. And, of course, we wouldn't want to do that, even if we knew how. The main part of the cube—well, all of our spectral analyses suggest no particularly known compound or substance, although it is possible that we are having problems making the measurements because of the quantum phenomena inside the cube.'
'And go ahead and tell us your wife's theory, Jim,' General Clemons said.
'Okay, 'Becca believes that the reason we can't find any particular spectra for the materials this thing is made of is because there is a fairly significant expansion of spacetime within the cube. And, worse than that, the expansion is not linear but following some polynomial expansion in the radial dimension from the center. Therefore, there would be no standard fluorescence spectra for any particular substance due to the nonlinear gravity red, uh, blue shifting inside the thing.'
I couldn't resist. 'What do you mean an expansion of spacetime inside the thing and why would a computer have such a thing in it?' Larry elbowed me in the ribs. I ignored him.
'Good question, Steven. Have you ever seen the ancient television show called
'Never heard of it.'
'Oh well, okay. Have you ever read any science fiction books by a fellow named Robert Heinlein?'
'Which one?' I returned the elbow back to Larry's ribs.
'It was the one where the little guy carried a pack around that was infinitely big on the inside, uh, what was that one called . . . oh man, would Anson ever kill me if he knew I couldn't remember that. . . .'
'
'Ah yes,
I had to admit two things: one) that would be cool and two) I hadn't read
Not long after this conversation we were pretty much brain fried. All of the technology of this 'cube' was way advanced and almost magical. It was obvious that these people were reverse engineering it, but then, who had built it? Did we steal it from the Russians or the Chinese? They would be the most likely candidates, but expansions in spacetime seemed too fantastic. And the biggest problem I had with this thing all day was the fact that there was only one major QCCPU. Where was its connected twin, its entangled counterpart? The board I'd worked on had to have two QCCPUs to function; it only makes sense. One fax machine just doesn't do, there must be another one . . . somewhere.
On the way back to the hotel I made Larry stop at a bookstore and I bought a paperback copy of