The Quantum Connection

Next year we plan to introduce to the world that the only reason not to live to be thousands of years old would be if you were hit by a truck—a big and very fast-moving truck that stopped and backed up over you several times —or were squished in an alien collapsing singularity. And it wasn't physicians that developed the cure for old age. Tatiana says I've been hanging around Anson and Jim too much and have adopted their distaste for medical quacks, but Anson and Jim are right and I like them—I can't recall a quack that I ever did. After all, the headshrinkers would've never found that Gray implant in my brain, but they would've sold me all the drugs I could afford until my insurance ran out.

We knew that the ability to live forever would really shock the world and excite it and force it to start thinking about colonizing other worlds or we would run out of room on Earth. We had that part of it covered. There were thousands of outpost worlds in need of settlers. The human race was really growing up and we were also becoming a dominant force to be reckoned with in our part of the galaxy. I hoped we weren't getting too big for our britches.

And were we getting too big for our britches? Because a war between alien species forced one of those races to infect us with the desire to build a war machine, our evolutionary path skewed from what we might have been. The alien that infected us had hopes that our acquired propensity for warfare would one day enable us to develop a means of destroying his enemies. Well, the red bastard got more than he bargained for, didn't he?

Opolawn hadn't counted on some brilliant redneck scientists and astronauts, a Russian bureaucrat's daughter, and a video game repairman from Bakersfield. He hadn't expected that we would develop a means not only of destroying his enemies, but him as well.

As far as my part in this war was concerned, I started out completely alone in the universe after The Rain— which Opolawn had caused in a way. But the W-squared core, Tatiana, and an alien SuperAgent showed me that nobody is really alone and that somehow we are all physically connected to each other.

I'm not real sure about the philosophical ramifications of our connectedness with the universe, but practically it means that the human race is now a formidable species and that if any of you aliens out there think you want to come and mess with us then you had better think twice. We might just make a quick quantum connection to you and lower one hell of a boom on your ass!

AFTERWORD

Well, here we are at the end of my second book and although I didn't want to make it a habit of putting afterwords in my books it looks like I'll put one here anyway. Actually, a colleague of mine, Dr. T. Conley Powell (an expert astrodynamicist and physicist) read the manuscript before I sent it off to Jim Baen.

'You have a lot of very cutting-edge physics in this one,' he told me. 'And if you don't want folks thinking you just made a lot of it up and that it is not fantasy, perhaps an Afterword is pertinent.'

We discussed this a bit and after a while I decided that Conley was probably right. But here is what I want to do. Rather than spending pages here explaining the modern theories of quantum connectedness and the universal quantum consciousness and quantum teleportation and computer Agents and so on and on, I will merely say here that these things are at the state of the art of technology today and I will suggest how you can find more information on these topics.

One of the main characters in this book is a computer Agent. Well, actually it is an evolved next level and alien SuperAgent. At first read one might not understand the true implications of what a computer Agent is. If you have seen The Matrix then you are familiar with Agent Smith and his band of black-suited agents. Agent Smith is an example of a computer subroutine with some sort of artificial intelligence algorithm that is designed to carry out particular decision-making functions. With things like fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, and artificial neural networks it is quite possible that Agent codes could become as aware as Agent Smith or as my SuperAgent in this story. You may not realize this but you have probably used something similar to a dumb Agent everytime you use an internet search engine. There is all sorts of information on this topic on the web and in books. Go to your favorite library, search engine, or online bookstore and search for 'computer agents' and you will find more than you can read in a lifetime.

Another major technology in the story is that of nanomachines. We have all most likely heard of these and seen them in books and television programs. However, I think that a lot of writers miss the really and truly most amazing aspect of this technology and that is that it will create the next evolutionary step for mankind. With real nanomachines there will no longer be fear of injuries and diseases and old age. Physicians as we know them and medicine as it is today will become an archaic thing of our past. Search 'nanotechnology' and 'nanomachines' for this. Oh, and I'm not certain that I have ever heard of anybody proposing machines on the order of 1x10^{- 29} meters as was discussed here, but the Alcubierre warp technology would allow for it.

Since I covered the warp theory in my first book, Warp Speed, I will not go into it other than to say, 'If you didn't read that one first you should check it out.' Search 'warp theory' and 'Alcubierre' for this.

The major theme of this book is the quantum connection. Quantum connectedness is a well-observed phenomenon, although its applicability to things such as teleportation and time travel and the like are presently the topic of much debate. However, the papers mentioned in the story are real and experiments have been conducted that have teleported photons across a laboratory. And it shouldn't be too long before more complicated things are teleported. This teleportation does occur at the speed of light, as mentioned within this story, and this is why we needed to discuss something greater for the information to travel upon—the universal quantum consciousness. Really, I am not making this stuff up! There have been several papers out about the possibility that everything within the universe is quantum connected with everything else and even the universe itself. This is a very abstract concept but there is some experimental basis for parts of it. Go search things like 'quantum connectedness,' 'quantum consciousness,' 'Bell's inequality,' 'EPR—Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen experiment,' 'quantum teleportation,' and 'quantum entanglement.'

There are a lot of smaller ideas in the book that are equally as fun and can also be found out there on the web somewhere. If you have questions about the things in here just go search for them. It is exciting to ponder some of these concepts and the real ramifications they will have on our species once we develop them. Imagine having a quantum connected teleportation system set up across the universe in such a way that anywhere is just a connection away. Once we learn to teleport ourselves around the universe the way we teleport information around the Internet, then that really will be something! It's not an impossible concept and who knows, it might happen sooner than we think. I know I can't wait!

THE END

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