Cold Trap

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Sacramento CA: 09122027—Fifteen years ago

Lester Keppel stared out from behind the smoked glass of his second-story office at the angry throng calling for his head on the street out front. It had been just twelve hours since a small group of tech-beat reporters gathered in a university basement, some six thousand miles distant, to chronicle the Cube’s first public demonstration. In the event’s lead-up, a few establishment researchers deigned to acknowledge that, with the technology becoming so widely accessible, even a novice like Lester Keppel might hope to make a run at the three-digit mark, though it would, of course, be some time before one of the more reputable laboratories toppled the current factorization record of 299. It was an understandable reaction. Keppel Computing LLC was no major research institute, like at Cambridge or Waterloo, but a repurposed machine shop secreted in the treeless expanse of southeast Sacramento’s warehouse district.

Eleven hours ago, the first news van appeared across the street. The press had figured out that the unmarked structure was his daily haunt and the workplace of his five personal employees. Four of those five were loyalists he had peeled off from his birthright, Keppel Instrumentation. The fifth, Joel, had only been with him for a little over a year, though Keppel had no doubt that the boy was steadfast.

Eight hours ago, a prescient Sacramento police chief closed the street to vehicular traffic and ordered crowd barriers erected across the front of the property. The first clumps of demonstrators had arrived, drawn in like so many iron filings. Four hours ago, the riot squad showed up to maintain order as the protesters, now several hundred strong, lobbed hostile chants at the warehouse. Impromptu signage bobbed above the throng, railing against the dangers that Keppel and his Cube posed to everything from privacy and national security to e-commerce and 401Ks. This was not the same old anti-globalization crowd. There were retirees out there.

He leaned closer to the glass. On the burned-out strip of lawn in front of the building, a stout woman in a Dodgers cap and hiking boots pointed a video camera bearing the call letters KSAC at a reporter with slicked-back hair. Keppel pulled up KSAC’s website and touched the Live Coverage link. A window opened and a commercial played about a little boy coming home from preschool, bragging to his mother about how he had stayed dry all day. The mother smiled and hefted a box of big-boy diapers just as the Skip This Ad link appeared. Keppel scowled and poked the link.

The slicked-back reporter, a strong-chinned forty-something, appeared in front of the warehouse’s beige stucco facade. A red Breaking News banner pulsed at the bottom of the screen along with the tagline:

Quantum Computer Sends Stocks into Tailspin

“—that you see behind me is thought to house Lester Keppel’s remarkable Cube quantum computer, a device light years ahead of the pack. The Cube’s capabilities were on display in the early morning hours at a live demonstration carried out with the help of professor of mathematics, Patrycja Baranoski, from Poland’s Lublin University of Technology. Professor Baranoski sent the Cube a number, called a semi-prime, which is the product of two prime numbers. Now you might be wondering: why all the fuss about a number? Well, the thing you need to understand about semi-primes is that they are the backbone of nearly every information security protocol on the planet. Large semi-primes, of say a hundred digits or more, are so difficult to factor back into their component primes that even the most powerful supercomputers can chug away, quite literally for millennia, without ever finding the solution. This makes semi-primes ideal for securing information.”

An animated sequence showed bits of data streaming through a pipeline from one computer toward another. A lock with a keyhole at the front blocked the way.

“The semi-prime serves as a kind of lock, to which the component primes supply the key.”

Two strings of digits appeared on the screen of the sending computer and entered the information pipeline as a parade of glowing bits. They streamed into the keyhole and the lock opened. Information flowed freely in both directions.

“Without the component primes, the semi-prime lock is virtually impregnable.”

The scene shifted to the KSAC newsroom, where a fair-haired anchor in a tight dress asked the obvious question: “Ethan, how was Lester Keppel’s Cube computer able to factor one of these large semi-primes?”

“Great question, Madison. Let’s hear what Professor Baranoski had to say after the demonstration.”

The scene shifted again. A woman with dark complexion and blue-gray eyes stood, arms crossed, in front of a small assemblage of reporters and cameramen. The display screen behind her showed a single long string of digits. Cameras flickered intermittently as she spoke: “In the simplest possible terms, quantum computers make use of the exotic properties of the subatomic realm, where particles can be linked together, or entangled, without anything connecting them physically, and where those same particles can exist in superposition, in multiple states of reality. Quantum computers exploit superposition, carrying out the search for the factors of a semi-prime simultaneously across many states of reality.”

The lawyers had hit the mark with this one. Her delivery was frank and competent, her voice husky and sultry. The gal had mucho gravitas.

“The first quantum computer was created three decades ago. It was able to factor the number fifteen. Other quantum computers have been created since then, but always they are—what do you say?—mere proofs of concept. This is because, to build a large-scale quantum computer, one must find a way to organize and entangle massive numbers of these teensy tiny particles ...” Baranoski mimed the meticulous placement of particles. “But,” she said, finger raised, “the universe, she works tirelessly to disorganize and disentangle.” She swiped an arm across where she had placed the particles. “As my advisor, Dr. Everett, once said, it is like trying to organize thousands of spinning tops on the deck of a ship as it is rocked by a gale, except that such a task would be child’s play as compared to that of creating a large-scale quantum computing device.” Baranoski took a sip of water. “And yet,” she continued, “on this day, in less than one minute, Lester Keppel’s device, this ... this Cube, factorized a 253-digit semi-prime, a number that was carefully chosen. By me.”

Baranoski glanced back at the computer screen and then, to staccato camera flashes, announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have moved past the threshold and now stand squarely within the quantum age. This is as it should be, but still we must take care. There are consequences ... always, there are consequences.”

Keppel clapped his hands. Everything had gone off splendidly. The spotlight was on, and the world was clamoring for information about the Cube. If the feds had any thoughts about breaking their end of the deal, he would give the world exactly what it wanted.

Ethan reappeared, smiling and nodding. “Consequences indeed, Madison.” An inverted hockey stick graph labeled Dow appeared beside him. “When Wall Street received the news that a California inventor suddenly had the power to hack any networked computer on the planet, panic whipped through the markets like wildfire. The Dow shed 20 percent of its value as part of a massive selloff that tripped circuit breakers and cleared trading floors all across—”

“Ethan,” Madison broke in, “we are getting word that Lester Keppel is about to issue a statement by way of one Gavin Mott, junior partner at Sacramento’s own Wechsler, Schmidt, and Jacobs. That is the law firm that Mr. Keppel hired to oversee the integrity of the Cube demonstration.”

Keppel looked out the window. Things were heating up along the barriers. Riot officers were now yelling at the pressing crowd and jabbing at them with their batons. A few yards closer in, Mott was stepping up to a cluster of microphones. In front of him, a gaggle of science reporters huddled, looking like tomorrow’s feast, on the inside of a roped-off square.

Keppel turned back to the KSAC feed.

“Yes, ah ... hello ... hello,” Mott said. “I have, uh, two announcements for you today. First—”

Shrieks of panic exploded from the crowd, which scattered radially away from a shaggy protester pointing a metallic object at one of the officers. A green substance spewed from its tip, striking the officer full on in the faceplate. A blur of black gloves and batons hauled the man over the barrier until he lay cuffed and bloodied against the sidewalk.

The stricken officer peeled foam party string from his faceplate.

“First,” Mott rasped, “Mr. Keppel has denied the press’s request to allow a pool reporter in to photograph the Cube.”

The crowd moaned and drifted back toward the barriers.

“Second, in one week’s time, Wechsler, Schmidt, and Jacobs will oversee a new demonstration of the Cube’s capabilities.”

A voice from the crowd screamed something about “Nazis.”

“We have assembled a team of five biologists for this new demonstration, wherein the Cube will simulate, from the molecular level on up, a complete animal, a tiny flatworm called a ... planarian.”

The protesters fell silent. Whatever they had been expecting, this was not it.

“I have time for...