Inside the massive prototype quantum system an accelerator, unstable super-heavy elements flew about at terrific speeds. So fast, that the difference between the speed of light and themselves wasn't anything more than a rounding error. Element 123 originally known as Unbitrium was used in these particular systems. It was a semi-stable superheavy element, near the second so called ‘island of stability’ and allowed for the extremely high energy densities needed to create a temporary singularity.
However, by itself element 123 wasn’t enough, even when moving at a hair less than light speed was just a little bit too, light. For the reaction to actually take place, a series of very high energy gamma rays needed to converge at the impact site at exactly the right moment and place. The flash of energy would create unstable quark matter which would then collapse after being hit by another pulse of dense leptons, known as muons. Because they don’t interact with the strong force, and because of their negative charge they didn’t bounce off the dense positive mass, instead they collided with it and pushed it over the edge. The collapse would only last a plank length, in seconds, it was a number with 43 zeros followed by a 5.
Almost immediately after forming, it would decay, expand into an explosion of hawking radiation. Mass energy would scatter from the shortly formed blackhole, and in that mass energy would be all the entropy, all the data and information of the initial collapse, and beyond it. Properly tuned it was the densest form of quantum computer possible, the most powerful one on the planet.
Yun and Theo got to play with one of the prototypes, and it was a far cry from what they were designing.
It was a complex dance of hundreds of mixing parts, culminating in the most advanced and precise atomic collisions that were thought possible. The complex and high energy required earned the various warning across the surface of the device. Not the least of which was the glaring radioactive symbol Yun stood in front of. Behind the plastic and composite walls of the device was a hard vacuum, followed by high temperature super conductive accelerator rings.
One could just barely make out the near arcane technology though the tiny view port window her and Theo stared through. Both were young adults, but with their appearance and wonder, you might be forgiven in thinking them still children.
It had been a little over three years since their combined theses were accepted and already, they could see it was the right choice. Research into the area of so called, singularity processors were exploding. The first prototypes came online not even a year after Yun and Theo agreed to combine forces. Everyone was focused on the minuscule, the quantum side of singularities and computers. Whereas Yun and Theo, had something bigger in mind. Quite literally.
“Hey, you two youingin’s! Your simulation is done!” Dr. Shroder shouted from the other side of the room.
Hurring over, the two watched as the simulation finally came together. On the screen, masses of particles, even denser than what was used in the system next to them, coalesced on the screen, shrinking into oblivion. Just beyond the oblivion, a 2-dimensional sheet of degenerate mater, a Bose-Einstein condensate of mass energy. Powered by two filaments of super-heated plasma, tuned directly to the ends of the singularity. The simulation ticked by in multiples of plank-seconds. It seemed stable, on the surface of the minievent horizon, interactions began, fields comingling as one. Bursts of ultra-high energy hawking radiation surged out in predictably unpredictable frequencies, encoding bits of entropy from that surface foam. Each flash carried the equivalent of trillions of qubits of data. Slightly smaller than the machine used to create the very simulation they were watching, but occurring much faster and more reliable.
It was almost mesmerizing to watch the simple quantum program run. A program which was itself a simulation of another program. Which was simulating a plant sized gas nebula arranged in the shape of a familiar set of words, “Hello World”. The actual program running on it didn't seem to matter, and it was beautiful to watch, until the surface distorted and collapsed into an accretion disk. A ring.
Theo deflated, and Yun could only swear, “Son of a bitch.”
It was a failure, but as Dr. Shroder pointed out, “The simulation ran for nearly 2 bundecto-seconds before collapsing! That’s better than the last.”
"…Barely. It's like we've hit a wall, we've been stuck here for months now."
Bundecto was a very tiny number, representing 33 zeros followed by a 1. It was a hundred billion times the length of a plank-second though. The whole simulation only took about 4 real world hours to run to simulate a little over 3 of those bundecto-seconds. What they were seeing happened would have happened about 3 hour and 10 minutes into the run. Theo's own research suggesting after the 3 Bundecto second mark that the singularity would be relatively stable enough to resist developing a rotation. There would also be options to correct it at that point.
It was a marked improvement from their first few runs, which only ran for about 15 seconds. The next set lasted much longer at 6 minutes. A few weeks after that they were up to nearly two hours. They were getting closer, but it took months to get that extra hour. Any progress they made this past week, was a rounding error at best, and stability still seemed deeply out of reach.
Yun couldn’t help but rub at her eyes, it was getting late and she was tired. “Lets just save the data here. We can revisit tomorrow and… maybe figure something out.” Her stomach rumbled slightly, “I’m hungry she sighed.”
Theo smiled, "Want to grab some food?"
The two had grown closer over the past few years. Not dating, per-say, but they were always around each other, and could always be found with each other. Which when you consider they were some of the few who stayed away from the world of VR and escapism, made some sense.
At the local bar, one of the few that managed to stay open and active, the two shared a section with Yun's sister, who was visiting. Again.
Yun would always lament when her sister visited and complained. But Theo always noticed a subtle smile about her at the same time.
As usual the bar was mostly empty, but not completely with small pockets of people hiding in the various shadows and nooks of the space. Yun didn't really drink alcohol but did enjoy a virgin cocktail on occasion, Theo enjoyed one or two beers. Arial on the other hand, was already on her third martini and was about to switch to something with a bit more 'punch' to use her words.
After having spent the past half hour trying to explain their research, Yun was about to strangle her sister or herself.
Arial smiled and shook her head again, "So, I still don't understand, why can't you just let it spin?"
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"It's not that simple." Yun became quite animate with her hands, visualizing her own sister's neck as she waved them around. "We tried simulating that, it just, reduces the usable entropy output. Plus there's hundreds of papers that say the same thing. It just doesn't work."
"Uh huh, and entropy is information?"
"Yes, exactly!"
Yun could tell Arial didn't really understand. Maybe she should have a drink too, Dumbing herself down might help her understand her sister.
Theo would break the animus exchange between the two, with a question he had been wondering for some time. "So what's with your names? They're very different."
Yun, not chucking down a drink spoke first. "It simple, I was named after our grand-mother on our mom's side."
"And I was named after our father's mother." Arial smiled and slammed the glass on the bar top, causing the bartender to glare at her. “Hey, let me get another!”
Despite the bar being mostly empty, it was not completely empty. As Arial noticed after a handful of drinks. At least one of the other clientele was quite open to her advances which she quickly moved on and which suited Yun just fine. Despite spending most of the day with him, she was still enjoying Theo's company as they drank and talked about the trivialities of life, that made it worth living.
"I don't know. Never really thought about it to be honest. I know people used to get married, settle down, have 2.5 kids, a dog and a house in the suburbs. But that seems like such a different reality from today, you know?" Theo took a sip of his beer as he thought about it all. "Not, that I wouldn't mind it."
Yun laughed and shook her head as sipped her virgin mojito. It was such a refreshing drink; she couldn't understand why people had to ruin it with alcohol. "I'm not looking to have kids. I know I probably should, I mean, we're technically generation Gamma, smaller than Beta, which was smaller than Alpha. If we don't… but I just don't want to you know?"
Theo nodded in tentative approval, "I know what you mean."
It was mostly an unspoken truth that no one really thought the world was going in the direction it should. It created a feeling of helplessness that led to many just abandoning the thought of bringing more people into it. There was also the simple fact that it was, unnecessary. Robotics had taken over nursing homes, so people didn't need children to help them when they got older. Companionship could easily be simulated by advanced AIs and more robotics as well. Why go dating when you could just make the perfect date?
But for Yun, there was something else, and she turned to smile at her sister. Given how she was talking and looking at the young man next to her, she may have been thinking about adding to generation Epsilon. "I think my sister will have our family line well in hand. I wouldn't mind being an aunt."
"You have a brother too, don't you?"
"Yeah, he's way younger than us. Mom and Dad never told him he was an unexpected accident. I guess he might have a family too one day. If neither of us do."
Yun's smile might have been misinterpreted as Arial brought her new friend over to talk to them. As much as she tried to hint it wasn't a good idea, her sister didn't quite catch on. Unfortunately for Arial, her friend turned out to be more interested in Yun and Theo's research.
“So, your whole idea is to get this up on that space station they want to build?”
It had been several minutes, but already the young man seemed to grasp most of the complexities of the idea. “I mean, that is one idea yeah. Really, I like the idea of using it to control a gravity drive.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Theo knows more about the mechanics of it than I do. But, there are complex space-time metrics, basically the shape of spacetime, that could allow for faster than light travel. There are some that don’t even need exotic matter, but they require some very complex interfiled interactions. You could put a quantum computer at the surface of the singularity and let that control how it manipulates spacetime.”
Yun looked at Theo for a sign she overstepped, “Yun’s right, I mean there’s more to it than that. The metrics get really complex, really quick, but this is one of the potential uses of such a powerful computer.”
Arial was quickly getting bored with the conversation, but just couldn't seem to pull her new friend away from her sister and Theo.
"Well, if you guys think the idea might be viable, you should message me." The man handed the two an unusual artifact, a business card. All be it, one with integrated electronics and thin film LEDs. With that, Arial managed to pull the man away from the bar, heading out to the wider city.
Yun and Theo looked at the card, there was only a single name on it, "Ardman?" She read it aloud. "Strange name, ever hear of him?"
Theo looked at the card and held a puzzled expression, "'World Simulations'. Yeah, they're a gaming company. Mostly they manage the servers for other companies though. I had a few friends in undergrad that interviewed for them."
"Oh, any good?"
Theo laughed and shook his head before tossing the card. It was getting late, neither were exactly tired but just hanging out in the bar for the rest of the night was losing its appeal.
“I’ll be honest, I love my sister, but I really don’t want to go back to my studio apartment right now.”
“Do… do you want to come back to my place?”
It grew late, or perhaps at this point. Early might have been the better term. The night didn't turn out exactly like she expected, but she also wasn't complaining.
A bottle of water on the nightstand next to them caught her eye, as she laid there awake watched the humid drops on the outside bead up and roll down the surface. It was mesmerizing, as she thought about the drops collecting at the bottom. Pulled there by gravity. A thought crossed her mind and caused her to laugh a bit, as wondered what it would be like if they ran backwards, up the bottle instead of down. What if time's arrow went backwards instead of forward if entropy decreased instead of increase?
That thought began to change and deform. What if it was just a local decrease? If you could get the water droplet to spread evenly over the bottle. If you could program them too. Yun shot up out of bed, stirring Theo from his slumber.
"Theo!" She cried, "I think I've got an idea."
"That's nice…" He closed his eyes tightly but couldn't keep them closed. "What kind of idea?"
"We'll write a program, a quantum algorithm that will fix the problem."
"How?"
"That's just it. We'll write a program to do it. We'll move the move the mass around the event horizon so it stays stable."
"Right, but we can't control it like that. That's the problem."
"You're right, but what I'm saying is what if we write a program to do it?"
Theo finally satup in bed next to her, "…I'm not following you."
"So, even before the singularity stabilizes the Bekenstein bound still exists, there's still a surface there. We know we can run programs on it, just like the singularity processor. We even saw it running that sample program earlier. We just need to think more physical. Instead of simulating something random, we write a program that spreads the data out evenly."
"Spread the data evenly, but how would…" Theo paused lost in thought, he understood the physics of it, but not really the computer science aspect.
"It's just a quantum algorithm. It would push data away from dense areas. It's like an inverse packing problem. Since the data-"
"Is entropy, which is basically just the configuration of energy at this point. That could work, if you can write it. At least it's worth trying."
"Right!?" Yun didn't bother to wait for a response as she dressed herself.
"Wait, you're leaving right now?"
" The corrections should be easy enough to implement. Come on Theo! It's 3 AM, no one is going to be using the array at this time. "
"You know that's not true… You're just going to interrupt someone else's job, aren't you?" Theo sighed as she ran after her.
Yun could only turn around and smirk.
This was it, if this run didn't work, they'd have to try something else. They watched as each frame ran by, flashes of light, of particles, and energy. Then, suddenly, it happened. The simulation ended. The singularity was both stable, and still.
It was done. They’d run a few more simulations and models just to be sure they had enough data, but everything looked right. They had done it!
Dr. Shroder had to deal with several angry faculty whose jobs had been queued, but the department chair seemed far more forgiving. Given their success.
“Now what?” Was all Yun could say.
“Now! You two can start working on publishing and then you’ll both be able to choose any project you want to work on after that." Dr. Shroder looked over the two again, as if they didn't quite get it. "You're both going to be able to write your own tickets with this thesis."