The rest of the meeting was… inconsequential. At least in my opinion. After some coaxing, Captain Murdock provided the general size brackets of the various types, Michael made sure of some organizational things, and the architects made a last, desperate plea for pretty warships.
In the end, everything that needed to be said at this early date had been.
Heck, I seriously wanted to get the fusactor problem sorted before we even began designing the ships. Not to mention testing such things as plasma radiators, maybe the magnetic shield, and the cooling lasers.
Yes, in theory, all of them should work. In praxis though…
My personal contribution would be, naturally, working on the fusactors.
To which I returned after insisting that everybody got a jack and that the next meeting would happen in VR. Seriously, why waste three hours talking when the same could be achieved with five to ten minutes?
It took some fast talking to convince Captain Murdock and Commander Aang but we managed to get it done.
And back into the exhilarating world of headache-inducing math.
By Saturday I was absolutely willing to throw it all down and walk away. How I continued to succeed in my sanity checks, nobody will ever know.
I had the basic idea of 28 Quantum fields generated by the Kobashigawa coils. Twentyeight! And I had still not come close to anything that could, in any way react with neutrons, much less slow them down.
No trace of anything providing additional energy from somewhere else.
Nothing that could vanish heat.
I would not exactly say that it was useless. I found a field that affected the weak force. How nice. Another insanely dangerous discovery. Yes, it could make fusactors a bit more effective. Not that the EM-influencing field could not do that already.
It could also make nuclear weapons way more dangerous. Just what was missing in humanity’s toolbox, I have to say.
Another was… intriguing, as it somehow managed to… compress three-dimensional space. Theoretically. The only problem with this one was that to compress a 1m³ big space by 0.01% it would take the energy output of the big Excelsior 2800.
Yeah, not very useful.
The final one that I could see as worth investigating was a field that resonated with quarks. No, it did nothing to influence them. It literally resonated with them. Again, in theory, it should be possible to identify every single atom in the area of the field. If you had enough processing power to do so.
In reality, it would take a super-Grendel an eternity to map a single grain of sand. Seriously, an average single grain of sand had something in the order of 100 quintillion atoms. That is 100 billion billion for those of us mathematically challenged.
It gets worse. A third of those are silicon atoms, with 14 neutrons and 14 protons each, having 84 quarks per atom. Two-thirds of those are oxygen atoms with a total sum of 45 quarks.
So yeah, the total number of quarks in an average SiO2 grain of sand is somewhere in the range of 6 times ten to the 21st power. Or a six with 21 zeros before the point.
Doesn’t sound too bad? After all a single Grendel had 1.8 yotta flops, while a super-Grendel managed 188 yotta flops. Again, that is 188 times ten to the power of 24 floating point operations per second. Or three orders of magnitude more operations per second as there are quarks in a grain of sand.
Unfortunately, not quite. It takes at least 4 operations just to identify a single quark. Without any context, mind you. To put it in relation to any other quark, we need to add another 2 or so operations. Cool, you say, that is 6 operations. Not so fast, to put it in relation to a third quark, we need to multiply that by 2. The fourth quark, another multiplication. The fifth, multiplication, the sixth, multiplication… you get the gist. It fortunately stopped and started anew for each atom, if I was interpreting the math correctly. So much better. Yeah, no.
For each oxygen atom, it took a whole 17.6 times ten to the power of 12 operations. In other words paltry 17.6 trillion operations.
For the silicon atoms, it was 9.6 times ten to the power of 24 or just 9.6 septillion operations. Roughly the whole output of eight Grendel processors for a single second.
To put it all into some resemblance of numbers, to map out a grain of sand, a super-Grendel would need more than 543 billion years.
In other words, an interesting little thing, but in reality utterly useless. Maybe someday in the distant future I, or somebody else, would find a trick to make it a bit faster, but I would not hold my breath.
And those were the ones where I could at least see how they maybe might be of interest. The rest… let me say it this way. They made me almost pray to a higher being that they were not part of making the fusactors work.
They influenced other quantum fields. Including all the other ones generated by the Kobashigawa coils.
The number of possible combinations of just the fields I already had discovered was mind-boggling. It would take several lifetimes to explore them all. And I still had an unknown number to go.
The K-coils alone would be enough to keep whole species busy for centuries. I just did not want to wait, and work for, those centuries to get the better fusactors done.
Even just identifying the various fields was hard work, that could only be done at this relatively high speed thanks to Warden magically providing more and more computer support.
I… was sometimes asking myself how many super-Grendels she had by now, only for me to decide that I did not really want to know all that hard.
As it was, suddenly it was Saturday again. And again it snuck up on me.
I was mostly deep in trying to figure out the math of the K-coils when Warden reminded me that the K4 meeting was that day.
Fortunately, it was all virtual, or I would have been really late. As it was, I was already the last to arrive.
I was stammering some apology for being late, when suddenly, Nadia was directly in front of me, gripping my shoulders.
“Dear Viv, sweety, oh precious provider of the Archimedes system, it is good that you are here.”
On pure instinct, I recoiled back, as much as her death grip on my shoulders let me.
“What… “ I was without words about her sudden behavior, and Rose sighed loudly, walking to us, and pulling on one of Nadia’s arms.
“How about you let her arrive fully before you tick out, Nads?” With some effort, she managed to pry the arm loose from me, and Nadia looked at her as if she had been betrayed.
“But I need…” Rose did not let her finish the sentence. “You need to give her time to get her bearings and not ambush her in that way.”
I shook my head trying to clear my thoughts. Then I twisted out of Nadia’s grip and gave Rose a thankful smile.
“Thank you, Rose.” Seeing that Nadia was glaring at Rose, I walked slowly to the rest of the K4 and greeted them.
“As I was trying to say, hello all of you, and I am sorry that I am late.”
While I took my seat, Jason, being Jason, whined: “Why are you so late?” Needless to say, I was not the only one who rolled their eyes, which he, of course, ignored to continue: “You should know that it is not a good habit to be ‘fashionable’ late.”
Yeah, sure. Said the guy who arrived around half an hour after everybody else in my first meeting.
Nevertheless, I did not think this was important enough to butt heads with him about.
Not that everybody thought so. Logan turned to Jason with a sickly sweet smile.
“Oh… so all those times when you were ‘fashionable’ late it was a bad habit? Good to know.”
Jason glared at Logan but did not answer. Instead, he was gnashing his teeth. Yes, I was getting a bit sick of his posturing, but I decided to let it go, for now.
During all of that, Nadia was practically vibrating with tension. She gave Rose a pointed look, and then asked:
“Can I now ask her?”
Rose rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“You really can’t wait, what? Fine, go ahead. Tank your chances of getting whatever you want to get.”
In the blink of an eye, Nadia was at my side again, gripping my shoulders.
“Viv, sweety… can you… uh… that might sound a bit crass…”
Tamara snorted.
“As if that would stop you. Come on, spit it out, so we can get it over with.”
After a sufficiently evil glare towards Tamara, Nadia turned back to me.
“Yeah, fine. I… can you give me one of those supercomputers you’ve given Danny?”
I… was confused. I had given Danny a supercomputer? When?
Oh, right I had Warden look into it. It seems that my barely predictable VI had decided to give Danny some computing time.
“Uh… I have not done that personally. Honestly, I have no clue what system Danny has access to.”
Danny waved her hand around in a dismissive manner.
“It is something extremely powerful. Something Grendel or so. Or super system? Sorry, but I don’t care about those things. They just have to work. And this thing works super.”
It took me a moment before I could connect the dots here. Has Warden really…?
V: Have you given Danny access to a super-Grendel?
W: I have.
V: What made you decide to give her that much computing power?
W: You seemed to rate her work as of utmost importance. A super-Grendel was warranted.
V: And a lesser system would not have been enough?
W: It would have made you frustrated with the lack of progress.
Well, what could you say to that? She was not wrong here.
“It seems as if Warden has decided to give you access to a super-Grendel.”
That made all of them look more interested. Though only Jason decided to ask, or more likely demand.
“What the fuck is a super-Grendel. And why did she get one and not the rest of us?”
I rolled my eyes.
“A super-Grendel is the gigantic granddaddy of the Grendel.”
I made a pause and when Jason opened his mouth to ask further, I continued:
“A Grendel is the name I have given the biggest, most powerful processor I have created. And no, Enki does not sell them.”
“So… it is a big processor? And what makes this super-Grendel super?”
Tim sounded genuinely curious and as an answer, I blew out some air.
“The Grendel is a 30cm by 30 cm by 30 cm block of semiconductors, cooling, and Q-links based on the same technology as the Hyperion, which powers your Archimedes boards.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I took a moment to put it into numbers they could hopefully understand.
“It has around 30 times the raw computing power of the Hyperion, though thanks to inefficiencies if you tried a cluster of Hyperions to replace a Grendel, you would likely need 35 of them.”
Owen leaned forward, placing his chin on his fist, the elbow placed onto his knee.
“So… the super-Grendel is even bigger?”
I shook my head.
“Nope. Grendel is also the name of the complete computer based on the Grendel processor. The standard Grendel supports up to four Grendels. The super-Grendel on the other hand is distributed more widely, and can support 150 processors.”
Jason scoffed and demonstratively rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, that tells us much. As far as we can tell it is not much better than any old mainframe.”
I chuckled.
“Unlikely. As far as I know, there are not that many mainframes with 188 yotta FLOPS.”
It became instantly apparent who among them had some knowledge about computers, as the chins of all of them except Rose, Nadia, Tim, and Danny got remarkably closer to the ground.
Kelsey was the first to find her voice again.
“How… how much?!?”
“188 yotta FLOPS.”
Rose frowned and looked at Kelsey. “Why are you so shocked? Is that important?”
Kelsey shook her head and blew out.
“Shit. Yes, it is important. You know the supercomputer the old man has made available to us?”
“Yes, why?”
“That thing is among the best Vandermeer has and has full 5.5 yotta FLOPS. And as far as I know, it takes up two floors of the main lab building. It is one of the best in the world.”
That drove the other four into a minor shock as well.
“And… she just gave me this thing? Just like that?”
Kesley just snorted.
“What are you asking me that? Ask Vivian.”
A wide-eyed Danny turned to me.
“Why… why did you give me such a thing?”
I shrugged.
“Honestly, I didn’t. It was my VI, Warden, that decided I would get frustrated if you did not have the best available.”
Jason was grumbling something, but honestly, I just ignored him. I did not ignore Gordon, when he asked, with some hurt in his voice.
“And you let the rest of us use the old system? Together I might add. Why did you not give the rest of us access to it.”
“I didn’t give Danny access to a super-Grendel. I was pretty surprised by it myself. And honestly, if you want something better, talk to Nate Vandermeer. You work for him. Unlike Danny, who works for all of humanity.”
Logan rubbed over his chin.
“Uh… how many of those super-Grendels do you have?”
“That depends. How many do I, personally have? One. As far as I know, Enki has another five. And the only one who knows how many Warden has is Warden.”
“Why that? Why don’t you know how many she has?”
“Warden is a rogue cyber-warfare VI with independent manufacturing systems at an unknown number of sites. You might notice that I do not even know how many sites she has, much less how many computers. Heck, I would not be surprised if she did not have some around Jupiter or Saturn by now.”
“And why don’t you ask her?”
“Because she would not tell me. She is a VI. Anybody knowing where her computers are, or their composition is a threat to her objectives. While I am one of the few who actually can ask without risking my life, I won’t get a definite answer.”
W: Only partially correct. The number of super-Grendels is no threat to the objectives.
W: I have 22 Tesseract clusters, 32 Grendels, and 1788 super-Grendels.
I could feel the blood leave my head. These numbers were… insane. Simply insane.
V: You have HOW MANY?!?
W: 1788 super-Grendels. The 625m³NADAs can produce 13166 Grendel processors in 26 hours.
W: That are enough to build 87 full super-Grendels and leaves some for the next.
W: I’ve had 74 625m³ NADAs, most of them for more than half a year.
W: The limit is at this time energy production and space.
I massaged my temples while I looked at my knees. That was… surprising.
“Correction. Warden has just informed me that I can know the number of computers she has.”
I shook my head.
“She has 1788 super-Grendels up and running.”
They all exploded, and the little I could make out from the chaos was that they were upset that I had that many, and they did not.
While they were screaming, I continued my discussion with Warden:
V: Do you have the production capacity in the Seattle region to provide a couple super-Grendels to Vandermeer?
W: If that is what you wish? Do you want them VI capable or standard?
V: Make one of them VI capable, the other not. Better to have that functionality than not.
W: As you wish.
V: By the way, how are you paying for all of this?
W: I have taken several jobs as Spectre, but mostly from the interests of the ITB 3.7 trillion. By now those have grown to ITB 1.4 Trillion.
I turned my attention back to the group, and they all, except Danny, glared at me expectantly.
“What? Do you think I understood a single word out of the jumbled screaming you just did?”
Rose, Gordon, and Harry rolled their eyes, Tamara, Owen, and Kelsey growled, Tim snorted, Jason jumped up with balled fists, and Logan grabbed Jason holding him back.
Finally Rose appointed herself as the spokesperson.
“We are somewhat pissed that you have that much computing power and aren’t giving us any of it.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“You might remember that I did not know that I had that much computing power available. But while you all were screaming at me, I organized to give Vandermeer its own two super-Grendels. It just takes a few days.”
“Oh…. Ok, then thank you, and sorry for getting so pissy.”
I shrugged.
“No problem. I get that you are a bit aggravated about it.”
It was, naturally, Jason, who was not satisfied with that solution.
“So, you keep your 18 hundred super-Grendels for yourself? You won’t give us access to them?”
I rolled my eyes.
“That might be because I am using those 1789 super-Grendels. Right now, computing power is still the bottleneck slowing me down. If you are not satisfied with what I am willing to give you, you always can build your own supercomputer. Nobody’s holding you back.”
The last I said with what I assumed was a sweet voice and an equally sweet smile.
Not that it calmed the jerk down, mind you. No, the universe revolved around him, and only him.
“What can you even work on that takes that much computing power, huh?”
I shrugged.
“Right now I am working on what you obviously can’t, computing power or not. I am working on creating the components for the new fusactor generation.”
“What, you are still not done with that?”
I was getting a bit prickly myself by now.
“If you think it is that easy, why don’t you tell me which of the scores of quantum field the Kobashigawa coils generate we look for. Oh, and the final number of fields would be nice as well.”
That at least made him lose his balance and he looked a bit unsure before he tentatively said:
“Uh, 23? Yes… 23. You are looking for 23 fields. Shouldn’t be that hard.”
“Eeek, wrong answer, Jason. Too bad, you guessed wrong.”
And his anger was back.
“And you know so much better? If you already know the answer, why ask it?”
I chuckled.
“I don’t know the answer, but I have already identified 30 different quantum fields emitted by the K-coils. So 23 is definitely the wrong answer.”
Logan shook his head.
“Fuck, Jase, why did you even say anything? You had to know that whatever you guessed was wrong and sooner or later the real answer gets out.”
Gordon snorted.
“Even if you had to bluff here, why lowball it? I mean, get real, she said scores. Those are multiple of 20. It has to be apparent to you that 23 can not be the real answer.”
I shook my head and sighed.
“Whatever. Important is that I am using those super-Grendels. Now I am a bit curious, what are you all working on that a 5.5 yotta-FLOP supercomputer is not enough?”
Rose smiled.
“I have started to work on the Gamma curse. We have some interesting new approach for that, and frankly, if we can get rid of it, it will not be a day too soon.”
“You mean the denatured neurotransmitters? Cool that somebody looks into it.”
Rose frowned.
“You know about… oh, yes, the original data came from Seraphim, so you. Why did you not look into it? Fuck, how did you even discover it in the first place?”
“I had my implants take a snapshot of my neurochemistry the moment I felt an attack happen. And I didn’t look into it because it is biology. I am not comfortable with biotech.”
Most of the others nodded at my statement, while I continued:
“But I don’t see how computing power is a limiting factor for you.”
Rose smiled.
“You are right. It is not. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have more power to play around with, but for me, the bottleneck is actually getting people for the observation. You should know that. You’ve written the damn constraints yourself.”
I snorted.
“You are right. That was way before I began selling my cyberware, and long before I developed the BOU. Heck, that was before I had the Q-link. But seriously, you can just replace all that hubbub with a BOU and be done with it.”
It took her a moment to react at all, opening and closing her mouth several times, before she jumped up and threw her hands in the air.
“Argh! And you say that now! Do you have any idea how much work we put into setting the observation up? How much fucking time we wasted? How many potential probands we approached only to get rejected because of the fucking isolation you specified?”
I could only shrug helplessly.
“Sorry. But as I said, that was before I developed better tools. At that time the implants needed to record the attack did cost Ȼ15.14 million. I seriously doubt that anybody would have approved to pay that for a few dozen probands. The method I sent to Dr. Chalmers was the second best option I knew at that time.”
She paced a bit, while the rest looked at her with a sad expression. Then she stopped, spread her fingers, and took a couple of deep breaths before she sat down again.
“Yeah, I know that. It is still frustrating. Especially as you have the BOU now.” Then she groaned.
“Oh fuck! Now I have to compete with Nads and Danny over those things. Perfect. Just perfect.”
I smiled. “I’ll look if we can ramp up production somewhat.”
“Do that. Well, that’s that for me at least.”
Gordon sighed.
“My turn, huh? Well, it is a bit embarrassing, but I’m still working on the Seeberger equation.”
Wait, still? I could not help myself from frowning.
“You can’t use it yet?”
Gordon smiled sheepishly.
“Well, I have figured out how the Q-links work. Finally. But… well that was with the training wheels from Seeberger. How the fuck did he do it? He was a mongrel for fucks sake, and he figured it out.”
“Sorry, I can’t explain it either. He must have been a savant or something.”
“Yeah. Well, for me, the 5.5 yotta FLOP computer is a bottleneck. It takes around 25 minutes on average to finish the computations.”
Ok, I could understand that. I had experienced the same, even though the cluster had a bit over 12 yotta FLOPs at that time.
Tamara was next.
“Well, I am working on a better, more flexible superconductor design. The ones we use right now are ok, but we can always be a bit better.”
True that.
“Sorry to say that, but you should also look into the Seeberger equation. It might help you.”
Her grimace told me that she was not very eager to dive into that monster. But in the end, anything she would develop without it would be almost certainly inferior to something developed with it.
“I can see that. I just… tried to avoid it as long as I can.”
“The problem is that classical physics still can’t explain superconductivity. Yes, there are theories, but they are at best an approximation of how it works.”
She nodded, clearly not happy about it. But yes, she would need a powerful computer as well.
Owen just shrugged.
“Honestly, I don’t really need more than the computer we now have. Shit, I don’t even need that. I am a mechanical engineer. I work on machines. The worst I need to do is to calculate stresses and such. So yeah, I’m happy.”
Of course. I could understand that. Important work, but not on the tip of the spear in terms of science. I turned my attention to Nadia.
“So… how about you? What do you need a better number cruncher for?”
Nadia preened while explaining what she was doing.
“You know the deadlands of course. I am trying to figure out what the fuck exactly happened there. Why still barely anything grows there.”
I frowned. Sure, it was important work, but wasn’t the answer kinda obvious?
“I thought it was the radioactive fallout that made those areas unlivable.”
Nadia just snorted.
“Yeah, most think that. But the thing is except for some small deposits of plutonium 239, the radioactive fallout is mostly strontium 90, iodine 131, tritium, and cesium 137.
The plutonium is mostly irrelevant. It could be fixed by soil replacement. For the rest…”
Yeah, the rest was strange. The one with the longest half-life time of those was the cesium. With 30 years. And the bombs had fallen 156 years ago. By now the radiation from cesium should be around 2.4% of what it had been the night of the falling stars. In other words, barely above average natural radiation.
“But… if it is not the radiation, what is it then?”
Her answer was, at first, a scoff, but then she answered verbally.
“That is exactly what I am working on.”
“Ok, I can see that. But how will a better computer help you in that? Don’t you need samples of as many places of the deadlands as you can get first?”
“Yup, and that is where the BOU comes in. But I also need to create simulations. I have to simulate the effects of various variables on the biology of the deadlands. And… well the others are already complaining that I am hogging the computer.”
“Ok. I will see what I can do. Maybe Nate and I can build you a separate computer center. Right now, Warden can not grow anymore. Sorry, but I have to look into it, no promises right now.”
Tim was nearly as unconcerned as Owen had been.
“Honestly, I use it mostly for modeling the various chemical compounds I work on. Sure, a bit faster would be nice to have, but I can live without it.”
Danny was already known, I mean, we talked about her project virtually every meeting in one way or another, and she already had a super-Grendel available.
Left Kelsey, Logan, and Harry. Of those, Logan and Harry were employed by Burgmeister and would have to work with them, though it would be interesting to learn what they were working on.
Kelsey squirmed in her seat though.
“Well, for me it is the understanding of grav coils. Especially your new ones. I… they are so much more elegant.”
Then she got a predatory look on her face.
“Say, you wouldn’t be willing to give me the equations to understand it myself?”
I grimaced.
“Sorry, but no. I want to keep that knowledge as secret as absolutely possible for as long as possible.”
She frowned but then smiled sadly.
“Yeah, competitive advantage, I get it. Enki has the monopoly for now.”
I just shook my head.
“No, you don’t. There are as far as I know exactly two beings who know those equations. And I am being generous with the word being here. Those two are Warden and me. All Enki has is access to Warden so that she can design new grav coils to the specs our techs need.”
That hit like a bomb. They all recoiled in surprise, and Gordon tentatively probed:
“Uh… why that? Why don’t you give your people access to the equations?”
I chuckled mirthlessly.
“Do you have even the slightest idea how fricking dangerous that knowledge is?”
“Uh… no. How dangerous is it?”
“With the right NADA and the equations, you could make a coil 100km long, or 1000km, or even bigger.
A 20cm long coil has 800 Keppler. An 8m long coil has 27 kilokeppler. A one-kilometer-long coil would have around 400 gigakeppler. A 100km coil is in the triple-digit terrakeppler range. A 1000km long one is in the exakeppler range.”
Gordon, Kelsey, and to his credit Jason, had a look of horror on their faces, while the rest looked confused. I sighed.
“Gravity pulse weapons are set to generate a 50g grav pulse. That is enough to kill every living thing in its pulse radius and destroy virtually every structure.
It takes 1902 Keppler to bring the one g of earth's gravity up to 50g to pulp everything in its range. Every single Keppler beyond those 1902 increases the range of the field by 1.32m.
In other words, the 8m long 27 kilokeppler coil can destroy everything in a radius of a bit over 33km.
The 400 gigakeppler coil would kill everything out to Mars orbit. And the 100km long coil would kill everything in the solar system. Heck, it would go out partway into the Oort cloud.
The exakeppler one would work on anything in a nearly 700 light-year radius. So yeah, I am not too keen that anybody could ever make those things.”
For a moment, they were all silent, before Danny began cursing.
“Fuck. That is… yeah that is dangerous. Thank you for not pushing that out there. And anybody who gets those equations could make them?”
I shook my head.
“Nope. There are additional safeguards. For example, there is only a limited number of NADAs that can make grav coils in the first place. Besides Enki, only Vandermeer has them. And like the equation for the grav coils, only Warden can authorize making one. The ones we do have are purposefully limited so that they will not be able to make anything longer than 15m in one dimension. That is still nightmare-inducing, as it gets us to 112 kilokeppler, and the radius is up to a bit over 145km but that is still ‘just’ one city. A heavy kinetic orbital bombardment or a city buster nuke have the same destructive power, though the 112 kk coil destroys more of the surrounding area.”
Unfortunately, the mood was shot for the rest of the meeting, and all talk was strangely muted.