The question now was how to even begin.

“To be honest, I am not so sure I actually can explain it. Well, it is… no, that is not right. If you look at the different dimensions… no, not right either. Not even the right word.

Heck, there are no right words. No language I know of has anything even remotely capable of describing how a Q-link works. It is so far out there… maybe Clarke's third law… but no, that will do nothing to explain…”

I rubbed my temples, feeling the headache coming, even here in cyberspace.

“I could… yes, that could work. Ok, I think I have a way to explain it. At least partially.

So, have you ever heard about quantum entanglement?”

To give him credit, while it was obvious that he had no clue about it, he kept showing interest.

“No, I can’t say I have. I mean, it is obvious that it has something to do with quantum physics, but that’s all I have.”

“No worry. It is nothing that would concern you. Basically, it is a fringe phenomenon in quantum physics.

In certain circumstances, a couple of subatomic particles can become entangled with each other. One of the factors is that they have in the same location for the entanglement to happen.

Now, as long as the entanglement is not broken, which can happen pretty quickly if something goes wrong, the universe treats these two particles as one. If anything influences one of them, it influences the other exactly the same way in exactly the same instant.

And it is completely irrelevant if they no longer are in the same location. They can be a few centimeters apart, a few meters, or on the other side of the galaxy from each other.

The instant something happens to one of them, it happens to the other.”

Ben frowned and looked pretty thoughtful.

“That can’t be right. That would mean instant communication, and it still takes hours one way into the outer system.”

“You would be right, it would mean instant communication if the uncertainty principle would not play spoilsport here.

Essentially, anything that can be entangled that way is small enough that simply checking the status of the entangled particles means changing its status randomly.

It has some uses in the verification of a light-speed signal for interference, but that is it.

No breaking relativity that way.”

“Hm, ok, so it is mostly a curiosity but not important in real life. And the way you tell it, you are not talking about your Q-links here. So what gives?”

I inhaled deeply, before continuing.

“What gives is that I… learned how quantum entanglement actually works. Just to make it clear, it simply should not be possible according to Einstein. But it exists, so Einstein must have had some things wrong.

Again, I have learned how it works. And, much more important, I learned how to induce a much deeper entanglement between bigger things than particles.

What I mean is, that I can entangle complete atoms, or even molecules, to an extent that, when one of them gets electrically stimulated, so does the other.

Those are the Q-links. Single carbon atoms that act as an electrical conduit for a signal.

Or an electromagnetic signal.

And while quantum entanglement is… fragile, Q-links are much harder. They are… also more versatile. Instead of just two particles, I can link several atoms together, in a form of broadcasting.”

Ben just sat there silent for some time, until he finally answered me:

“You are saying you have… an instant communication system. With what? Unlimited range?”

“In a way, yes. It is… much more complicated than that, and the real way it works is actually at no range but… frick, that is so complicated.”

He inhaled deeply a couple of times.

“Yes, I can see that this… is an advantage. I can also see that it will be bad if it is known. But… hell, how? Yes, I get that you are smart, but how the fuck did you discover something like that?”

I sunk back into my chair.

“I… didn’t. Not… really. I found it, but somebody else discovered it.”

“Of course you found it. How else… fuck, Vivian, how comes nobody but you has that?”

“That… is the complicated part. Do you remember that when I had finished the Lamb, I learned to enjoy finding out things, tinkering?

Early on, I desperately tried to engage my mind in other things than revenge and rage. I searched for the most esoteric, hard-to-understand science texts I could find. The more obscure, the better. Anything to distract me.”

I had the urgent need for some coffee, so I spawned some.

“Do you want some?”

Without waiting for his answer I spawned a cup for him as well, while I took a sip.

“Roughly a year, maybe a year and a half later, I found some leads to a science paper that… had the reputation to drive people mad. I thought I had nothing to lose there.”

“That… is debatable. But please continue.”

“I managed, after some digging, to find a copy of it. Seeberger’s last hypothesis. Or Seeberger’s madness, as some called it.”

“Who is Seeberger?”

“Andreas Seeberger was a professor for theoretical physics at one of the better European universities I think. It is a crime that his name is so unknown. By rights, he should be talked in the same way people talk about Newton or Einstein.

But three factors made his work… well lost.

First, when he published his hypothesis, I can only assume that he made a typo. Nothing too bad normally, just a mistyped letter. An h instead of a g. Unfortunately, it was deep in the bowels of the main equation. An equation that gives one a headache just looking at it.

At least when I played with the math, it made no sense to me, and I looked deeper and discovered that the h in that place made no sense, and invalidated the whole equation.

I have to assume that he actually had the right equation because the rest of the paper works perfectly when you use the corrected equation.

So, the next unfortunate point was that just two days after submitting the paper, and roughly a couple of weeks before the first feedback that it was not working came in, he had a fatal car accident.

So he was no longer around to correct the typo.

Still, that was before the war, so there were enough people knowledgeable enough to find the mistake and correct it.

If… he did not have his accident on January 28th, 2079.”

It took a moment, but then Ben groaned and buried his head in his hands.

“So… all that happened just two weeks before world war III started?”

“Yep. And when China visited Taiwan, people had pretty quickly other things to do than trying to understand the math he devised. And after the war, it was mostly forgotten.

It did not help that physicists were preferred targets of assassinations on all sides. I am not sure that after the war there were even a dozen people who were smart and educated enough to get what Seeberger wanted to say, much less to understand that he had made a typo.

And with Sanderson's Folly in effect, it’s gone downhill from there. Until K4.”

“So, a revolutionary new step in humanity lost because of bad timing?”

“You get it. Honestly, after the war, everybody who tried to understand the paper… either they gave up, or were the sort of kooks that are easily, and all too often rightfully, stamped as insane. So of course it had the reputation of inducing insanity.”

“That did not stop you from looking into it, apparently.”

He sounded slightly amused but did not comment further.

I lifted my hands and shrugged.

“Yeah, sure. I was not all that sane anyway as I see it. I honestly did not expect to get anything out of it. I did it just… well, I needed a distraction. It helped that I could not find the English version. I had to learn Seeberger's language to be able to read it.

And at first, I got exactly what I expected. A nice puzzle without an available solution. It took me quite some time to get to the point where I could actually understand it as much as it could be understood.“

I needed to do something with my hands and spontaneously spawned an old-fashioned pen, after I placed the never-ending cup back on the table, and began playing with it.

“I expected to read it, decipher it as far as it was possible, laugh about it and then put it aside. I managed the former two, with some effort. The latter two, not so much.

I don’t know… somehow, something made click for me. For some reason I… just… knew that the equation was wrong. I could not tell you how I knew, or even when I knew. I just suddenly realized that I knew.

I was delighted. The puzzle had turned out to be even… more interesting, more distracting. It took me nearly a month, virtual that is, to find out why the equation was… wrong. It took me another month to find out what variable I had to use instead.”

I whirled the pen around my fingers, looking sometimes at it, but without real attention to it.

“Not that I expected the hypothesis to suddenly work just because the equation was correct. It was just something to divert myself, keep myself from crossing the event horizon.

But suddenly, it all made sense. I had previously only dipped my toe into physics, I was more an engineer than a scientist, or at least I’ve seen myself so. But I had learned enough to at least get the basic idea.

The next couple of months I invested much more… energy into physics, especially the more advanced parts. Quantum physics, string theory, relativity theory, the height of our knowledge of the universe.

And I understood more and more of Seeberger’s hypothesis.”

I took another sip of the coffee, becoming more and more agitated.

“It was… it is… brilliant. Simply brilliant. The man should have been celebrated as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Here he was and discovered the holy grail of physics, the fricking holy grail, and nobody knew about it just because of a fucking typo.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

At that moment I realized that I was basically screaming at Ben. I closed my eyes, shook my head to clear my thoughts, and generally tried to calm down. Ben used that moment to ask a question.

“The holy grail?”

I deeply inhaled and exhaled a couple of times, spreading my hands to regain my composure before I answered.

“He… he discovered the theory of everything. No, that does not sound right. He discovered the Theory of Everything. Yes, better.” I had taken special care to emphasize the capitalization.

“The one theory that explains, well everything. I… barely scratched the dust layer on the surface and I… already know so much more than the physicists from before the great war… it is scary.”

I finally managed to calm down somewhat, and a sudden thought crossed my mind, and I sat up straight.

“Why the heck am I even telling you this? I… this is squarely among my most important, most valuable secrets.”

I was, frankly, pretty bewildered. In retrospect, I realized that I had gotten louder and more energetic continuously while I told about it. I looked at Warden to see if she had any idea, but she just sat there, unmoving, and seemingly uninterested. Then I looked at Ben, and he was smiling this mild, knowing smile, as if he was looking at a particularly bright child.

After he looked into my eyes for a few seconds, he answered me.

“I… might have a clue why. Do you want to hear it?”

I nodded, still perplexed.

“Ok. First, a question, to make sure I am right. I assume that you are proud of it?”

I frowned. Was he joking?

“Yes, of course. This may be the most momentous discovery since… well, at least Einstein, but probably much further back. So yes, naturally I am proud of it.”

His smile intensified.

“And you are obviously pretty passionate about it, and what happened to… Seeberg?”

Just fine. Instead of giving me a clue about what he thought was going on, he confused me even more.

“I… am? And it is Seeberger.”

“Oh yes. Honestly, I’ve not seen you so… engaged about any topic, not even your new cyberware. This is what you are born to do.”

I looked at him slack-mouthed.

“Oh-kay…” I drawled that one word pretty hard.

“If you say so?”

He chuckled.

“Oh yes, that is pretty clear by now. And that is the reason why you told me about it. You are desperate to share it with somebody, anybody really. This, not the replicator, is your masterwork. The thing you are most proud about. But you couldn’t. You did not have anybody who you could even marginally trust with this… knowledge. Until now.”

Could he be right? Could that be it? But if he was right, how did he know it. Another, much darker thought came to me. I felt as if a cold hand had gripped my heart and began to squeeze.

“You… that was psychobabble. Are you a… psychologist?”

He snorted.

“As if I had ever the time to learn psychology. No, I am just good with people. A psychologist, a good one at least, is as well, but that doesn’t make me one. I have to confess though that I’ve read some books about it, but nothing special.”

Did I… could I, really trust him about that? He… he could be lying. But… was that so bad? Would that change anything? I realized that I had instinctively increased my compression where he could not follow me. That allowed me much more time to think.

If… well if I could think at all that is.

My thoughts were coursing chaotically. On one hand, I had no indication that he was lying. But… somebody in his position, I was pretty sure that he was very good at it. So the first question was, did I trust him? After a bit of thinking I concluded that for now, yes, I would.

But I would look into it further.

So the next question, if I later found out that he had lied about it… was it really that bad? That important?

I shuddered when I realized that yes, it was. I would not… could not really, trust any psychologist. I knew enough about it to know that this… trust issue was not entirely, ok not even a little bit, rational. It was justified, no question about it, but even I knew that the… psyops jerks were not really psychologists, counselors, or however they called themselves.

That did not change the fact that I… just couldn’t be near one of them.

But what would I do now? Or if I found out that he had lied?

With trembling hands, I took a few cleansing breaths again. I would have to nuke that bridge when I came to it.

Left just the question of what to do now? Could I trust him far enough for now to continue?

It took me a moment to realize what just happened, but it seemed as Warden was very good at predicting my mood. I almost immediately calmed down and reduced my compression back to 4:1.

I saw him, first in slow motion and then faster and faster develop a frown, and when I reached 4:1 he opened his mouth.

“What the fuck was… that? You… just blurred.”

I looked at the log for what compression I had reached, and it was 127:1. Ouch. For him, it must have been bewildering.

“I am sorry. I… let’s say I had a short in my thinking. I react badly, very badly, to psychologists and such folk. Or even the possibility of it.

For a moment I… panicked and was spiraling out of control. And instinctively reacted as if we were in a combat dive. I increased my compression. Significantly. At least it helped me to come to grips with it.

He looked me directly in the eyes and lifted his eyebrows.

“Just like that? Sorry if I don’t just believe you. This… trauma sits too deep, and you were too agitated about it. So how come you are now so cool?”

I felt myself blush, and absentmindedly wondered why I even had integrated that function into the VR, and I looked at the floor, while I softly answered him.

“Warden.”

“Warden? What has Warden to do with it?”

“I looked up your degree and told her that you said the truth.”

I felt my blush deepen and was seriously considering taking the time and excise that function in the near future, but I could not look at him. Honestly, I felt like crap at that moment.

And his hurt tone when he continued did nothing to help.

“That was what it took? You don’t trust me?”

Again, Warden answered for me.

“You have to realize that Seraphim is unable to react rationally to the mere possibility of somebody being a psychologist, psychotherapist, or counselor. My projections say that she would have, with approximately 88.43% probability come to the conclusion to trust you. But it would have taken her time, in which both of you would suffer, which in turn would decrease your usefulness for her.

That would have increased the risk for her life by approximately 0.02%. I decided to intervene.”

For some time, I heard nothing else, and then Ben talked again, much calmer now.

“I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand. Fuck, if I had your experience I think I would be the same. But please understand, your distrust hurt me.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and forced myself to look at him. For some strange reason, I wished I had implemented crying in the VR. But I hadn’t so I looked at him with dry eyes.

“I… know. I, honestly, I don’t like it myself. But I just can’t help it. I wish I could. But the moment I get the idea somebody is a shrink, I just react without thinking. I can’t think at that moment.”

“Yes, I get it. And I will try to help you. I just don’t know how.”

I had a mirthless laugh

“Just you being here for me helps. Seriously, it helps. Yesterday, I think I would have gone nuclear. And Warden helps as well.”

He rubbed his chin for a moment.

“What if… you used Warden to… I don’t know, help you?”

“While I could use a psychotherapeutic overlay, that would be counterproductive. Seraphim knows I don’t have emotions, and would likely view the overlay as false, rejecting it.

At the moment the most promising method is me intervening when she has an episode and giving her information that fortifies her trust.”

“But how can you even know when you have to intervene?”

“By now you should understand that her implants are directly connected to my servers via Q-link. I see everything she sees and hear everything she hears.”

“Yes, I got that. But, as you just said, you don’t have emotions. So how do you decide that she needs help just now?”

“My secondary objective is to assist her. Her work is easier and better when she is calm and in a good mood. As long as assisting her does not jeopardize the primary objective of keeping her alive and safe, I will do what I can.

That includes predicting when she needs help and either providing it or informing others that can.

For that, I have used several psychoanalytical algorithms to model her personality. Her talking about her past to you helped me refine these models significantly. I previously had no knowledge about her reaction to mental health professionals.”

Oh wow. Still cheerful and bright sounding, but this time it was me who was… not happy about what she was talking about. But… unlike a shrink, this was different. For one, she… behaved nothing like the faked friendliness the jerks had played to get deeper, and then for some reason I… knew that she would not hurt me. Well, I knew the reason, deep inside. She was incapable of hurting me. But still, psychoanalysis? I was… delighted.

“Can we please change the topic? I… somehow I don’t like this topic.”

Ben sighed, but nodded, while Warden answered with an: “As you wish.”

For a few seconds we sat there in silence before Ben spoke:

“Well, then how about back to Seeberg…er?”

“Yes, Seeberger. What about him?”

“Well, you said something about this every theory… whatever that is.”

“The Theory of Everything. The point is, that all theories of how physics work… stop working in certain circumstances. A black hole is an example. Classical physics, relativity theory, even quantum physics just don’t work there.

That’s why they are also called singularities. But we know they exist, we even have pictures of them. So real physics has to have a way to explain it.

Or how quantum physics and relativity theory are, on some fundamental level not compatible. They can’t both be true, but each of them stops working in one situation or another, and often the other theory can explain the situation.

All that means that there has to be… one singular framework, one theory, that explains everything. Quantum physics, gravity, relativity, quantum entanglement, singularities. Simply everything.

And that is the aptly named Theory of Everything, the holy grail of theoretical physics since the early 20th century.

And Seeberger found it. I… sofar I don’t fully understand exactly how it explains singularities, but I have some small inkling. I know how it explains quantum entanglement. I know how it explains that at one point relativity theory works, and at another quantum theory. It explains things we as humanity have not even noticed yet. It is, well I would not really call it elegant. It is too complex, too complicated for that. But it works.”

He leaned forward, onto his elbows.

“And… how does it work?”

I blew out a lot of air.

“I seriously don’t think you want that headache.”

“No, seriously, that sounds very interesting. So how does this theory of everything work?”

I shrugged, but if he absolutely wanted it, well it was his brain.

“Don’t say I did not warn you.”

He chuckled.

“You already said that. Did not dissuade me before.”

“Yes, but now we come into the insanity-inducing area. But ok. He called it Quantum Resonance. And it works…”

Then I thought about it. And I thought about it a bit more.

“You know, the problem is that English just hasn’t the words for it.”

“Then use the language that has the words.”

I groaned.

“No normal language can explain it. Only math. And it is a messed up math that… not to try to say you are stupid, but I don’t think you could grasp it.”

“Hmm, try me.”

I let my head hang for a moment.

“Fine. Have it your way.”

I spawned a wall, a big white wall, opposite from Warden so that we both could look at it comfortably, and then rendered the main equationte on it.

To explain how… messed up the math is, this one equation, in the paper was going over more than 14 A4 pages.

Not any of the derivatives, solutions, or anything. Just the pure equation.

Ben’s “What the fuck! What the hell is that?” made me snort.

“That is the math. And not even all of it. It is… the primary equation, that all the other equations derive from.”

After a few moments, he groaned.

“Ok, you made your point. I… how the hell do you understand this shit?”

“I don’t know. I just do.”

“So, can you… simplify it for me?”

“Not the math. I can try to… an analogy, but… well I’ll try.”

I looked at my hands, while I mostly talked to myself, trying to figure out how to explain it.

“Maybe… I could use dimensions… but… even the way SciFi-writers use them doesn’t fit. How about planes? Hm, no, still not right… it is nothing like a stack of paper, or an onion, no layers… oh, I know.”

I looked back up at him, while I continued:

“You know gems, right? They are usually cut in these ways that they have several facets. And depending on how you turn them, they look different, they change the light differently.

Imagine reality as one of these gems. It has several facets. I haven’t yet found out how many exactly, but at least 23.

The point is, depending on what facet you are on, the rules of physics change. The way we see the universe, how classical physics works, we are mostly in the center of one of these facets. The material facet, where everything consists of particles. Matter. We are mostly unable to look at other facets because we can only experience the material world. But at the fringes, we get glimpses at some neighboring facets. At the very small, in the quantum realm, the border between the material facet and the… let’s call it energy facet, where everything is just an energy wave, intersect.

That is the cause for the wave-particle duality. At that level of reality, what we can see is both facets.

The same with gravity. It… comes into play at large masses. The larger and denser the mass, the more it drifts into a facet, where everything is drawn together. And if the mass is big and dense enough it switches completely over, creating a singularity, where the material facet and the rules of it are no longer relevant.

Keep in mind that this is… not correct, but it is the best I can explain it. “

He huffed.

“Ok, I… think I get it so far. It is… hard to wrap my mind around it.”

“Tell me about it. And believe me, the reality of it is… harder. But to continue, where it comes to the Q-links, Seeberger developed this theory when he tried to explain quantum entanglement.

The point here is, that it happens under very specific circumstances where not two, but three facets overlap.

The material facet, the energy facet, and, what he called the resonance. So let's call it resonance facet.

In this facet, every single particle, every energy wave, simply everything is reduced to a combination of vibrations. Incredible complex vibrations. As far as I can tell it is a vibration in 73 different dimensions.

And the amplitude and frequency of these vibrations describe what particle x or wave x is, where it is in the material or energy facet, what state it has, everything. The combinations are… honestly, the number is irrelevant. Nobody can understand it. I probably could explain it mathematically. But I would have to use terms like Googol, or Graham’s number, or something like that.

But more important, in the resonance facet, there is no distance.”

Ben sucked in a sharp breath.

“You mean in this resonance facet, everything is at the same place?”

“Correct. The only difference between two things, whatever things that are, are the various vibrations.

The point now is that Seeberger managed to identify a couple of these dimensions as the… let’s say it ‘unique’ identifier and the state of the particle or the wave.

And if it comes to quantum entanglement, the vibrations of two particles or waves sync up in these dimensions, making the universe treat the two as a single entity.

Without external pressure that can only happen in the fringe between material and energy facet, meaning in the quantum realm, and as soon as the conditions change, the vibrations reset.

What Seeberger did not manage, but I did is to artificially induce this synchronization between bigger particles. Like protons, neutrons, electrons, or even atoms. And between more than two. Without straying into the energy facet.

That makes the universe treat these synchronized atoms as a single thing, irrelevant of their physical position, as, in the resonance facet, they are at the same position anyway.

And, to keep Seeberger’s naming scheme, and connect it to the quantum entanglement that started it all, I call these synchronized atoms quantum links or Q-links for short.”