The Quantum Bridge

By Steven E. Sund

My name is Jax Isaac Newton and it was just over a year ago today that I was let go by Allied Aerospace.
This began the trek that changed my life. I was a staff engineer at the corporate research laboratories located in Richmond Virginia for one of the top aerospace companies on the planet. The company was doing fine but management was looking for ways to increase shareholder value. We all knew this meant reducing operating costs, which translated to reductions in programs and ultimately job reductions.

I knew something was coming because in the last nine months I had seen laboratory after laboratory closed or moved to smaller locations. Each time this happened the closed laboratory was cleaned out and excess equipment was sold, scrapped or just thrown out.
First, the rest of the corporate laboratories staff would be allowed to claim excess equipment for their own labs on a first come first serve basis. Then the equipment left over was either thrown out or sold at bargain basement prices. I had over time picked up old computers, hard drives, and outdated but otherwise perfectly good equipment for my own personal use.

Earlier that week we were all waiting for a big announcement. Rumors had been circulating that something big was coming from corporate. We all updated our resumes and hoped we were one of the lucky ones to “miss the bullet.”
It was on a Thursday that my boss walked into my lab and told me the company would be letting me go at of the end of the month. He said he didn’t have any say in the decision and that he would write me a good recommendation letter when I needed it.
He told me that I had the better part of a month to finish up any outstanding work, clean out my lab and desk. Since I had worked for the company for over five years at that point, I was entitled to a one-month notice along with five more weeks of severance. As my boss left my office I quickly estimated I had almost three months to look for more work before I had to dip into my savings. This was not the case however, as I quickly became caught up in the adventure of a lifetime.

This is the story of that adventure opening my eyes to wonders I couldn’t even have imagined before

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven E. Sund
• Release date: Jun 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311625885

Steven E. Sund

Steven E. Sund was a Mathematics teacher for five years after which he received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Chemical Engineering. He spent the next thirty years as a research engineer at a multinational corporation working on projects in chemicals, material science and aerospace. He is listed as an inventor on five US patents, and on numerous published papers. Steve is now retired, and resides in North Carolina with his wife Janice. They have two daughters who reside in Maryland and North Carolina along with four grandchildren.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

"He who controls the past controls the future.

He who controls the present controls the past."

~George Orwell

My name is Jax Isaac Newton and it was just over a year ago today that I was let go by Allied Aerospace. This began the trek that changed my life.

I was a staff engineer at the corporate research laboratories located in Richmond Virginia for one of the top aerospace companies on the planet. The company was doing fine but management was looking for ways to increase shareholder value. We all knew this meant reducing operating costs, which translated to reductions in programs and ultimately job reductions.

I knew something was coming because in the last nine months I had seen laboratory after laboratory closed or moved to smaller locations. Each time this happened the closed laboratory was cleaned out and excess equipment was sold, scrapped or just thrown out. First, the rest of the corporate laboratories staff would be allowed to claim excess equipment for their own labs on a first come first serve basis. Then the equipment left over was either thrown out or sold at bargain basement prices. I had over time picked up old computers, hard drives, and outdated but otherwise perfectly good equipment for my own personal use.

Earlier that week we were all waiting for a big announcement. Rumors had been circulating that something big was coming from corporate. We all updated our resumes and hoped we were one of the lucky ones to miss the bullet.

It was on a Thursday that my boss walked into my lab and told me the company would be letting me go at of the end of the month. He said he didn’t have any say in the decision and that he would write me a good recommendation letter when I needed it.

He told me that I had the better part of a month to finish up any outstanding work, clean out my lab and desk. Since I had worked for the company for over five years at that point, I was entitled to a one-month notice along with five more weeks of severance. As my boss left my office I quickly estimated I had almost three months to look for more work before I had to dip into my savings. This was not the case however, as I quickly became caught up in the adventure of a lifetime.

This is the story of that adventure opening my eyes to wonders I couldn’t even have imagined before.

THE MACHINE

Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.

~Erwin Schrodinger

Allied Aerospace was my first job after graduating from engineering school. My double major in computer science and mechanical engineering helped me obtain a position in a computational group at the corporate research center building on the Allied Aerospace corporate headquarters site. I quickly found my niche by using my engineering training along with my computer skills to support existing research projects.

I supported any and all groups in the corporate labs because most of the projects were the development of new untested technology. At that early stage of the development process the scientists really only had a hunch as to how a technology might work. Computer modeling of the basic principles involved gave the researchers insight as to what direction to follow. Unfortunately, when budgets were cut, the computer modeling was the first to go thinking that raw brainpower is all that is really needed to develop new technologies.

One of the ongoing projects I had been working on was the study of the Apollo moon program KREEP rocks. KREEP was an acronym from the letters K for potassium, REE for Rare Earth Elements, and P for phosphorus. These rocks were very interesting because KREEP rocks are not found on the Earth. I had been doing modeling of the mechanisms needed to create the KREEP rocks. We hoped to be able to replicate KREEP rocks in the lab for eventual use in aerospace electronics.

My apartment was downtown only a few miles from the corporate laboratories. The apartment consisted of the full second floor of the building and was made up of a living room facing the street, a small kitchen and two bedrooms facing a common parking lot. I got a good deal on the place because it was next to a police station. Police cars occupied most of the rear parking lot and when I first moved in I was disturbed most nights by police sirens or other police related noise. I quickly acclimated to the noise and now I hardly heard it anymore.

The greatest thing about the apartment was that I had an extra bedroom to act as an off-site laboratory and computer room. On one of my dumpster diving expeditions after one of the Laser group’s labs had closed I had obtained a few Alexandrite crystals that had been grown experimentally for some military project. Apparently the United States Homeland Security actions had made it harder and harder for the company to get the base material to grow the laser crystals and alternate sources were cost prohibitive so the company’s solution was to close the lab.

I had saved the crystals for a long time and always planned to build my own laser at some time in the future. I had finally started building the laser a few months ago, which I hoped would later supplement my income.

The day I got canned I left work early and came home to find the new eyeglasses I had ordered online in the mail. I immediately tried on the glasses and decided they were more than acceptable. They were bought online from a new optical lab that offered low cost coatings and upgrades. I remember when I first saw the website where I bought the glasses I had a strange feeling I had seen or heard of this company before. At the time I dismissed it thinking it was due to my placing the order for the glasses very late at night.

I started to make myself a dinner of spaghetti and frozen meatballs on the stove. While everything on the stove was bubbling I opened a beer and started planning my strategy for getting another job. I knew some of my friends had been laid off earlier in the year and that it had taken a long time to find another job. The prospect of a long job search was very disheartening.

My girlfriend, Jeanne, had just broken up with me because I worked too much or so she said, so I was a single guy again but now one without a job. Being an engineer at a research facility really doesn’t make for a large girlfriend pool to choose from.

After dinner I called a few friends to tell them my employment woes and see if anyone was up for a night of drinking away my troubles. Everyone I called was busy so I decided to see if I could make some more progress on my laser project and take my mind off my employment problems.

I walked into my back bedroom lab, booted up the computer array I had built from company castaways and turned on the laser prototype. I was extremely proud of the Massively Parallel Processor Array (MPPA), which I had built for less than five thousand dollars. I had adapted seven discarded fracture testing equipment racks to house fifty-six surplus computers, which ran as a MPPA. My personal customization of the Linux operating system was used to control each node and I had written a subsystem, which controlled the breaking up of any large problem into smaller parts. The software also managed the communication between each sub-computer. This allowed a large problem to be broken up into pieces, which could run in parallel each running its own processor. The MPPA also had the capability to run multiple processes in parallel mode, which used the array as a bank of single computers that concentrated on one process at a time. This allowed fast execution of multiple processes, which could bog down a single computer.

Another feature of my MPPA was that I had also built a large hard disk array that made a set of discarded disks and purchased drives into one super-hard-drive. This configuration was also controlled by my customized Linux based software.

My software gave me a virtual disk with maximum flexibility, extremely fast access times, and redundancy with the capability to virtually eliminate the need for backups. I thought it was quite an accomplishment for a home computer system.

I usually used a series of four computer displays to monitor the various processing and hard disk subsystems but tonight I allocated only three displays to monitor the MPPA subsystems and the last to monitor the laser in manual mode.

My eventual plan for the computer based laser system was to have the MPPA computer system control the laser, which would etch complex designs on jewelry and cell phone cases automatically. The final product would be sold online and I planned to have the system run twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. My long-term plan was to create a website to take orders automatically, send the information to the MPPA, which would use one of a series of lasers to create the custom jewelry. All I would have to do is send out the jewelry and spend the profits.

Earlier I had discovered the Alexandrite crystals now installed in the laser had a major defect. I had fashioned a new crystal out of my supply and I was just about to replace the flawed crystal and test the new laser system configuration.

I picked up the machined crystal and examined it again before the overhead light for previously unnoticed imperfections when I realized the overhead light filament looked funny. The small movements of my hands caused the light filament to change shape in what seemed like an infinite series of outlines and intensities. This had never happened before and I immediately knew it was because of my new glasses. I removed the glasses and the phenomenon stopped. I went into the other room and returned with my old eyeglasses. I found that using my old glasses I did not see the phenomenon. I spent the rest of the night researching the coatings and materials used in my new glasses on the internet.

By the morning I knew it was the combination of the eyeglass company’s new photochromic coating on my glasses and the Alexandrite crystal that was causing the phenomenon. The next day was spent building a device to create images using the Alexandrite crystal and one of the lenses popped out of the now ruined glasses. By the late afternoon I had a preliminary setup working.

I had to wait a few hours before I contacted the optical laboratory, which was on the west coast, to find out what coating was used on my glasses. After re-asking the question over and over to different employees of the optical laboratory, I found the right person who knew what the coating was and the manufacturer of the coating chemicals that had been applied to my glasses.

I ordered a sample of the coating chemicals from the coating manufacturer on-line using my Allied address. I continued to work and by midnight that night I had the prototype working with the MPPA. I quickly decided I would forget about etching jewelry and instead explore this new phenomenon using my setup, which I christened the Machine.

Testing revealed the slightest rotation of the crystal caused a drastic change to any light source and even the image in the room. Next to my computer array I had set up another surplus computer as a standalone computer for access to the internet.

I had a search engine web page open on this computer researching something or another. When I moved the machine to the display connected to the standalone computer the image on the display of the computer changed to what looked like a series of numbers. Every small rotation of the Alexandrite crystal converted the web page on the monitor to an image of another series of numbers.

I was fascinated by the results I was seeing and energized to explore the phenomenon further. I was in high spirits because I knew I didn’t need to go to work tomorrow and could explore this new phenomenon as long as I wanted. Trying different websites, monitor intensities and locations of the display I worked through the weekend. By early Sunday night I had settled on a webpage that gave the clearest image through the device and I had the MPPA controlling the rough movements of the laser crystal. By midnight Sunday I had added the capability of logging the output from the machine to the disk array.

I slept until late Monday morning and then went to work. At the labs I asked any colleague that would listen if they had heard or seen such a phenomenon. Most thought I was on something or I had dreamt the whole thing. I quickly realized that I had observed something really special and that I should keep my mouth shut about it.

I returned to my office to answer important e-mail’s and throw out some old project files. This took two hours and then I decided to leave work early. Being let go was very liberating. I drove home thinking about the machine and what the images it was creating meant. After a quick snack I went to work beginning the process of developing software to allow the MPPA computer to fully control, analyze and log the results of the machine.

For the next week I made short appearances at work to answer e-mail’s and clean out my office and lab. Everyone I met was sorry I was let go and wanted to know what my plans were. Mostly, they were glad I was the one let go and not them. Scientists and engineers are like that. They always think that they are so indispensable that the company would never get rid of them until it actually happens. Then they are surprised because they don’t know how the company will get by without them. The company always does somehow.

Every evening I worked on the machine late into the night and after the better part of a week I had a device controlled by the MPPA computer that scanned the image of the page on the World Wide Web on the standalone PC, translated the image to numeric characters and logged the results to the large disk array.

At this point the computer array could rotate the crystal by one hundred thousandth of a radian and record the results. Another couple of days were spent refining the sensitivity of the rotation, which increased the data obtained drastically. It looked like any refinement of the sensitivity revealed another series of images. My preliminary analysis of the data being logged suggested there were an infinite number of results but that some rotational locations repeated the results of other rotation locations. I called these repeating pages re-pages.

The quantity of data being logged was becoming even too much for my large disk array. I decided I would have to make the computer array controlling the crystal compare the new pages against the existing databank of images and only keep track of new images. This slowed down the processing as it introduced the additional step of comparing each translated image against every other stored. Even using the parallel capability of my MPPA system it slowed down the whole process drastically.

To speed up the process I decided to only analyze the repeating parts of the message as a separate function dedicated to a single set of processing units. I reduced the gradation of the crystal rotation from one hundred thousandths of a radian to a gradation of one ten thousandth of a radian, which gave me approximately sixty two thousand samples. A run of this magnitude originally took about four hours but with my new algorithm it only took about an hour.

I quickly found the repeating results displayed a series of re-pages and each of the re-pages contained what looked like a series of random numbers. I downloaded the overall occurrence statistics and the saved text re-page information to a flash drive for offline analysis before I restarted the angular search with a new sensitivity.

I restarted the angular scan using a much smaller gradation scale of one hundred thousandth of a radian again and allowed the computer array to run the Machine and log the results. Using results obtained thus far I estimated this run would complete overnight. I would check the results against the previous run to see if there were any other re-pages generated.

I went to my living room, put some Jazz on the stereo, uploaded the information from the initial run and worked on a more in-depth analysis of the data offline on my portable.

The initial analysis took a few hours and determined that there were ten different re-pages. Each distinct re-page had a completely different number sequence.

The first eight digits of each of the ten recurring re-pages consisted of four non-zero numbers followed by a four zero series. In addition, each of these ten re-pages had two zero’s in what looked like a random distribution. This was when I first noticed that the spacing of the two zero looked quite a bit like a delimitation between words.

After some research on the web, I found that this combination looked quite a bit like an encoded message that had a fixed digit key followed by the encoded message.

That was the first time I had the feeling that something had changed. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on edge and I felt just a bit dizzy like there was less air in the room somehow. It was somewhat like the feeling you get when an elevator starts moving down. I was so excited I was making progress that I shrugged off the feeling and continued the analysis.

The overall statistics of the results obtained thus far indicated that the number of occurrences of the ten re-pages was unusual. The ten beginning eight digit series along with their occurrence statistics were;

1) 07240000 5%

2) 01090000 6%

3) 16150000 7%

4) 04100000 8%

5) 12400000 9%

6) 36100000 10%

7) 07210000 11%

8) 28130000 12%

9) 04370000 13%

10) 01010000 14%

The probability of all the ten number sequences added together was almost ninety five percent exactly. The remaining pages were either a copy of the original webpage with no change, a page of random numbers with no double zero spacing, or just pure static like the monitor was not receiving any input.

It was interesting to note that the actual text of the webpage as seen without the crystal-coated lens combination never was found. There was an eleventh pseudo re-page that consisted of the eight digit key numbers 011400000 followed by a random sequence of numbers again with no double zero spacing.

A web search of any of the eleven beginning number sequences was unsuccessful.

I finally gave up on the search at one o’clock in the morning and put my subconscious mind to work on the meaning of the ten starting sequences of numbers as I slept.

This routine continued for the next seven days; shorter and shorter time spent at Allied, work on the machine tweaking the algorithms, refining the rotation, logging and translating algorithms, downloading the statistics for the runs thus far, work on analysis of the results, and finally eating and sleeping. I was making incremental progress on speeding up the rotation and logging of the results but my offline analysis of the data was making absolutely no progress.

I thought, What I needed was inspiration!

THEN CAME SANDY

Early Saturday evening I was again working on the machine when I heard my doorbell ring. I quickly went to the intercom and recognized the voice of a good friend of mine, Kenny. He was an old high school friend from my old biking days. We had both ridden our motorcycles across the country one summer seeing the sites when I was first out of college. I quickly walked downstairs to open the front door. Kenny entered and said, Man, it sucks to park near your apartment. I think every parking spot is used by the cops.

Yeah, I know. I park in the back most days.

Don’t you check your messages? I must have left you ten.

I’ve been busy with finishing up work at Allied and all.

Screw those guys. You don’t owe them anything. I want to take you out for dinner and a few drinks.

As I had not eaten a normal meal in more than a week and the machine was pretty much working by itself I said, Sure. Where shall we go?

Let me figure that out. Come on. Follow me to my car.

I grabbed a coat and said, Let me get my wallet.

Hell no, the meal is on me. Come on!

Kenny took me to the local American Steak House, which was one of his favorites. We ordered wings and some draft beers at a table in the bar area. It was then I realized it was Friday and I had been worked on my little project for two full weeks.

After the beers arrived we toasted to ‘good things to come’.

Kenny said, You really have to get out more. There’s a party tonight at Janet’s house that should fill the bill.

I agreed that all work and no play makes Jax a sad boy. We laughed and Kenny asked what I planned to do about a job. I said I didn’t know yet but I already had some headhunters call me.

This was a lie and I think Kenny saw through it because he said.

Yeah sure, companies are falling over each other to hire a genius like you. If you wait long enough you can get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart.

I laughed uncomfortably and I changed the subject to how companies were being run by accountants and that corporate prudence was valued over individual intellect. After a while the wings arrived and we wolfed them down. Kenny suggested we eat dinner here and then go to the party where there will be lots of hot babes to scope out. I agreed but said I would have to meet him there, as I needed a shower. I ordered New York Strip and Kenny had the American Big Ribeye steak. During dinner Kenny suggested this would be a good time to apply for a job in another part of the United States or even Europe where all the babes sound much sexier. I thought about that for a while and had to agree starting anew in an exotic place would be fun. Kenny loved to travel and I suspected Kenny wanted me to find a job somewhere exotic where he could visit me.

After dinner, Kenny dropped me off at my house and said, If you don’t show up by ten I’m coming to get you. Janet’s house is on Maple. You can’t miss it. It will be the house with all the drunks in the front yard.

I promised again that I would go to the party and waved. I was tempted to blow off the party and continue my work on the machine but one look at the flashing YOU HAVE 37 MESSAGES on my answering machine in my bedroom told me I needed some time away from it all. The messages were mostly outdated requests from work and calls from Kenny. I deleted all of them and decided a party would do just fine.

I took a long hot shower, changed into more suitable clothes and drove to Janet’s house.

The house was easy to find because there actually were quite a few people on the front porch laughing and drinking. I walked up the front steps to the porch and walked into Janet’s house where there was a crowd of people enjoying themselves. Kenny saw me enter and came over and gave me a big bear hug and said. I didn’t think you would come and I would have had to drag you here. Let’s go get you a brewsky.

We walked to the back of the house through the mud room to a small outdoor deck where coolers filled with ice were set up with hard liquor, wine and beer. I took out a light beer, twisted off the cap and took a big gulp. Kenny and I both stood looking at the back yard fence when I asked.

So who was invited to this shindig?

Just some friends from Janet’s work, some of her girlfriends, and friends of friends. You may recognize some of them from Joe’s parties. I’m glad Janet threw out that loser. He was just mooching off Janet.

What do you mean? I always liked Joe. He was the life of the party.

Janet met him at a bar when he was working as a carpenter. When the local economy turned sour Joe would just sit home and drink. It got to the point he didn’t even go out some days. Janet kept trying to get him out of his funk but after a while she just gave up and threw him out. Enough BS! Let’s get you inside and talking to some babes.

We both walked back inside and Kenny introduced me to just about everyone he knew. Kenny made sure that every woman at the party knew that I had just broken up with my girlfriend and that I was available.

Kenny told Janet I had been let go