03 - Recursion Boy

Simon Park burst through the lab door to the sight of Miles polishing his reflection in the casing of their quantum cooler.

“Your intrepid cofounder has returned bearing the best of Dublin’s whiskey truffles!”

Miles continued to burnish the metal shroud without turning around, “I hope you’ve got some good news in that bag.”

“You mean, besides these Irish whiskey truffles? Cause’ these little suckers are addictive. I might as well tell you now—I ate two of yours in the taxi from the airport.”

Simon’s reflection, with his spiked dark hair and crisp shirt collar peeking from a deep blue blazer, gave him an air of ivy-league finance alum. Miles thought “used car salesman” might have been more fitting.

“Lots of meetings. Lots and lots of endlessly boring meetings. A few rooftop parties in-between. We’ve got some solid leads, for sure. How’s progress on the Italian job? Oh, speaking of which, that eruption grounded flights in and out so we don’t need to…”

Miles hadn’t really been listening after realizing he’d returned without a single sale. He polished off the last few fingerprints from the metallic housing of their machine before speaking in a voice drained of energy. “We can’t keep this up, Simon. We’re scraping the bottom of our funding bucket. I’m rotting away in this lab while you’re out partying across the globe.”

“Hold up there, partner. The funding for that machine you’re spit-shining was a product of my efforts. Not to mention—” Simon twirled a finger in the air, “this filtered-air lab we find ourselves in.”

“What… Blueprint? Those greedy bastards will toss our work to the piranhas for a cheap sale as soon as something better comes along—and sooner than you think.”

Taken aback by Miles’s sudden change in character, Simon took a second to consider what had transpired during his absence. He walked over to the mirror-like surface and admired Miles’s work. “You’ve takin’ good care of Eleanor, I see. Look, I haven’t had breakfast yet. You?”

“It’s 1pm.”

“Is that a yes?”

“No, Gary McLectureface ruined my appetite.”

That single line told Simon all he needed to know. He stepped aside and motioned towards the door. “In that case, breakfast is on me.”

* * *

The outer edge of Vancouver had its fair share of fine dining options to choose from, but their default spot was Elmer’s, one of those 50’s throw-back diners that didn’t break their food budget. For those who knew where to sit, it even came with a show. Miles wasn’t in the mood but reluctantly followed Simon to their regular booth in the corner, right across from Bennie.

Maggie walked over, her yellow apron dotted with the occasional grease spot, her hair pinned up with a matching shade of #2 pencil.

“The band is back in town I see. What can I get you boys?”

Simon was a regular, when he was around.

“Good to see you Maggie, Bennie too of course. I’ll take a short stack of your delicious pulled-pork pancakes, a side a’ toast, hash-browns, and—do you have Irish coffee?”

“Not on the menu,” Maggie looked over her shoulder and through the serving gap connecting the kitchen, “but our resident Romanian back there probably has something squirreled away. I’ll see what I can do for a VIP like yourself.” Miles barely looked at the menu before taking up a blank stare out the window. “Just orange juice and some eggs for me, please.”

Maggie jotted it down then bounced the pencil’s eraser on her notepad.

“Come on Miles, you’re skinnier than when I saw you a week ago,” Simon said before turning back to Maggie. “Throw another stack of porkies on there for us, Maggs.”

Miles wasn’t going to argue. Most days he skipped meals until four in the afternoon anyways. He could use the extra calories while they were on someone else’s tab.

Maggie made the addition, then ran a hand over Bennie’s shoulder as she passed. He continued scribbling away at his next masterpiece. Bennie was nine and on the autistic spectrum. Today he’d barricaded himself in with Crayola boxes angled towards him from either side like an array of missile batteries ready to launch. The red vinyl padding of his booth, the smallest in the joint, shimmered around him.

Kid’s coloring placemats layered the table in front of him. Scattered around his feet were the discarded corpses of twenty or so crayons. Scrawled on each square was a different picture, one wildly different in style from the next. Some were concrete, recognizable shapes while others had more abstract patterns. Maggie started bringing him in during her shift a year or so ago when she wasn’t happy with the progress he was making in school. She thought he’d be better off interacting with people who understood his condition rather than being tormented by kids his own age. She felt he was happier here, and she liked having him nearby, even if he sometimes made things difficult.

At times he’d get stuck in thought loops; his inspiration of word choice pulled from one or more of the amplified conversations around him. He didn’t seem to care what the words meant, but if they caught his attention, he’d rearrange them into a loop. Maggie had given up apologizing for him long ago and most people found it amusing. The last time they came in he looped a mother’s response to her teenage daughter’s pregnancy confession.

“How are you going to take care of a baby? How dare you do this to me! JESUS, YOU’RE FIFTEEN AND ALREADY LETTING GUYS IN YOUR PANTS?”

Bennie jumped right on it, immediately announcing the news to every other booth, conveyed entirely via his steady, monotone voice.

“GUYS IN YOUR PANTS! FIFTEEN GUYS IN YOUR PANTS! LET IN BABY JESUS!”

Someone in a corner booth spat their sausage across the table. The restaurant vibrated in a combination of awkward silence and uneasy laughter. Even Maggie had to hide behind the register in an attempt to be respectful of the situation. The mother slammed the check on the counter, dimes flying, then rushed out the front door dragging the daughter by her jacket, but not before sending a nasty glare in Bennie’s general direction. He maintained his constant deadpan expression and kept drawing. Didn’t even look up. Miles wished he could take a page or two from Bennie’s book.

“Alright boys, your porkflaps, eggs and sides—and one Romanian coffee,” she said with a wink. “Closest I could get to Ireland.”

Maggie lowered down a dark brown mug in front of Simon, brimming with whip cream and the overpowering smell of booze.

“You’re a peach, Maggs.”

The boys dug into their breakfast in silence. Even Miles enjoyed it, despite his best efforts to the contrary. He wiped his chin and gave a thousand-yard stare past the nearby cliffs and onto the distant horizon. “We’ve got two weeks to pin down revenue or invent something revolutionary before Blueprint gives us the boot. We can’t afford to fly you out to any more conferences. I don’t care if we make nothing on the first units, we need sales to attract bigger buyers, or someone to acquire us outright.”

Simon laid down his fork and leaned back against the padded seat. He took a sip of coffee in the same way he slurped ramen noodles, then made a sort of twisted expression with his lips as if he’d bitten into a lemon.

“Well, the coffee is better in Dublin, that’s for sure.”

“I’m serious, Simon. You’ve got a safety net with your inheritance trust, but I don’t. This is it for me, and if something doesn’t happen soon…”

“I want this to work as much as you do. Actually, I’m glad you brought this up because I’ve been reconsidering our marketing efforts and there’s something I think we should try.”

Miles stabbed at the last pancake on his plate, “I’m listening”

“Ok, bear with me here, because this is a two-parter.”

Miles wasn’t surprised.

“On the plane over I remembered reading this article a few years back about some hieroglyphics they found in a newly discovered tomb in Egypt, right? The title was some clickbait thing about how they ‘finally know how the Pyramids were built,’ and that this thing called a ‘jed’ was used like a multi-step pulley system to raise these hundred-ton blocks.”

“I didn’t see that.”

“It doesn’t matter, just listen. So, this article goes viral. All these media channels start picking it up and people are getting convinced that we finally know how they did it.”

“So?”

“So, the whole thing was based on theory, not fact. I mean, the idea is still convincing… who knows if it’s real or not, but the whole thing got me thinking that we could create something with viral potential while still promoting our business in a positive light.”

“You have this article all planned out I assume?”

“Sort of. So, when I was younger, I used to overclock my computer trying to get to the top of the leaderboards in processor benchmarks, right…”

“You jump from pyramids to computer hardware like that’s a natural transition.”

“Well, what about quantum?”

“What about it?”

“Just follow me for a second. What about quantum overclocking?” he said before leaning in closer. “An official ‘overclocking’ leaderboard doesn’t exist for quantum computers.”

“Yeah, they don’t have a clock speed, hence no leaderboards.”

“Exactly, so what we need is a new definition of clock speed when it comes to quantum computing. If it’s not the chip speed in megahertz like a normal PC, then it needs to be something else.”

“I’m trying to follow you here.”

“Common on. You’re more knowledgeable about the physics stuff than I am—I mean, I’m just the hardware guy and this quantum stuff hurts my head, but from what I know, it seems there are two things holding back our quantum chip from working faster. One, is the amount of energy you can put into it, and the second is how many operations you can make it do before the quantum computing bit destabilizes.”

Miles was listening, but just barely. “Yeah, but keeping it stable limits the amount of power you can put down the pipe anyways, so really it’s about how long you can keep the qubit coherent.”

“See? I knew you’d have the answer.”

“I don’t understand. You wanna make a leaderboard for how long you can keep a qubit stable?”

Simon fell back against the booth and put his arms up in the air like he’d just made a field goal. “There ya go!” He took another big swig followed by the same look of disgust, then pushed the mug off to the side.

“I thought we were talking about marketing, what does a leaderboard have to do with anything?”

“See, that’s the best part. We just have to set a new record based on whatever new metric we decide on—which is any record as it’ll be the first, then we push an article out to the media about how advanced our tech is to have achieved said result. After that, we promote the crap out of it and wait for the phone to ring. It’s the same thing these fusion reactor startups have been doing for years come to think of it.”

“You really don’t think people will see right through your scheme of ‘look at me, I set a record for something I just made up’?”

“Quantum is that new-new, bro. Media is going to be interested. We might even pick up some new investor interest from it. Think about it, we say we’ve set the record for the longest stable qubit, and then mention just how much that is going to save the big boys when they start using our system.”

Simon picked up his phone and pretended to dial.

“Ah yes, is this Google? Oh, great. This is Cryopulse Inc., and having just set the record for the most powerful and cost efficient quantu… oh, you’ve already heard of us,” he covered the phone with one hand and whispered “they’ve heard of us” across the table “—well, we’d like to discuss partnership terms, too… next week? Sure, that works for us.”

“You know, maybe it’s the lack of sleep I’ve been getting. Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe I’ll smack you to be sure we aren’t both dreaming, because I know my real business partner wouldn’t present a military strategy of jumping around on a pogo stick for our last stand.”

“This could really put us on the map. Get us some serious coverage. Noise marketing, man. NOISE MARKETING!”

“MARKETING NOISE, NOISE THE MARKETING MAN!” said Bennie.

Simon flipped a thumb in Bennie’s direction, “See? He gets it. Noise the marketing man, man!”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, because I don’t have anything better at this point than pimping you around town to any company that’ll meet with us—which I’m still not sure isn’t the best idea in the room. Because, there are existing records out there for the longest stable qubit and to give you an idea, the length of my patience right now is about how much we could even pretend to be beating them by. So, I beg of you—how the hell do you expect to do what every billion dollar company in the market hasn’t yet been able to?”

“It’s the same old story of David and Goliath. They’re heavyweights, bolstered with their fat year-end-bonuses. They just don’t have the motivation and speed that you and I do.”

Miles mumbled under his breath “Motivation not to see your baby killed?”

Simon furled his brow, “Hmm?”

Miles dropped his face into his hands. He was asleep. Yeah, that was it. He would wake up tomorrow and things would be different. Simon would return from Dublin and stroll into the lab shaking ten freshly signed contracts over his head with a big grin smeared across his face. All their problems would be solved and there would be cake. Yeah, cake. Miles looked up from his palms, disappointed the scene hadn’t changed.

“Do you realize the work I’ve put into our cooler? You can’t expect me to change everything now. And, outside of the prototype Italian chip sitting in our lab, we don’t even have our own quantum processor to play around with. I mean maybe we could try and set some kind of new baseline for this tactic but that chip and our new system are due on a plane to Italy tomorrow—and then we’ve got nothing.”

“That’s the beauty of it.”

“No, don’t say we’re gonna make the results up and post fake news across the web. I’m not going to stoop to…”

Simon shakes his head, “No, no, nothing like that. That’s what I was trying to tell you in the lab! The shipment is delayed at least a week, if not two because of that volcanic eruption in Italy. Don’t you watch the news?”

“Eruption?”

“Mount Etna, man. It’s spewin’ more than a frat house pledge during haze week. All planes are grounded, including cargo jets. I barely got out of Dublin before they closed the ports.

“You didn’t say that before.”

“You didn’t let me… listen, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, we’ve got at least a week, probably more the way things are lookin’, to get this thing tested. Who makes the best quantum cooler on the planet?”

“We do.”

“And who’s got his head so far up his own ass that he wouldn’t see light if the sun exploded?”

“That guy from Calypso.”

“Well… yeah, but I was talking about Gary. My point is, there’s no reason to not at least try.”

“I don’t know, you’re suggesting we use half of our two weeks left at Blueprint attempting to set some arbitrary record? Don’t you think we’d be better off nailing down sales with that time.”

Simon grabbed Miles’s orange juice and drank till the straw sucked air.

“What are you most worried about?”

“Besides someone finishing my damn orange juice, I’m worried that I’ll be on the streets soon while you’re counting the days till your trust activates.”

Simon made a sour face, leaned forward and flicked a finger in Miles’s direction, “you know I’d give it all away just to see them again. Just once.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just…”

“You try this—I’ll cover your rent for six months if things don’t work out. That’s money I don’t even have now, but I believe in us.”

“I appreciate that. But, I wouldn’t even know where to start. The only way to increase stability is to improve cooling efficiency at the quantum level. Things are crazy down there. Unpredictable. I mean, we’re already pretty much hitting the limits of physics as it is.”

“You must have ideas on how to improve stability, right? You’re the smartest guy I know when it comes to engineering this stuff.”

“I don’t know, I’m tired and this is getting ridiculous.”

“Let’s think about this… just play in the space with me, bro.” Simon pretended to dangle something in front of his face, “six months re-ent.”

If Simon knew Miles was living in a garage with a leaky bucket for a shower, he’d have known the value of his proposal was mere water costs. Six months rent was nothing for Miles, but it might cover his dad’s care for a bit longer until he could find whatever came next. Miles let out a sigh, then remembered the one interesting discovery he’d made over the past few weeks.

“I don’t know. I might have noticed something while you were out trying to join the mile-high club.”

“Mhmm?” sneers Simon, before nearly reaching for his coffee again.

“That Italian chip we got has way more temperature sensors than their first model, and when I was looking over the data I had the thought that cooling accuracy might be just as important as cooling power.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t have this worked out or anything, it was just a passing thought.”

“Yeah, and the vibration of a bathtub is what inspired the telephone, so keep talking.”

Miles looked out the window and saw the sun coming out from behind Vancouver’s ever-present cloud cover and realized he hadn’t felt the warmth of its rays in weeks, maybe even months.

“When you really get down to it, everything on the quantum level is waves. The calculations it makes produce waves of heat, but the chip is getting too hot too fast to cool effectively. Based on the sensor data, it looks like it’s occurring randomly across the surface of the chip, so it seems to me that if we could counteract these random hot spots somehow, then maybe we could also make it stable longer.”

“How do we go about doing that?”

“No idea. It doesn’t seem to matter how cold it gets, the waves are constantly changing direction, piling on one another and amplifying the heat. Eventually the whole thing destabilizes and we lose coherence.”

Simon snaps his fingers, “I get it. We need something like my noise-cancelling headphones, right? The speakers produce an opposite sound wave to the noise outside the headphones and our ears perceive that cancelled-out wave as silence.”

“Maybe for you. Those damn things give me a headache. Vaguely similar to the one I’m getting now. But—you’re not entirely wrong. We’d need to magically generate an inverse cooling wave which would cancel out the heat wave, but we’re talking infinite unknowns with that… a whole different setup, etcetera.”

Simon leaned into the squishy vinyl padding, “sounds great. Let’s do that then.”

Miles felt something in his head snap, like the twig that startles a rhino into a charge. His well of patience was full of sand.

“Our tech doesn’t even woRK THAT WAY Simon! YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO THE START WITH THIS? THE COOLER COOLS THE PROCESSOR ON A DIFFERENT PRINCIPLE, DAMNIT.”

“COOLS THE PROCESSOR COOLS THE COOLER COOLS THE PROCESSOR DAMNIT,” echoed Bennie from his booth.

Miles didn’t laugh.

“Listen, Simon. I’m tired and I need to visit dad. Let’s think about what we’re doing next, and if we should even continue with this whole partnership idea.”

“Hey, I—I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to…”

Miles got up from the booth and started towards the door. He pushed it halfway open, ringing the bell at the top, then turned and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow. If we want this thing to work, we’re going to need some fresh ideas by then.”