“Bandwidth?” asked Alice. “That has something to do with communication frequencies and TV channels, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed,” said George. “Over the past few decades the bandwidth, the range of frequencies available for communications and the transfer of information, has been increasing by a factor of ten every five years. There’s a principle that enough small quantitative changes can become a big qualitative change enough small improvements can add up to a technological revolution. That’s what’s happened with bandwidth. It started with TV conferences. We’d link into other laboratories to listen in on their seminars and group discussions. But as the bandwidth got better and we got fiber-optic links that eliminated the satellite-link time delays, we developed telepresence. Instead of watching on a TV monitor, you can go there with telepresence and experience what is happening on the spot. You can walk into somebody’s office and ask what’s going on. We even have some electronic blackboards where you can scrawl equations and diagrams by telepresence or use robot hands and arms to do the same thing.
“If you had walked into my office several hours ago,” George continued, “you would have seen me sitting in a black recliner wearing what look like wraparound sunglasses. We call them ‘magic glasses.’ Lasers from the sidepieces bounce off the front lenses and draw pictures directly on the retinas of my eyes. The unit also has sensors that detect my head and eye movements and points the cameras on the remote accordingly. Because the cameras move when I turn my head, my eyes see just what they would if I were looking at the same scene directly. The vision center of my brain is fooled into thinking it’s all real, and I get an amazing feeling of ‘presence’ that has to be experienced to be appreciated.”
“But if you’re wearing glasses, why did I see your face on the remote without glasses?” Alice asked.
“There’s a TV camera mounted above the couch that scans my face and head, and the magic glasses monitor my eye and eyelid positions. A computer synthesizes a representation of my face from the data and reproduces my features on the remote’s headscreen, with the magic glasses electronically removed. That way the people I’m talking to can see my lip movements, my eye motions, and my facial expressions and react to them. I get 3-D stereo sound from the earpieces, and I wear data cuffs that detect my hand and arm movements. The cuffs buzz when I put my hand through a ‘solid’ object, and I’m now conditioned not to do that.”
Alice heard soft footsteps to her right and turned. A well-dressed man with Oriental features stood next to the sofa. “George, have you seen Hans?” the man said. “I think he’s hiding from me.”
Alice had a roommate in college who was addicted to the Taiwanese cinema, and she recognized the man’s guttural vocal mannerisms as those of a Chinese alpha male “bossman.” She smiled and looked closely at the newcomer.
“We saw him down in the electronics stack an hour ago, Jake,” George said. “Why don’t you just call him? He always carries a cellphone.”
“I was about to have Sally do that,” said Jake, “but I will bet you that he doesn’t answer. Do you know what he did? He told SDC people that they could tune a test beam through our detector tonight.” Jake took a cellphone from his pocket and dialed. “Sally? This is Jake Wang,” he said into the telephone in a completely transformed voice, urbane and courteous. “Would you please try to reach Herr Doctor Professor Hans Koch? Tell him that he is urgently needed in the LEM counting house. Thank you very much, Sally.” He hung up.
“I don’t think it matters if they tune through our detector, Jake,” George said. “The end calorimeters are rolled back, and we could use a little beam down the pipe to check the veto system.”
Jake froze and seemed to grow larger. “What?” he shouted. “Just who took out the end calorimeters?” He looked upward, as if seeking the source of his cruel fate. “Who gave permission to roll back the end calorimeters! Do I have no one but fools and charlatans working with me on this experiment? Can I not turn my back for one fleeting moment without having someone roll back the end calorimeters? George, I thought I could trust you. What could have possessed you to allow these imbeciles to roll back the end calorimeters?”
Alice turned her head away, suppressing a snicker. She found it hard to believe this performance had not been staged for her benefit, perhaps to deceive her into believing that mad scientists could be found outside late-show sci-fi flicks.
“Jake,” said George, “didn’t anyone tell you that the protection diodes needed to be changed in about a thousand of the calorimeter scintillators?”
Alice noticed that George’s voice was now unnaturally soothing and well-modulated. He sounded almost like a funeral director.
“I’m sure it was reported in the setup group meeting yesterday,” said George. “We can’t start the new run until the diodes are changed, and that means rolling back the calorimeters and working on them. That is what’s going on now.”
“I see,” said Jake. “Somebody must have told the SDC people that our calorimeters were rolled back. That explains a lot. Why can’t my people keep their mouths shut? Why don’t they ask me before talking about our private affairs to other groups? How can I run this experiment when nobody asks me before they do these things?” He gestured again, but the aura of high drama was rapidly dissipating.
“By the way, Jake,” George said, “there’s someone here that I’d like you to meet.”
Jake halted in midgesture and pivoted toward George, then toward the sofa where Alice was sitting. Alice suddenly felt uncomfortable in his gaze.
“Alice,” said George, “I’d like to present Professor Jake Wang. Jake, this is Alice Lang. She’s a professional science journalist here to do a cover article for Search magazine on the important new physics being done here at the SSC.”
Alice started to protest that she was only a freelance writer and had no reason to believe that her story would be a cover article, but she didn’t have the chance.
Beaming, Jake strode around the sofa and took her hand. “Miss Lang!” he said. “I am an avid reader of Search. We are so delighted and honored to have you pay us a visit.” He turned his head sideways and gave her a long look. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
“Uh, why, of course!” Alice said, confused by Jake’s sudden focus on her.
“You have come here to visit us at a time that must have been arranged by the Fates. We are on the brink of the most momentous discovery of our new century. The Higgs particle, the very mysterious and elusive boson that breaks the symmetries that make our wonderful universe what it is, this magical particle is about to reveal itself to us. The great detector below us, which I personally designed, will deliver this new key to understanding God’s Creation into our hands. It must be of great significance that you have come here at just this time, this turning point in the history of science.”
Jesus, thought Alice, he’s trying to write my story for me, right here on the spot. She imagined the reaction of the Search editors to Jake’s hyperbole. “That’s quite fascinating, Professor Wang,” she said sweetly.
“Call me Jake, please,” he said.
“Okay, and I’m Alice,” she said. “Uh, Jake, I heard what you said about, um, disclosing information. I hope you won’t mind if I interview some of the scientists working on your experiment in the next few days. I can assure you that I’ll treat anything I learn as privileged. I’ll also be sure to check the scientific details for accuracy and sensitivity with you before I use them in my article for Search.” Saying this made her feel deceitful, but it was nevertheless true as far as it went.