“It was a reasonable assumption,” said Suma IV.
“Reasonable,” agreed Orphu of Io, “but wrong. We know now because of the quantum data left by the so-called Olympian gods on Mars and on the otherdimensional Earth where the battle for Troy is still being fought what real quantum teleportation looks like. We know its footprint, and what the old-style humans were doing to get from Point A to Point B ain’t it.”
“If the old-style humans aren’t quantum teleporting,” said Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo, “then how have they been moving instantaneously from one place to the other on Earth for more than fourteen hundred years?”
“The old-fashioned idea of teleportation,” said Orphu. “Storing all the data of a human being’s body and mind and personality in code, breaking down the matter into energy, beaming it, then reassembling it elsewhere, just as in the old TV broadcast series from the Lost Era—Star Truck.”
“Trek,” corrected General Beh bin Adee.
“Aha!” said Orphu of Io. “Another fan.”
The General clacked barbed killing claws in embarrassment or irritation.
“Our scientists long since determined that storing such incredible amounts of data would be impossible,” said Cho Li. “It would require more terabytes of storage space than there are atoms in the universe.”
“Evidently the post-humans found a way to build that memory storage,” said Orphu, “because the old-style humans have been teleporting their butts off for centuries. Not true quantum-level teleportation of the kind our friend Hockenberry or the Olympian gods carry off, but the crude mechanical ripping apart of molecules and reassembling of them somewhere else.”
“Why would they do that for the old-style humans?” asked Mahnmut. “Why such an incredible engineering project for a few hundred thousand people whom they treat almost like pets… like creatures in a zoo? We’ve seen no signs of new human engineering, city building, or creativity for more than that millennium and a half.”
“Maybe the teleportation itself has something to do with that cultural retardation,” said Orphu. “Maybe not. But I’m convinced that’s what we’re looking at down there. It’s a case of ‘Beam me up, Scooty.’ ”
“Scotty,” corrected Retrograde Sinopessen.
“Thank you,” said Orphu. To Mahnmut he tightbeamed, That makes four of us.
“You may well be correct that the old-style humans have been using a crude form of matter replication-transmission rather than true quantum teleportation,” said Asteague/Che, “but that doesn’t explain Mars or…”
“No, but the post-humans’ obsession with reaching another dimensional universe does,” said Orphu, not even noticing in his excitement and pleasure of the telling that he was interrupting the most important Prime Integrator in all the Five Moons Consortium.
“How do you know the posts were obsessed with getting to another dimensional universe?” asked General Beh bin Adee.
“Are you kidding?” said Orphu. Mahnmut had to think that the stern Asteroid Belt rockvec general had not been asked that question many times in his life or military career.
“Just look at the junk the post-humans left behind in orbit,” continued Orphu, oblivious to the military moravec’s taken-abackness. “They have wormhole accumulators, black hole accelerators—all early attempts at ripping through space and time, taking shortcuts out into this universe… or to another one.”
“Black holes and wormholes don’t work,” the Callistan Cho Li said flatly. “At least not as transport devices.”
“Yeah, we know that now and that’s what the post-humans found out more than fifteen hundred years ago,” agreed Orphu. “Then, when they had these incredible memory-storage satellites in orbit, plus the crude matter-replication teleportation portals for the old-style humans—who, I would wager, they were using as guinea pigs in all this experimentation—only then did the post-humans start messing around with Brane Holes and quantum teleportation.”
“Our scientists and engineers have been… messing around, as you put it… with quantum teleportation and the generation of Calabi-Yau universe Membrane Holes for many centuries,” said Retrograde Sinopessen. The Amalthean was so agitated that he was almost dancing on his long, spidery, silver legs. “With no luck,” he added.
“That’s because we didn’t have the one thing that allowed the post-humans to make their breakthrough,” said Orphu of Io and paused. Everyone waited. Mahnmut knew that his friend was enjoying the moment.
“The million human bodies, minds, memories, and personalities that were stored as digital data in their orbital memory satellites,” said Orphu. His deep voice was triumphant, as if he’d solved some long-pondered mathematical conundrum.
“I don’t get it,” said Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo.
Orphu’s radar flickered over all of them, a feathery touch on the electromagnetic spectrum. Mahnmut thought that his friend was waiting for their reactions, perhaps for their shouts of approval. No one moved or spoke.
“I don’t get it either,” said Mahnmut.
“What is the human brain?” Orphu asked rhetorically. “I mean, all of us moravecs have a piece of one. What is it like? How does it work? Like the binary or DNA computers we also carry around for thinking purposes?”
“No,” said Cho Li. “We know that the human brain is not like a computer, neither is it a chemical memory machine the way the Lost Era human scientists believed. The human brain… the mind… is a quantum-state holistic standing wavefront.”
“Exactly!” cried Orphu. “The post-humans used this intimate understanding of the human mind to perfect their Brane Holes, time travel, and quantum teleportation.”
“I still don’t see how,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che.
“Think about how quantum teleportation works,” said Orphu. “Cho, you can explain that better than I can.”
The Callistan rumbled and then modulated the rumbles into words. “The early experiments in quantum teleportation—done by old-style humans in ancient times, as far back as the Twentieth Century A.D.—worked by producing entangled pairs of photons—and teleporting one of the pair—or actually by teleporting the complete quantum state of that proton—while transmitting the Bell-state analysis of the second photon through regular subliminal channels.”
“Doesn’t that violate Heisenberg’s principle and Einstein’s speed-of-light restrictions?” asked Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo, who, like Mahnmut, had obviously not been briefed on the mechanisms by which the gods on Mars’ Olympus Mons QT’d to Ilium.
“No,” said Cho Li. “Teleported photons carried no information with them when they moved instantaneously from place to place in this uni-verse—not even information about their own quantum state.”
“So quantum teleported photons are useless,” said Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo. “At least for communication purposes.”
“Not quite,” said Cho Li. “The recipient of a teleported photon had a one-in-four chance of guessing its quantum state—the quantum photon had only that many possibilities—and, by guessing, utilizing the quantum bits of data. These are called qubits and we’ve successfully used them for instantaneous comm purposes.”
Mahnmut shook his head. “How do we get from quantum-state photons carrying no information to the Greek gods quantum teleporting to Troy?”
“The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream,” intoned Orphu of Io. “He awoke and found it truth. John Keats.”
“Could you try to be more cryptic?” Suma IV asked caustically.
“I could try,” said Orphu.
“What does the poet John Keats have to do with quantum teleportation and the reason for the current quantum crisis?” asked Mahnmut.
“I suggest that the post-humans made their breakthrough in Brane Holes and quantum teleportation more than a millennium and a half ago precisely because of their intimate knowledge of the holistic quantum nature of human consciousness,” said the Ionian, his voice serious now.