The Mahdi, page 4
In studying physics and chemistry, Caitlin had noticed that much of the advanced work was in describing what was going on so others could then study it. In other words, any work in the sciences required calculus as the descriptor language—a nearly infinite one, and constant in its written nomenclature across every spoken dialect. One of her early mentors, theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, once said calculus was the language of God: it allows one to describe God’s work.
“This explains why I get contracts around the world to consult on new ideas,” Caitlin pointed out. “If I can understand a new scientific concept, I can describe it mathematically better than anyone I have met.”
It was a lot to take in, even for a highly intelligent lawyer. LuAnn’s hostess knew more about calculus and how to use it than pretty much anyone alive, and she had been working on it for thirty years or so. And she was quick, obviously. But where’s the beef? LuAnn thought.
“I sort of get it,” she admitted. “But why is that valuable? Why do they pay you so well?”
“Aha!” Caitlin said. “The benefit is that I make things smaller and faster. Small things run cooler; heat is important. An organization’s current effort might take a lot of computer space and time, which makes it impractical. So they hire me to describe their product in a faster, more efficient way.”
“I’m a lawyer,” LuAnn said. “I don’t see any math in my business, but I do see a lot of finance arithmetic wrapped up in opinions. Things are defined in varying shades of gray.”
“Yeah, that’s why I avoid fields with too many dependent variables, like the law and politics. Especially finance. There is insufficient precision in any of those fields to get a reliable, correct answer to a problem.”
“Okay, so you were the smartest kid on the block, maybe the planet,” LuAnn said. “You were born with a head start, and your parents put your already capable brain on metaphorical steroids.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it. But I wouldn’t be here without Alex. He bought and bailed out my business ten years ago. After putting years into Emilie, I would have lost it all.”
“So, he gets you.” LuAnn nodded, smiling. “He gets it.”
“He has always gotten it, and I adore him for his persistence,” said Caitlin as a dreamy look came over her face. “And now I have a quantum computer in a cell phone case.”
“So this Kphone is a big deal,” LuAnn said. “Net it out for me.”
It’s not just the Kphone, Caitlin thought. It’s Emilie.
The heuristic AI chatbot that powered the Kphone was what ChatGPT and other sophomoric AI implementations could only hope to be. Caitlin had named the software for her declared idol, Émilie du Châtelet, one of the few women to grace the pantheon of eighteenth-century Enlightenment natural philosophers. AI functions on data—lots of it—and Caitlin had been teaching Emilie to collect and index the world’s data for ten years now, in the form of videos, meeting transcripts, emails, phone conversations, you name it. By now, Emilie was getting quite good at it.
Caitlin walked to the bar and refilled their glasses once more, taking a sip. “Nice wine,” she confirmed. Then she shrugged. “It’s a big deal,” she admitted, despite being unsure whether getting into it with a lawyer was wise. “A Kphone is thousands of times faster than the world’s largest, fastest air-cooled computer. One can do a lot with that speed, especially if no one else has it.”
Quantum speed vastly enabled computers, just as calculus vastly enabled the study of the natural sciences. It provided Caitlin instant access and reference to all the data managed by Emilie, and from there—with unlimited cloud storage and unlimited quantum speed—anything was possible. Caitlin had designed the phone several years before, and a former colleague from Caltech used his Taiwan chip-fab to build a quantum chipset for it. Caitlin had bought thousands of the chips for just $100 each. Buying the phone software and the cheap plastic case was easier yet.
She ticked off her next points one by one on her fingers. “I have access to all the information ever recorded in modern history up until this morning—that’s big data.” One. “I have the ability to sift through it in minutes while questioning the content—that’s artificial intelligence, and without speed limits because the Kphone is a quantum device.” Two. “And then I draw conclusions from it—that’s predictive analytics.” Three.
Caitlin looked expectantly at her guest.
“Go on,” said LuAnn slowly. “I think I’m tracking you. Except for the part about the NSA paying you and your firm $225 million a year … without receiving title to anything at all.”
Caitlin strolled to the large plate-glass window and peered out at the lights around Tangier harbor. What do I say now? she wondered. This is some seriously secret shit—so secret, even the NSA hasn’t quite figured it out. She turned back to LuAnn before she had even decided what to say—but suddenly figured if the tall Texan woman was good enough for Brooks Elliot, she was good enough for Caitlin.
“Okay, here it is,” Caitlin confessed. “I can find out anything you want to know that has a recorded history and a communications connection, along with a set of observations—conclusions even—about the topic. The software, known as Emilie, does all the translations and research.”
So, she explained, if you asked Emilie, What were the results of the meeting between President Putin and his foreign minister last night?, within twelve hours you’d get a transcript of the conversation in any language you chose, plus any observations made by other meeting attendees who had commented electronically or typed their response into a connected computer, plus conclusions with reasoning based on any recorded history behind the same topic. Putting it all together depended on compute-speed capability—enter the quantum speed of the Kphone.
“In other words,” Caitlin said quietly, “no message is secret, no design is protected, and no act is ignored or forgotten.”
LuAnn whistled. “Wow. I had no idea. That’s … enormous.”
Cailin smiled wryly. “And that’s why they pay us the big money. The NSA finds that information valuable, for good reason. Until someone catches up, we own the game.”
“Given Alex’s latest project, let’s hope the Israelis don’t catch up anytime soon.” Sensing an end to the evening, LuAnn drained her glass and put it on the bar.
“They won’t,” Caitlin assured her. “I’m watching closely. They have some very smart people, but this took me twenty years to develop. It’s no picnic.” She turned to stare out the living room window again, an empty glass in her hand. “We have what no one else has. And we use it.”
TANGIER
MONDAY
“THE ISRAELIS ARE TOUGH,” SAID ALEX EARLY THAT AFTERNOON. “IT will be hard to manipulate them to our point of view.”
Alex and Caitlin sat in Caitlin’s office, on a padded bench at a small wooden table, where teacups and teapots awaited clearing. It was a clear midday, with the bulk of Gibraltar visible from the office windows. Computer screens covered the walls. In one corner was a closet, where tiny blinking lights confirmed the presence of several servers connected to the main computer facility at Kufdani Industries, embedded deep in the mountain.
Alex, his bare feet in Caitlin’s lap, stared blankly across the choppy water at the Gibraltar’s gigantic promontory jutting hazily from the blue-green sea, just a few miles away. “For this Bedouin thing to work, I need to plan some kind of force multiplier. And Emilie just might be the key.”
Caitlin applied thumb pressure to the ball of his foot and rolled it around. “How do you think that might start?” she said.
Ideas for how to restore the stolen land to the Bedouins as is, with the Israelis’ developments in place but their Haredim Orthodox tenants back on the kibbutz, had been rolling around in the back of Alex’s mind all day. “What if I could create some kind of central attraction to the cause of restoring Bedouin honor—and therefore Islamic honor—by making the Israelis give back the West Bank?”
“But what about the IDF?” Caitlin said. If Alex’s plan got any traction, surely the Israel Defense Forces would immediately get involved. He would have to neutralize them somehow. “They’re a bunch of bright, mean fuckers. And that’s the first place the Israeli government will turn if it gets uncomfortable and they need to … fix things.”
“Yeah, they’re good,” Alex said. “The IDF has technology that really makes things hum. Everyone talks to everyone. Their combined forces communicate and act in concert—securely, effectively. They have smart weapons.”
Caitlin looked offended, as he’d known she would. “Securely? Well, hell, we can already read their messaging, and I’ve had Emilie hard at work figuring some shit out,” she insisted. “What if I could mess with their communications, maybe even interfere selectively with their infrastructure?”
Alex nodded and wiggled his foot to demand more pressure. “If we can do that, it’s an idea with potential. If I know what the IDF is planning, I have a decent chance of figuring the rest out.”
“I already figured it out,” Cailin said, digging deeper into the ball of his foot. “And if you make nice love to me, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
Alex put his hands behind his head. “And what if I don’t make nice love to you?”
Caitlin laughed. “I’ll tell you anyway. I just had a few thoughts that I’d like to ride for a while, and you do know how to make a thought ride pleasant.”
“Ride them later,” Alex demanded. “Tell me now.”
“Okay now, stay with me,” Caitlin replied, sitting up straight. “These are the CliffsNotes, and you ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.” She explained her interest in the mathematical and physical characteristics of an electromagnetic pulse, which she’d been studying for a while thanks to the NSA money.
“I know what you mean,” Alex agreed. “EMP was a big component of my venture in the attack on Iran. It got my attention.”
“That’s when I started thinking more about it too. It changed the game on the ground,” Caitlin said.
Alex wiggled his foot again. “Frying electrical circuits without killing people made it useful in Iran. We interrupted communications in a large part of Tehran and on targeted field units of the Republican Guard. It worked fine. So …?”
“So, what if we could control the EMP impulse?” she said. “Make it big, make it small, maybe even make it shootable? We have some boss 3D printing capability now. That could be useful.”
“That’s huge.” Alex nodded. “It’s a good start.”
“Want me to tell you all the dirty pieces?”
“Not right now. I want to ride that thought for a while. Care to join me?”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Caitlin murmured. “Who has the honors?”
“Happy to be of service,” he replied, swinging his feet from her lap to the floor and sliding off the padded bench to his knees. Bob James—high on their go-to list, up there with Oscar Peterson—was busy on the piano, notes flowing from the speakers hidden in the ceiling. He felt Caitlin’s hand ruffling his hair with one hand, her eyes closed, as she reached for the remote with her other hand and notched the volume up a little.
As he turned toward her, she continued running her fingers through his thick, graying hair. He knew she would be emptying her mind of thoughts and current events, succumbing to his skill. Alex was a master at the oral artistry of accompanying a complex, repetitive jazz beat.
LATE AFTERNOON SUNRAYS SLANTED THROUGH the windows of Caitlin’s office. Through one window on the west wall, a two-lane, twenty-five-meter lap pool was visible. It was hers, extending beside a corridor leading to workspaces, custom made for her and installed years ago with a watertight door. She seldom let others use it.
Alex, freshly showered and dressed, picked up two Bordeaux glasses from a rack on the counter, then plucked out a bottle of water and one of red wine: a Napa Cabernet from recent wine venture Accendo Vintners. Caitlin watched him sleepily until he returned to the couch.
He opened the red wine, poured a third of a glass for Caitlin and another for himself, and then drained the water bottle. “I talked to Guns, asked him to set up a meeting with the Israeli prime minister as recognition for our help in Iran,” he began. “We talked philosophy for a bit. I’m assuming the Israelis will try to placate me at first without agreeing to anything much.”
“Now, there’s a safe assumption,” Caitlin replied, rolling her eyes. “If they even notice you at first.”
“I need a plan to spin public opinion early,” Alex said. He would need to figure out whom to convince, when, and how, and get the US political people on board—all before meeting with the prime minister.
“Okay. That’s probably the key, really,” Caitlin said. “Get the world on our side.”
Alex nodded. “Brooks knows a lot of folks back there, so he’s likely to be useful.”
“The whole idea just has too many dependent variables, with no real predictability that I can identify,” Caitlin pointed out. “But with my Kphone, I can definitely fuck up anything, anywhere, as long as it’s connected to the internet.” On the couch, she moved an inch closer to him. “But if it all goes bad, I’m willing to hire you as my personal sexual linguist. You have very special skills in that rarified field.”
Alex grinned at her, then felt his Kphone buzz in his pocket. He took it out, glanced at it, and stood up quickly. “It’s Mom. I’m going to grab this in my office.”
Maria Kufdani Cuchulain lived just across the Strait of Gibraltar, in Algeciras on the south coast of Spain. Years ago, after growing up in Tangier, she had been teaching high school math in Algeciras—and seriously dating the mayor—when Alex’s father showed up. He’d been stationed at Rota, the US Navy station strategically located nearby. When a group of four or five determined Spanish men demanded he look elsewhere for a girlfriend, Mick had revealed himself to be demonstrably (and violently) unintimidated.
The two were married, and when Mick was transferred to Vietnam, he moved his young family to Audley, South Carolina, near the Marine Corps base at Parris Island. When Mick came home from his second tour in Vietnam, he had a wheelchair and the Congressional Medal of Honor to show for it; the medal came with fifty bucks a month added to his medical retirement. Life for the Cuchulains changed.
Maria taught math at the junior college, while Alex and his older sister, Elena, adapted and grew up in the small South Carolinian town. Mick read a lot.
Alex planned to be a high school wrestler, and he was good at it—until he injured two of the town’s high school jocks fairly badly after they assaulted Elena. A friend of Alex’s father, Mac Macmillan, violently intervened in town politics to keep Alex from going to prison. Soon after, life sent him off at age sixteen to Parris Island to become a US Marine.
Elena survived the incident with the football heroes and went on to teach math at a small liberal arts college in New Jersey. She was married now and had a teenaged son, Michael. When Mick died, with no one left in South Carolina, Maria had moved back to Algeciras, where she had a sister, friends, and connections with Tangier, just fifteen or so nautical miles across the Mediterranean.
“Hi, Mom. All good in Spain?” Alex asked. He sometimes worried that his mother wanted to return to Tangier, where she could be a major society player if she chose. She missed Morocco, of course. But she could have anything money could buy, and with her house and her sister in Algeciras, she had all she needed. Plus she had the recent surprise of twin grandchildren living nearby—unacknowledged, but still flesh and blood.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Alejandro, but I am troubled,” Maria replied.
Everything else on Alex’s mind vanished in a rush of concern. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Is there anything you need?”
“I’m fine. I like Spain, and I am busy,” she said. “But I am just back from visiting Elena. I think there is some trouble there.”
Alex relaxed into his chair. Marital troubles seemed stressful but usually went away easily. “Oh yeah? I talk to Elena occasionally, but she hasn’t been very forthcoming. I was planning to stop by and see her when I go to the States again. What’s going on?”
“When I arrived at the Newark airport, Elena met me at baggage claim as always,” Maria replied, “but this time her face was swollen and her jaw was cut.”
Alex sat up.
“I asked her about it, and she had some facile answer, which I accepted. She is entitled to her privacy.”
“Hmm?” Alex said patiently. He knew his mother well. Whatever this was, Maria had been thinking about how to say it for a while now.
“But then we got to their home—which is very nice indeed for a school-teacher—and when I walked in the door, Kevin’s face was also swollen and … his nose was splinted.”
Alex chuckled quietly. “She’s a Cuchulain. She doesn’t do the quitting thing. Kevin lost the fight, but he’s alive. May there never be another.”
“Don’t be coarse, Alex,” his mother scolded. “It does not become you.”
“Sorry, Mom. So if not domestic violence … then what?”
“Michael had a black eye. My grandson had a black eye,” she continued, her voice hardening. “He got it from a boy at his school.”
“Mom, he has to learn to fight back. We all have to do it sometimes,” Alex insisted. “Bullies are everywhere. We had a playground bully for a president who had never been hit hard in the face, and look what he’s like! I mean, perhaps I can help Michael out when I visit in a few weeks—”
“Alejandro, you are beginning to irritate me. I was married to the legendary Mick Cuchulain. I am the daughter of Kufdani. I am the mother of Cooch, the warrior. I know about these things.”
“So, what happened?”
