“This is the quantum computer?” he asked.
Juliet smiled. “Not at all.”
She kept going toward the rear of the building, though she finally turned around when she realized we had not followed.
“I assume that as part of your audit, you examined our electric bills? The power consumption of this facility is enormous.”
“It did cross our minds,” I said.
Indeed, one of the ironies of the information age was that supposedly the greenest of all industries gobbled up massive quantities of coal fired electricity, a fact the young activists rarely considered as they updated their social networking pages.
“Nothing here has the slightest relevance to our research,” she said, “but it provides a reasonable cover story. Do you remember your visit a couple of years ago, Mr. Markowitz?”
He nodded.
“A month or two later, we had what passes for a heat wave in this region, and the power company called to ask if we could cut back our usage temporarily. After that, we decided that we needed a way to explain what we were doing in case some authority showed up and demanded a better look.”
“I get that, but why the racks full of servers?” replied Markowitz.
“To a casual observer, we could explain that we were either storing vast quantities of data or conducting an exercise in massive parallel processing. Either way, they would see what they expected to see: the bustle of industry and lots of flashing lights.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You sound like you’ve read those management books: ‘Bias for action’ and all that nonsense.”
She smiled. “Feverish activity is the essence of progress, is it not? At least in the minds of the unthinking.”
***
Juliet flipped a switch and the racks of machines went dark.
“We only turn them on for the occasional visitor,” she said. “After all, they do consume power we could otherwise devote to more constructive purposes.”
“Yes,” I replied. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you about those purposes.”
“You have built a quantum computer?” said Markowitz.
“Of course.”
Juliet led us to a small box and pressed a security code. After a brief second’s delay, the door opened to a small room containing a bank of lockers.
“This way, gentlemen, if you please.”
The door closed quickly behind us and we immediately noticed that the temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees.
Juliet opened one of the lockers, took out a thick yellow jacket, and then handed us two larger ones — both colored in the most fashionable safety orange.
“These appear to be your size,” she said.
Markowitz and I glanced at each other, then donned the coats and followed her to another door at the opposite end of the room. She punched the codes once more, and after a brief delay, this door opened automatically as well.
This passage led into a storage closet, filled with file cabinets. However, when Bryson removed a key from her pocket and turned the lock closest to our left, the center cabinet swiveled around, exposing an elevator sized opening.
“Go ahead,” she said. “It’s just what you think it is. Just be sure to step over the red line.”
She stepped in behind us and pressed a button. The doors closed and we could feel ourselves descend. About half a minute later, the doors opened again to reveal a large rectangular chamber, with banks of computers and instrumentation lining each of the four walls from floor to ceiling.
Markowitz shivered and pulled his coat tight. He glanced up at a thermometer atop the nearby console: minus 20?C, or minus 4?F.
“How far down are we?” he asked.
“Thirty meters,” she replied. “About a hundred feet.”
I glanced around. “Do the building inspectors know about this?”
“Partially,” she replied. “This was originally an old mine dating back to the Colonial era, From what I’ve been told, it played out before the Civil War. Over the intervening years, developers attempted a variety of schemes to make the property commercially viable, without success. The last one went broke in the 1970s.”
“How did you acquire it?”
“We cut a deal. As you would expect, the previous owners had left a mess, so we agreed to clean up the site to modern environmental standards.”
“And in return, the city agreed not to ask too many questions,” I said.
“Something like that. Of course, they had to approve our structural plans. They didn’t want responsibility for a cave-in.”
“How did you explain what you were doing?”
“Cryogenic research for the Defense Department,” she replied. “All top secret.”
“They bought that?” asked Markowitz.
“Why not? It’s perfectly plausible.”
“Why here? Why not out in the country somewhere, where you wouldn’t have to deal with inspectors at all?”
“What do they call it — hiding in plain sight? In the country, nosy neighbors would watch every delivery made to our site and compare notes. Here, we’re just another pair of MIT researchers — two out of hundreds.”
Markowitz pulled his coat tighter and shivered. “Don’t tell me you spend all day working in this cold?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Personally I prefer the beach. However, extreme cold was crucial to achieving the quantum effects that we sought.”
Bryson stepped through an opening in the bank of instruments at the center of the back wall and led us to a plexiglass enclosed chamber the size of a tennis court. Inside that chamber rested a glass cube about two meters across, and inside that sat a black box roughly the size of a household air conditioner compressor.
“This, gentlemen, is the heart of the quantum computer.”
Both of us stared forward, trying to comprehend what we were seeing. Five narrow tubes, connected to a web of multicolored wiring, pointed toward the center of the black box.
“There’s a sixth tube under the floor,” she said. “One for each face of the cube. It is a coordinated laser array, which is the final step.”
“The final step of what?” asked Markowitz.
“You’ll be pleased to know that even pointy-headed academics can conduct a cost-benefit analysis. We cool the surrounding air — this room we’re in now — using standard meat-locker technology.
“This allows us to save money when we lower the temperature of the outer chamber to minus 196?C using liquid nitrogen, which, as you know, is relatively inexpensive. For the cube in the center, we use liquid helium, which gets us almost where we need to be.”
“Where is that?” I asked.
“Absolute zero,” she replied.
“The lasers get you there?” asked Markowitz.
“This represents our real breakthrough. Three of our colleagues at MIT succeeded in cooling materials within a few micro-Kelvins of absolute zero using a similar process, but so far they’ve managed it only for an object the size of a coin. Our lasers are the first to accomplish the same feat with something of this magnitude.”
“When did you first achieve this success?”
“With what you see here, about four months ago,” she replied.
“You should have called us. My father would have rested easier knowing his money had not been wasted.”
“I can assure you, Mr. Markowitz, that the funds he allocated to construct the quantum computer went into our device. I will be happy to go over the accountant’s statements with you, if you’d like. They are correct to the penny.”
He considered this for a moment.
“That won’t be necessary,” he finally said. “However, I would like to know about the second half of your charge. How close are you to accomplishing that task?”
She hesitated for a brief instant before replying. “You’re referring to the quantum trading algorithm?”
Markowitz nodded. “You weren’t only to build a computer. My father also intended it to accomplish a specific purpose.”
An uncomfortable silence ensued. Finally, after a couple of minutes, I spoke in a quiet voice.