The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [21]
The machine. It was beyond tiny, past minuscule. In structure and shape it was unlike anything Seastrom had ever seen. Under magnification it shone like the tiniest imaginable drop of molten silver. Functioning at the molecular level, its purpose was as enigmatic as its incredibly complex design. It should not have been there. It should not have been anywhere. And it had been removed from near the brain of Cara Jean Gibson, to all outward appearances a perfectly ordinary and classically self-conscious fifteen-year-old girl of modest circumstances and no known exceptional interests.
All of this registered on Dr. Ingrid Seastrom’s mind almost simultaneously. Which turned out to be unexpectedly important, because as she was staring at it, the object vanished.
“Bring it back.” She hardly recognized her voice as she verbalized the command. “The object just assayed. I want to see it again.”
“The object does not exist,” the no-nonsense synthesized male lab voice informed her.
Doubly bemused, she settled slowly back in her chair. “What do you mean, it does not exist? I just saw it.”
The lab obediently restored the image, together with an explanation. “What you have been seeing all along and are looking at now is a replay of the primary assay. Only preliminary results are available, because the instant the object was subjected to focused analysis it vanished.”
Ingrid strove to comprehend. “Real objects don’t ‘vanish.’ It looked like it was made of some kind of alloy. Are you saying that when subjected to study it self-destructed?”
“No. It vanished.”
“Explain yourself,” she snapped.
“I cannot. I can only offer hypotheses. From the reaction of the object to initial probing, I believe it represents an example of delayed quantum entanglement.”
“I understand the last part,” she responded. “You’re suggesting that the object itself was a perfect duplicate of an original located somewhere else, and that the act of viewing it in itself caused this one to disappear in favor of the other. But if that thesis is valid, then it should have vanished when I removed it from the skull of the girl where it was located. What I did with my medogic similarly constitutes probing and observation.”
“I said that it was ‘delayed,’ ” the lab replied without rancor.
“There is no such thing as ‘delayed quantum entanglement.’ If the act of being viewed causes one copy or the other to cease to exist, then the nano-level device you just showed me should have ceased existing long ago.”
“I agree. I told you I could not explain it. I can only report what was observed.”
Seastrom sat quietly for a long moment; contemplating, digesting, trying to make sense of what the lab’s AI was telling her. As much as the physical contradictions she was mystified as to what such a finely crafted impossibility was doing in the head of an ordinary teenager. An impossibility that had, to all outward appearances, done the girl no harm. And if someone wanted such a device implanted in fifteen-year-old Cara Gibson, why had they chosen to have the work done by an apparently incompetent backstreet technician specializing in cheap cosmetic melds? None of it made any sense. Of course, if she had some idea of what the incredibly sophisticated nanoscale device was designed to do …
As if that wasn’t sufficient rational overload, the lab had one more for her.
“Subsequent investigation suggests that at least part of the device was composed of metastable metallic hydrogen.”
Ingrid nodded slowly to herself. “Sure it was. And the pressure required to maintain it in that state was the nominal several million atmospheres that happen to exist at the center of the Earth—something not generally found within the cerebral epidermis of a fifteen-year-old girl.”
The inlab did not react to sarcasm. “Atomic-level analysis revealed a crystalline lattice composed solely of protons exhibiting spacing less than a Bohr radius. This is consistent with the detection and presence of MSMH. A quantum state existing