Once, in a Central African country where some turmoil was brewing, closely tied to global geopolitical interests, an interesting phenomenon was discovered. The embassy of one of the neutral countries was broadcasting music over a shortwave transmitter. Moreover, the music broadcasts clearly preceded certain new phases of the turmoil or, conversely, heralded a calming of the conflict. In general, a correlation between the military-political situation and the music was clearly evident.
Of course, nothing is broadcasted without reason, and the best minds in the intelligence agencies of all the countries involved in the conflict began to dig into the matter. The investigations were focused on three main areas:
- what is encrypted in music. The music was of several styles, and the compositions were often from the same albums, but they never played in a row;
- In whose interests does the station operate, given that the embassy is neutral and the diplomatic mission is more focused on charitable and humanitarian activities rather than supporting the conflict?
- Who exactly is making the entries?
Of course, the last question was the easiest to answer. The recordings were made by a woman who had never been implicated in any espionage activities. She traveled to conflict zones, assessed the humanitarian situation, and organized aid for those in need, medical treatment for the sick, and the evacuation of wounded civilian victims of the conflict, among other things. The woman was in her late 60s. She had seen a lot in her life and was no longer afraid of death. Moreover, the locals knew her very well, and she had such authority that she could have driven through the hottest gunfire in her old Ford from the 1950s and emerged unscathed simply because the warring parties would cease fire out of respect for her. Practically every soldier or partisan had a relative who had been saved by this woman. She had no children, nor could she have had any since she had survived “medical” experiments in a German concentration camp, which allowed her to dedicate her entire life to her beloved work.
But, the spy minds thought, this is clearly the perfect “legend.” With such a “legend,” it would be easy to explain her presence wherever there was gunfire. And in her biography, this African conflict was neither the first nor the last. Indeed — a very well “sealed” spy. And everyone started digging into her background. The Americans dug, as did our people, as well as the French and the British, and yes, even Mossad was digging.
There wasn’t much need to dig deep into the investigation. The old lady clearly wasn’t trying to hide anything. Or she was playing a very subtle double game. The most interesting part was that her emails often mentioned something about a brick. And the emails were strange. Sometimes the brick was tired, sometimes it had misbehaved. Occasionally, the brick would sleep all day, and other times it would catch birds in the yard. Of course, the old lady was writing about her dog—a fox terrier she named Brick, due to its square face. But by the time the best minds of intelligence agencies around the world figured out that the lady was referring to her dog, the topic was already being explored further.
One day, a promising spy from one of the countries managed to win the trust of an old woman. He met her by what seemed like a chance encounter. She started inviting him for tea, introduced him to Kirpich, and shared stories about her life. They became friends, and one day he reluctantly agreed to help her with her work—after all, not everyone is eager to drive an old 1951 Ford into the mine-infested and guerrilla-ridden depths of Africa just to find out how many bags of rice need to be delivered to a village after it was flattened by the front line.
On the appointed day, he arrived at her home. She was finishing getting ready for the trip and invited him into her apartment, which was located on the embassy grounds. As she wrapped up her preparations, she took a CD player, inserted one of the compact discs from her shelf, started the music, and plugged in a cable from the headphones into the embassy’s radio station, which was sitting on the table nearby. She flipped the switch on the radio station and discovered that the young man she had invited was standing in the doorway, watching her with a certain excitement, rather than just curiosity.
“Ah… Don’t be surprised,” the lady said. “The thing is, you can’t install a new stereo in my Ford, and a CD player won’t work on bumpy roads anyway. Plus, with all this dust we’ll be driving through, no modern electronics lasts more than a month. I’ve already thrown out three players. We’re going to be on the road for a while. Music on the way wouldn’t hurt. So I tuned the radio in my car to this station and I’m playing music for the journey here at the embassy. It’s very convenient.”
The scout, losing all his caution from surprise, directly asked the old woman.
— How do you choose which songs to listen to?
— Not really. I set the player to shuffle the tracks. That way, it’s less tedious to listen to the same thing for six hours straight.
The story with the music might have ended there if it weren’t for those who wanted to dig deeper. And there were indeed some. The most interesting part is that they decided to dig deeper precisely because a number of intelligence agencies had stopped pursuing this issue. Of course, on a global scale, there were both “friendly” and “hostile” spies. The friendly ones shared their findings with each other, while the hostile ones realized that the friendly spies knew something and, moreover, were not opposing them. This meant that the music was clearly being broadcast in favor of the “friendly” side. Further investigation was necessary.
And they kept digging. They couldn’t gain the old woman’s trust. Cultural and ideological differences, so to speak, got in the way. At the same time, nothing stopped them from keeping an eye on the old woman and the people she was in contact with. They diligently monitored her and her connections, as they were unaware of why exactly the old woman played her music.
Meanwhile, the guys from the opposing camp were quietly chuckling to themselves, pleased that the best efforts of their opponents were occupied with such nonsense.
And just imagine, the opponents actually dug something up. If you dig long enough, you’ll find something. It turned out that the old woman was indeed receiving information about where and when she needed to go. Moreover, she was getting this information before it became known to the general public and, suspiciously, it’s very likely that she learned about events even before they happened. Tracking the chronological details was quite difficult. The country was devastated, and there were no connections. All military operations require confidentiality, making it very hard to determine what happened first: whether the troops of Group A captured some village B or the old woman set out for that village with humanitarian aid. But the undeniable fact was that she clearly knew about the event well before anyone else. Even if the old woman was not involved, it was worth digging into her case simply because she had a very valuable source of information, the value of which is hard to overestimate.
Continuing to develop the hypothesis that the divine dandelion plays music purposefully and that some information is conveyed through the music, the spies decided to track the source of her music. And they were right. She was getting her music from a local general, who would give her new discs “to listen to” and take the old ones back. In general, he was making exchange deals with her, reminiscent of the popular practice in the 90s in the USSR, when people would trade video cassettes.
The general could have ideologically aligned himself and approached him to ask what was going on without any trouble, but the scouts were no fools. They suspected that the general might be playing some kind of game and was in collusion with the old woman, so a simple interview wouldn’t help and might even hinder the investigation. Therefore, they began to “develop” the general. Wiretaps, surveillance, all that sort of thing.
It quickly became clear how they knew each other. The son of wealthy parents, the general received a good European education, right where his grandmother had once taught. Since then, they had been acquainted, and for her, the general was practically the only familiar face in this country, torn apart by bloody slaughter. The general had protected her, saving her from arrest several times—so it was clear why they were friends, and one could have felt reassured.
At the same time, another group reliably established that the old woman was aware of events not only earlier than others but also before the events themselves occurred. It was already clear that the old woman had no other serious contacts besides the general, and the general came under suspicion, or as they say, under the “cap,” due to his obvious collaboration with the ideologically opposed old woman.
After making contact with a high level of local counterintelligence and presenting some very serious evidence against the general, the operatives were surprised to learn from their interlocutors that, yes, the general was indeed a spy, and they were aware of it. Moreover, everyone knew that one of the opposing sides, let’s say “B,” considered the general to be “one of their own.” At the same time, the general was playing a double game, using the trust he had gained from “B” to access their important information while actually working for “A,” where he was officially listed as a general. “B” was unaware of the general’s double dealings and trusted him, especially since he was selectively leaking information that could be valuable to them.
In light of the newly revealed information, it became clear that the general was sharing military data with the old lady (from both side “A” and side “B”) purely out of friendship, simply helping her with her work.
The case was closed, and everyone was left alone.
The comedic nature of the story involving the music and the ambiguity of interpretations of seemingly obvious facts was striking. Not even a month had passed since the “revelation” of the entire scheme when this story, along with the relevant facts, was chosen to be used in the training center for intelligence analysts in an island nation. The variety of conclusions that students could reach amused the teaching staff, and a thorough analysis of the story served as a valuable instructional resource for training future analysts.
Of course, when admitting candidates for service in the authorities, there is a thorough selection process. They must come from families of indigenous people of this island nation (meaning that their parents must have been born on its territory). They should be talented in mathematics, diligent, respect hierarchy, not be afraid of routine work, and so on. In general, the descendants of immigrants from one of the former major colonies of this state have always had a better chance of being admitted to the school than the 100% local “golden” youth. While their chances were greater, they were often not accepted due to various racial prejudices. They were only admitted in exceptional cases when a person was clearly talented.
An interesting picture emerged: in a group of 20 students, there were always 2-3 particularly talented individuals, and these exceptionally talented students often came from immigrant families. This created a completely opposite scenario that broke the mold, as these “racially inferior” kids elevated the reputation of their entire nation, which later led to an increased demand for representatives of that nation in the IT industry. The word about the talents of the dark-skinned descendants of people from warmer regions spread beyond the school, especially after the story involving music, which, as you can guess, had a continuation.
The continuation was that the first-year analytics students, as I described above, were given our musical history as a study task. And then one, yes, a talented but dark-skinned student, noticed two interesting facts:
1) The general had a name that was more characteristic of the same nation to which the student belonged, and 2) a certain peculiarity in his behavior.
In fact, no one paid attention to the general’s name. To Europeans, it sounded like gibberish, just like all African names, and as they read the reports, they imagined him as some sort of Black man in epaulettes, like in a picture. Meanwhile, the darker-skinned geniuses considered such names to be a given for Africans, as they remembered their people’s history, including the fact that their former oppressors had mass transported their brethren from one colony to another when they discovered that in the new African colonies, Black people were completely incapable of working or thinking. Consequently, the future dark-skinned analysts envisioned the general quite differently.
The swarthy migrants, upon arriving in Africa, settled in well, distinguishing themselves from the local population through their hard work, resourcefulness, and closer ties to the colonizers. They quickly occupied a social niche as traders, shopkeepers, businessmen, middlemen, and moneylenders. Adding to this was a foreign religion that was alien to the local people, a manic devotion typical of any diaspora, and the preservation of customs from their distant homeland that were incomprehensible to the locals. It becomes clear that the genocide that later erupted in one of the African countries, under the slogans “Kill A – Save B,” directed against them, was quite expected.
And while Europeans were somewhat unsettled by the fact that some African-descended individual was studying in the West and came from a wealthy family, they, due to political correctness, did not express their doubts to anyone. Meanwhile, the darker-skinned geniuses, like scouts “in the field,” experienced no cognitive dissonance because the mass migration was a common and widespread phenomenon. In general, the exchange of information did not occur simply because some were not particularly bothered, while others took it for granted.
Yes, so our talented future analyst, while going through the electronic correspondence between the old lady and the general, noticed something that any of his compatriots from the historical homeland would have noticed if they had the chance. The general sometimes sent the old woman food in the form of what we would call a ration pack and commented on the quality of the products, mentioning that the canned goods were edible—he regularly ate them himself and the quality was good.
The problem was that the canned food was meat-based. Specifically, it was canned beef, which was abundantly supplied to the government troops of our African country by ideological allies. For the army in a war-torn country, this was a boon, while for the supplier, it was a good way to elegantly dispose of expired strategic reserves. No, it wasn’t about the origin of the canned beef; it was that, according to the customs of the people to whom the general belonged—customs that our dark-skinned analyst was aware of—they were not allowed to eat meat, especially beef.
Of course, one could assume, on one hand, that the general came from a well-off secular family where all these customs were understood. On the other hand, it is equally important to consider that life in the diaspora typically involves adherence to traditions. In general, it was necessary to get to know the family.
Our student printed out the email, approached his supervisor, and showed him what he had found. In the supervisor’s mind, accustomed to steaks with blood rather than rice with avocado, something like “the general is a spy, which is already known, good job student, you’ve dug it up, keep digging” formed. At the same time, the student was asking for the supervisor’s assistance in investigating the details of the general’s family life. The students were raised in school to value freedom of thought, open-mindedness, and creativity, so the supervisor, as if he knew the whole story about the grandmother, replied, “Go ahead, you have the authority.”
In general, the student assigned a task to the resident and two weeks later received a response stating that the family from which the general supposedly comes does not exist at all. His lifestyle and status are supported by anyone but wealthy parents. And that until now, no one had any idea about this, as it simply never occurred to anyone to check the general’s relatives.
It turned out that the general was indeed a spy, but now it was completely unclear who he was working for.
But if it turned out that the general was a meat-eater and had no wealthy family, three questions arose: a) Judging by his appearance and name, the general was clearly not Black, but belonged to a group of settlers. Who is he really and why does he eat meat? b) Who does he work for? and c) Is his benefactor connected to the general’s diet?
The analytical department had no trouble figuring out who he was working for by simply comparing his activity and the results of that activity, regardless of how it was presented, and identifying the beneficiaries of that activity. In other words, to put it simply — who benefits from his actions.
And here, both analysts and seasoned professionals faced a major disappointment. There was no significant correlation between the general’s actions and any benefit for the parties involved in the conflict. Either the general wasn’t as clever as one would expect, which was hard to believe given the aura of intellectual elite surrounding representatives of this nation, or he was playing his own game, trying to maintain his position. After all, if the war ended, he would have nothing to do and could be discarded like an unnecessary asset. Alternatively, perhaps someone was obstructing him, and his activities were not aimed at helping one side of the conflict, but rather at prolonging it.
But the main thing that the analysts found was that the general was indeed sharing information that was important to the participants in the conflict. In other words, one side of the conflict would learn what the general knew and take appropriate preventive actions. When the information reached “their own,” everything was clear; he simply communicated through official channels. However, when the information reached some of the “outsiders,” it was impossible to trace the method of transmission. This raised a fourth question: how did the general convey the information?
The answer was right in front of them. The only outgoing information stream from the general, in an abstract sense, was the very compact discs he provided to our benefactor. This meant that the messages were “encoded” in the music being transmitted, and the old lady was likely in cahoots with the general. This is exactly the report the mentor of the student analysts received, and he smirked again. Knowing that the tracks were played in random order, but wanting to give the students some practice, he approved further digging into this direction.
But the students, some of whom, as we remember, were quite gifted, generally paid no attention to the tracks. What mattered to them was what was coming from the general, not what was playing on the radio. So, they simply listed the albums that the general sent to “Mother Teresa” by date in one column, and in another, they noted facts from the military chronicle. It turned out that the style of music only mattered in the sense that it had to appeal to our elderly lady. She enjoyed a wide variety of music, but of course, not hip-hop or Britney Spears. It became clear that the artists didn’t matter, nor did the number of tracks on the disc. What mattered was the year the album was released. And the correlation was not just obvious, but 100%. The messages that the general transmitted in favor of one side were simply encoded in the last two digits of the album’s release year. The transmission code was sliding, clearly non-deterministic, and it was impossible to solve this problem without computers. And with computers, this was the only problem being solved. Numbers were clearer to computers than music styles.
It turned out that there were five parties in the conflict. If each party is assigned an arbitrary number that changes from message to message according to a specific rule, and if we instruct the recipient party to ignore music from the years in which that number is not present, using it as a designation for the decade, we can say that the last digit of the album’s release date indicates, through a separate code, the party that is the source of the threat. This way, we can easily send signals like “A, beware of B” or “Attention, A. B is retreating.” Considering that there were 5 parties in the conflict and the general had 10 digits at his disposal, the messages could be made quite obscure for the other participants, ensuring they wouldn’t pay attention to non-targeted messages. After all, the old lady doesn’t only play music when the general needs to convey something. For example, if the old lady played an album from 1964, the party with “6”—the expected address indicator (and let’s say it’s currently expecting “6” or “1”)—could easily read the necessary information from the digit “4.”
The general was carefully controlling the old woman’s audio library, never gifting her any discs, but only exchanging one for another. The old woman was completely innocent in this matter. The general simply used her as a means of information, having discovered one day that it was indeed she who selected the music for broadcast via the shortwave transmitter, and that it was by a fortunate coincidence that he had the honor of knowing her.
The story with the music seemed to have come to an end, and everything fell into place. Of course, there were still questions that needed answers, and it was necessary to verify the analysts’ conclusions, while also providing the resident with a convenient reconnaissance tool.
When the conclusions made by the analysts were presented to the resident, the first thing he expressed in response was doubt about the mental health of the analysts, who had seen nothing but their computers and had never inhaled the African dust in that savanna. What albums are they talking about if the field commanders have never heard anything but the drums in their lives?
Of course, it became clear that the recipients of the messages were not the military in the <pipi> savanna, but rather more educated residents from other countries who were somehow “rooting” for “their team.” However, there was also a discrepancy here. The general did not make contact with our resident, and our resident had not heard anything about any <pipi> codes. Nevertheless, everyone, including “ours,” received messages from the general.
After a couple of weeks of joint work between the resident on the ground and the analysts at headquarters, it turned out—surprise, surprise—that besides intelligence, every self-respecting secret service also has counterintelligence, military intelligence, and some other forms of intelligence. In short, they don’t let each other relax; information flows into HQ through various channels, and the residents from different sides are unaware of each other’s existence. So, the military intelligence, or rather its resident, had long had a reliable informant with the code name “Sipai,” whose reports matched the essence of the general’s “Morning Mail.” An interview with the counterintelligence resident revealed that “Sipai” was indeed that very general. Consequently, the counterintelligence officer was passing on to “our” militants what he learned from the “music by request” broadcasted by the old lady’s shortwave transmitter.
An interesting moment occurred when the first resident met the second—a counterintelligence officer. Without much thought, the first left the diplomatic mission he was part of, got into his Land Rover, and drove straight to the field commanders. Ideally, a white person shouldn’t have acted this way, but his professional honor was at stake, and he didn’t think about trivial matters like the risk of losing his car or wallet. Upon arriving at the front, he met with the commander and bluntly asked him where they had learned certain information. The commander replied that they were getting intel from one of “ours” in the official army headquarters—meaning, directly from the enemy. Surprised by the field commander’s musical knowledge, but not clarifying exactly how he obtained the information (to avoid making a complete fool of himself), he simply asked, in a way that resembled a joke, whether this clever source happened to be a representative of that rare non-local nationality known in Africa for its cunning and resourcefulness.
In response, the field commander said something that can be translated as, “No way, I don’t trust those filthy creatures; they eat babies. So, the information we get comes from our source, who is as dark as anthracite. Although he’s a staff rat, he hardly ever shows up at headquarters, spending a lot of time ‘in the field,’ traveling along the front and seeing a lot with his own eyes. By the way, he should drop by today—he has something to report, so hurry up, or he might get exposed.”
The first resident only needed to drive further away from the troop positions and simply wait by the roadside, pretending to fix his car while keeping an eye on who was going where. There was no direct threat to his life. No one would want to give a very powerful country a reason for open invasion during a war, but they could easily knock him on the head and rob him.
And of course, he waited for several jeeps with the official army insignia of the country, which were heading towards the location—yes, indeed, as if to a hostile group. Apparently, they were there to take a look at the front line or its ersatz. He was already preparing to glance over his shoulder and casually scrutinize the faces of the people in the cars when the convoy stopped. An officer got out of the second vehicle and, in very good English, asked the resident what had happened.
The resident was about to open his mouth to respond when he heard the radio playing from the officer’s jeep. There were no FM stations here; there was only one person in the country providing music. The resident explained to the officer the reason for the “breakdown,” said he had already fixed everything, and was about to start the engine and drive off. They said their goodbyes, and the very next day, a report from the resident describing the informant’s identity lay in the capital of the island nation.
As a result, both the scout and the counter-scout were recalled from Africa. They had clearly been compromised, and not even by the enemy, but by a “competing agency,” which, in their view, is even worse. If a resident fails, you won’t know who leaked the information: your own people or the outsiders.
At the same time, along with solving one problem and figuring out how and to whom the intelligence information was passed, questions remained about who the general is and who he works for. New questions also arose: how to continue informing “our people” in the absence of a resident, and whether it is even worth continuing such communication without knowing the general’s motives.
There is either a law or a natural consequence of human relationships, according to which the most arguments and scandals can be expected in the interactions of people who are close to each other. They always have something to divide. In the country in question, no notary has ever participated in transactions between relatives for any amount of money. Strangers signing a contract? Sure. Family members? No. There was some kind of practical wisdom in this. At the same time, the local population had to find ways to properly formalize things like a gift deed.
Such a law also applies to politics. If two nations share something in common from the past, they will engage in resolving their issues with more enthusiasm than even with a former sworn enemy. There are plenty of examples of this around the world. The intelligence agency, where the aforementioned talented but dark-skinned analyst worked, was well aware of this.
The analyst, adding 2+2, simply concluded that the general was not an ethnic migrant, but rather a “sent Cossack” belonging to a neighboring—related nation. This nation and the nation of migrants were united by their past belonging to one large empire, and now they were all playing a game of “who has the longer one.” The essence of the conflicts mainly revolved around the redistribution of disputed territories that remained after the departure of the metropolis and hardly touched on religion. However, in this narrative, we will refer to both nations as “meat-eaters” and “vegetarians” to clarify who we are talking about. Although I want to emphasize once again that the specifics of the menu were not the essence of the conflict, and in real life, it may not have been about the habit of eating or not eating meat, but rather about the peculiarities of the menu and religious taboos regarding it.
The politically correct intelligence leadership dismissed this assumption from the very beginning because it came from someone clearly biased towards the interethnic relations between “meat-eaters” and “vegetarians.” But the analyst understood better than anyone else that only a representative of the “eternal neighbor” could be very similar yet not conform to customs. The leadership responded to him: “Okay, let’s assume that all representatives of the ‘meat-eaters’ are malicious scoundrels and that you should expect a setup from them at every turn. But that doesn’t explain the motives behind the meat-eater country’s involvement in the conflict. There are simply no motives.”
And the analyst went to “dig for motives,” although deep down, in his heart, he was confident in his own correctness. “Who else, if not these bastards.” As had already become clear, the general-spy was not bringing success to either side of the conflict with his actions; on the contrary, he was dragging it out, constantly leaking information about one side to the other.
The field scouts quickly identified the main motive behind “Sipaya” — involvement in arms supply operations, money laundering, embezzlement of the military budget, and overall, the status quo allowed him to live comfortably. This fit into the existing picture, and all the annoying discrepancies between theory and practice, such as the obvious holes in the legend, were attributed to insufficiently thorough information processing. They hoped that everything would somehow settle down on its own. Moreover, the holes were visible in the metropolis, while a living person was right there beside them, who, by the way, occasionally treated them not only to information but also to gin. And gin was supposedly very useful in these parts as a preventive measure against various tropical diseases. In any case, the consumption of gin could be justified for medical purposes, which made it a convenient drink for men.
But our dark-skinned analyst was far from a deep understanding of the term “corruption” in his youth, did not consume alcohol, and therefore sought less obvious and more profound motives. Everything was crystal clear to him, but from a different perspective. The war-torn economy of the African country was not functioning. In other words, there was something that this country produced before the war that somehow hindered the livelihood of another country. Thus, that other country must have been interested in continuing the war so that this “something” would not be produced and thrown onto the global market.
Quickly reviewing the GDP statistics by year, the analyst noticed that this country was extracting a very rare but crucial mineral for modern industry. So important that if it didn’t exist in nature, global civilization would be stuck somewhere in the 1950s. Essentially, whoever held a monopoly on this resource controlled, to some extent, everything—from modern weaponry to the internet.
In fact, the whole mess in this country was really about this resource, not about “the ideals of democracy.” When the analyst presented his findings to his boss, the boss thought to himself something like, “Yes, Captain Obvious,” but out loud he praised the cadet and shared a story about how it all began, where it led, and what their country’s goals were in this conflict. He also explained to the cadet that he appreciated his analytical skills, but the thing is, given the current situation, the war needs to be wrapped up quickly, because the lack of serious reserves of this resource on the market is much worse than a monopoly on it by one of the sides. The global economy is already feeling a hunger for this resource, and thank goodness it is being used as an alloying additive rather than as a primary mineral. The needs of any given country are such that one bulk carrier of enriched ore is enough for about ten years.
The analyst cadet, as often happens among interviewees, heard not what the general intended to say, but the word “bulk carrier.” After all, he is an analyst. And just five minutes later, information appeared on his computer screen indicating that the last bulk carrier with ore had departed from the shores of Africa… heading straight for the country of “carnivorous bastards.”
In his mind, a motive took shape: “Meat-eaters are waiting for the world’s supplies to run out and will speculate on the resource against the backdrop of the war in Africa.” But why would the “meat-eaters” need to organize supplies of this resource for themselves if they, to put it mildly, were not involved in the high-tech business where this resource was necessary?
One way or another, a report on the possible motive for the “meat-eaters’” involvement in the conflict was sent to the manager’s email, although the story became even more mysterious and unclear: “Why was it necessary to send a ship with quite complicated ore across the ocean to a place where this ore was not needed, even before the war started, and the idea of speculation was not even on anyone’s mind?”
And the grandmother, a real sweetheart, once again opened her case, took out a fresh CD, inserted it into the player, and clicked the switch to the shortwave radio station of her embassy. Today, she was planning to take rice to one of the villages.
From a practical, engineering perspective, the idea of teleportation involves the instantaneous movement of an object to a location far from its original position without significant energy expenditure.
Of course, when it comes to moving an object, speed matters. Inertia, the laws of thermodynamics, and the principles of relativity are still in effect, and the energy required just to accelerate an object, even if we assume a source of that energy exists, would instantly destroy the transported sample.
From a practical standpoint, it is more likely that we are talking not about the movement of an object, but about creating a copy of it. Theoretically, everything is fine here. Some information about the object is transmitted at the speed of light, based on which it is recreated in a new location. The energy required to create a copy from nothing can be calculated quite easily using the well-known formula E=mc².2.A formula that doesn’t inspire optimism. Where are you going to get that much energy at the “point of reception”?
However, if we assume that there is some mass at the receiving point that can be sacrificed, the laws of conservation would not be violated if this mass were transformed into a copy of the transmitted object. In other words, we are talking about taking 9 grams of matter and producing a 9-gram bullet that is a copy of the one that was transmitted.
It turns out that the substance at the point of reception needs to be “dismantled into parts” and then reassembled into the target object. It became clear that transmitting “instantly” all the information about the position and state of each atom in the original sample is not feasible. However, scientists are not so foolish as to be deterred by this “minor” issue; instead, they broke down not the substance, but the problem into parts and focused on the teleportation (or creation of a copy) of a single atom.
The scientists were faced with another furry creature. On one hand, breaking an atom into nucleons is difficult, but possible; however, keeping them from flying apart and then reassembling something worthwhile is incredibly challenging. The second law of thermodynamics prohibits such things, at least. On the other hand, the scientists thought that to make a suit from a piece of fabric, no one unravels the fabric into threads; instead, they simply cut out the necessary piece from the pattern, throwing the scraps in the trash.
In other words, the task of teleporting one atom was reduced to the task of “cutting off the excess” from another atom. This was already more feasible. The next step was to figure out how to transmit the information to the target nucleus about what needed to be “cut off.” It was also necessary to determine where to obtain the energy for this cutting process.
For the second point, they decided not to worry about physics for now and to focus on the teleportation of atoms lighter than iron. In this case, the target nucleus had to be even heavier than iron, and the binding energy of the fragments was greater than the binding energy of the original nucleus. Thus, when cutting off the excess, an external energy source was not required.
Everything would have ended with such theoretical calculations and theoretical articles in scientific journals if it hadn’t been necessary to find an explanation for one unpleasant effect. The fact is that in one of the laboratories, during experiments involving the bombardment of target materials with a femtosecond laser, radioactivity was detected on the walls of the lead chamber where the experiments were conducted, which, in principle, had no source.
More precisely, radiation could have been generated. The lead chamber itself was merely an external shield for the experimental setup, which investigated thermonuclear fusion reactions by “igniting” deuterium-tritium targets encased in gold using lasers. The target had a diameter of about 1 mm, and the idea of the experiment was to instantaneously heat the gold shell from all sides with a synchronized ultra-short pulse from a large number of high-power lasers, causing the implosion of the target while simultaneously heating it with a series of subsequent pulses, ultimately achieving the fusion of the target nuclei. Fusion was indeed achieved, though not to a degree sufficient to create a power plant. The reaction produced helium and neutrons, which were captured by the first layer of protection—borated polyethylene. The second layer was made of stainless steel and was designed to create and maintain a vacuum. The outer lead shell protected against gamma rays and potential induced activity from the neutron shielding generated by the flow of neutrons.
The very fact that radioactivity was detected on the external lead casing was discovered by chance when one of the experimental setups and its spare parts were being disposed of, and they were checked for radioactivity according to formal procedures. It was found. The level was not high. But, fortunately for “all progressive humanity,” the waste management manager, apparently out of boredom, turned out to be a real stickler for rules and took the matter through official channels. If there is radioactivity, the source of its occurrence must be determined.
For the scientists, this meant yet another pointless report concocting reasons for the completely insignificant activity detected in the lead box, while the causes were obvious—weak or damaged neutron shielding. They tried to brush off the manager as best they could until it escalated to the head of the laboratory. The head, a seasoned physicist with a background in science, knew that there are no coincidences. After reading the report from the waste management manager, he simply took a Geiger counter from a neighboring department, went, and measured the activity in all four experimental chambers. It was there. Small, but distinguishable from the background. Moreover, the longer the chamber had been operating in the experimental setup, the higher the activity. It turned out that neutrons were somehow leaking through the neutron shielding when they shouldn’t have been. Furthermore, the neutrons were activating the lead, which meant there were a lot of them—extraordinarily many—which, in turn, indicated a more than obvious success in the laser ignition of the thermonuclear reaction.
Sensing a sweet prize and the looming Nobel Prize on the horizon, the lab head instructed the team to identify the source of the activity in the target. It was clear that some kind of nuclear reaction was taking place, triggered by the irradiation of the target inside the chamber with a high-energy laser pulse. Most likely, the bombardment of the target was causing an unexpectedly large flow of neutrons—so large that it was breaching the shielding and could activate the lead. As often happens, the first explanation that came to mind found immediate confirmation. However, there was one significant caveat. The neutron flow was being detected, but the neutrons appeared milliseconds after the bombardment and continued to be emitted for some time, while the duration of the laser pulses was measured in femtoseconds.
Then, another neutron detector was made: a) it was directed by shielding one side, and b) it was placed inside a vacuum chamber, right behind a polyethylene barrier. It turned out that neutrons from the thermonuclear reaction do not pass through polyethylene, but are generated directly in the lead material of the chamber’s shell. This made things even worse. There were no neutrons to be found there, and there are no “excess” neutrons. On the other hand, the induced activity became clear. It arose because neutrons were being generated, not because they were being absorbed. Thus, it turned out that an unintended discovery of lead fission had been made, along with the production of neutrons. To confirm that this was indeed fission, it was necessary to determine the chemical composition of the chamber’s shell. Therefore, there was only one thing left to do: dissolve the lead chamber in acid and analyze its chemical composition by extracting the “glowing” isotopes from the solution.
They were puzzled. First of all, they found gold in the lead. Secondly, there was deuterium and tritium. A hypothesis was immediately put forward that the target material somehow tunneled through the neutron shield and the steel casing, settling in the lead. However, it turned out that there was much more gold and tritium in the lead than there was target material, and the target material itself, after being shot at, settled on the walls of the vacuum chamber in one way or another. Secondly, they figured out where the neutrons were coming from by imagining a possible fission reaction of lead in such a way that one of the fragments was gold. The second fragment turned out to be lithium-11, which emitted neutrons as it decayed first to lithium-8, and then either through alpha decay transformed into beta-active tritium or through beta decay into helium-7, which also quickly decayed into an alpha particle and deuterium. The beta activity of the fragments was recorded by the Geiger counter.
They sat down to write an article about the transmutation of elements and the discovered effect. The lab head, however, understood that the news sounded too sensational. It had the scent of alchemy, pseudoscience, a story reminiscent of the cold fusion saga, the baseless division of stable, “twice magical” lead, and so on. Doubts plagued him. This simply couldn’t be true. As often happens in such cases, they decided to quietly “close” the discovery, attributing the presence of gold and deuterium with tritium in the material to some unaccounted diffusion (without explaining the significant amounts of gold, measured in tens of grams). The excess neutrons and their leakage through the shielding were dismissed as defects in the setup, leading to the conclusion that another layer of protection was needed, and that was that. It was better to “close” the discovery than to face disgrace. Moreover, the funding for the research had been allocated for a completely different topic, and a very specific report was required, not incredible discoveries. No one published anything, and the discovered effect was forgotten for several years, until one day…
One of the participants in that work came across an article about the theoretical possibility of teleporting atoms of matter.
I want to say right away that all of this is, of course, fiction. Any coincidences with real studies or events are purely coincidental. Moreover, after reading the text to the end, you’ll understand that the topic is so deeply buried under fallen leaves and rags that even acknowledging the possibility of non-coincidence in the narrative will give reason to think that it might actually be true. As long as I stick to a vague style, I won’t get arrested or shot. The person from whom I learned all this has died, so I’m not creating any problems related to leaking anything. Besides, it seems there’s nothing to leak anyway. If I misrepresent the essence of physics in any way, I apologize. I wasn’t involved and made it all up.
So, having read and compared their experiences with theoretical findings, the guys decided to test a new hypothesis and simply replaced the target material. At the same time, to stay “in the loop,” they chose lithium as the target and went with a bare version. Lithium, it seems, is also capable of synthesis. They were already expecting to detect neutrons with a detector placed outside the chamber, so the material for the article was virtually ready. “We bombarded lithium, achieved nuclear synthesis, and as proof—look, neutrons!”
Neutrons were not found. However, gold was discovered, and as expected, it was all radioactive. Not a single stable isotope. On the other hand, a lot of stable lithium was found in a lead shell. They quietly replaced the target with molybdenum (conducting this as yet another bombardment of lithium, since the energy costs for pumping the lasers and paying the bills were still in effect), and ended up with molybdenum in a lead shell. Plus, the expected “debris” from the fragments.
They became quite bold here and, “in the name of research,” randomly changed the target material, using it, of course, as a shell for the thermonuclear core—to stay relevant in the research field. The effect was repeatable and predictable. The target material appeared in the lead. A little more of it showed up in the steel shell of the chamber when the targets were balls made of zirconium, copper, or zinc. This was explained by the presence of heavy molybdenum in the steel material, which could, according to theoretical calculations, also serve as “raw material” for cutting out the target core, provided it was lighter than molybdenum, of course.
The distribution of the target material over the lead was uniform. The target substance was present in the screen in amounts significantly greater than those contained in the target itself. It was suggested that the distribution of the target material on the screen depends on the direction of the laser pulse. It turned out to be true. When firing at the target with only one laser instead of all of them, the target substance was found only on one side of the screen, and the direction of its exit was random, appearing as a thin, diverging cone, resembling the trace of a dispersing laser beam.
It turned out that a laser of a certain energy and pulse duration somehow extracted “information” about the target’s nucleus and “transmitted” it, after “elastic scattering,” to all the nuclei in its path, from which material for the target could be “cut out.” Moreover, the process of transmission was chain-like, and the “cutting out” occurred not only in the target atoms but also in neighboring ones. Apparently, the already transformed nuclei became new “sources of information” and replicated themselves in the surrounding nuclei for as long as the pulse lasted. This explained the “divergence” of the track in the material. In theory, by increasing the pulse duration or the thickness of the screen, it would be possible to achieve a higher yield of the target isotope in the target material. They were able to do the second one faster, and they did. Yes, the “cone” diverged, and it turned out that it was not a cone, but rather a kind of tent. With a screen thickness of about a meter, it was already possible to observe a circle of target material outside the screen, about the size of a thumbnail. However, it was impossible to predict where such a “circle” would appear.
The experiments, under the guise of the main topic, could have continued further, but the consumption of lead was becoming astonishingly high and differed by two orders of magnitude from similar values in other comparable laboratories.
I haven’t written in a while because I was having a serious conversation. The following narrative will intentionally diverge from reality. The intrigue will remain, but direct hints at the methodology and theory will be distorted. However, once again, all of this is fiction. So, let’s continue.
The most interesting thing is that the disposal documents for lead with induced radioactivity did not match the incoming documents for the lead received by the laboratory.
At the recommendation of one of the well-wishers, as often happens in the scientific community, who worked in a neighboring lab and was competing with our lab’s head for some administrative position at the institute, the competent authorities took up the investigation. What the authorities uncovered during the initial interrogations immediately changed the fate of everyone who was even remotely involved in the matter. This included the fate of the well-wisher, who, if he knew anything at all, knew it by chance.
During the initial interrogations, scientists who were not criminals demonstrated that they had learned to synthesize gold, that they had discovered an effect they called informational teleportation, which was not anticipated and did not align with their research topics. They decided to purchase new lead for screens, replacing the outdated, noisy material at their own expense, and to finance these purchases by selling the gold they extracted from the discarded lead.
No one managed to sell a particularly large amount of gold. And since it also had a slight odor, it wasn’t difficult to withdraw those few kilograms from circulation within a week.
The country where these studies were conducted was large, not entirely capitalist, and the concept of “sharashka” still existed there. The entire laboratory was sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, but in reality, they were relocated to a closed city, where a separate institute was already established, inviting half of the colleagues from the previous institute on a voluntary basis, including the aforementioned well-wisher. The climate there was not very pleasant. In fact, it was extremely hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. The nearest cultural place was a day’s train ride away. On the bright side, the air was fresh.
They brought in a few more serious specialists in quantum physics to work at the research institute, and they started describing the mathematical framework of the phenomenon. Articles discussing the theoretical possibility of the phenomenon I mentioned earlier also proved to be useful.
And here, the mathematical framework indicated that it would be quite promising to explore teleportation using as a screen, yes, that very element, the barge loaded with ore that would set sail from the shores of Africa a few years later and head east.