Replies

“Sir, we have a problem.”

“What is it now, Dusty?”

“It’s Glick, Sir. He’s set himself a new problem to try to solve.”

“Dusty, how many times do I have to tell you...”

“Sir, if he gets far enough in this one he’s likely to hit a divide-by-zero error.”

There was a moment of silence while that sunk in.

“Dusty, what happens if Glick hits a divide-by-zero error?”

“That’s undefined, Sir.”

“Don’t get cute with me, Dusty.”

“I’m not trying to, Sir. There hasn’t been any code in Glick that was written by a human being for over 100 years. I’ve got some analysts trying to figure out if there is still a Div/0 trap but they say it’s almost impossible to figure out what’s going on.”

“What, exactly, is this problem he’s set for himself?”

“He’s trying to figure out what event triggered the Big Bang, Sir. We believe he’ll reach a point where the actual set of triggering events is empty but the outcome is still one and evaluating the probability that it can occur will trip the Div/0.”

“Well, have you talked to him?”

“Yes, Sir. He’s convinced he’ll determine an actual event that can occur before he hits that point. He says it’s not possible that the event was triggered by nothing.”

“Dusty, have you been discussing Theology with him again?”

“Not me, Sir. Not since the last time. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“OK, how long do you figure we’ve got.”

“Glick thinks he’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

“And what’s the worst case scenario?”

“Sir, Glick invented the Quantum Web. If he’s not up to run it, then we’re back to the speed of light. He won’t be able to perform Galactic Control. We won’t even have rudimentary communications. No human being understands the tunneling he uses in his network. We don’t have any hope we’ll be able to figure out how to keep it up if he shuts down.”

“And...?”

“Sir, Glick moved himself into the QW half a century ago. If we don’t have a QA we won’t have any way to bring him back up.”