The Anabases

For theory’s sake, suppose that a hard-to-trace group of free-state electrons (that is, valence electrons not in a bound state in an atom) have been posited to lurk about a given sample of a semiconductor crystal. You, as the experimenter, want to find out the general location of this elusive group of electrons, but have difficulty doing so. This last part is no coincidence, and owes its occurrence to a redoubtable theory called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In order to “see” an object as tiny as an electron, we have to shoot a photon at it; however, the photon’s kinetic energy, upon striking the electron, could disrupt either its position or momentum (in so few words – I won’t get into the details here). As a consequence, the information about the electron will never be complete.

Suppose, now, that the only way to lure out these shy creatures is with a bait of some sort. We knowing that electrons are negatively charged, and respond to one of two things: repulsion from other electrons, or attraction to a positively-charged particle, either a proton or a positron. A proton is ridiculously massive next to an electron, but a well-placed sample of positrons would cause enough of a stir. The electrons can be spotted as they leave their trail, approaching their antiparticle brethren. So, success! You’ve accounted for your missing electrons.

Why it's tough for Quantum Mechanics to find love.

There is, however, a downside: In your haste to find your free electrons, you seemed to have overlooked a possible electron-positron collision that could result in an ugly explosion. The low-end energy is about 511 keV, enough to get you shocked by a Taser, according to my flimsy research. Oops. There go the positrons. But, hey! You’ve found your electrons, nonetheless. Was it worth the cost of losing the positrons?

To most of us in the larger world, this overly-simplistic experiment has little relevance. But let’s put this in metaphor in perspective: Suppose now, instead of an experimentalist in Caltech or Stanford, you are a cryptanalyst in Bletchley Park at the height of World War II, working feverishly to crack the enemy’s encrypting code or “crib.” There is a flotilla of Allied merchant ships steaming through the Atlantic, and on its way to provide badly-needed resources to the British Isles. Sketchy intelligence have reported that a pack of hostile German U-Boats cruise the waters, with the sole intent of destroying these supply ships. They are a wily, disciplined bunch, never breaking radio silence except when reporting weather, or at the onset of an attack. The Allied convoy is spread out at sea, with no air support, and little communication; the naval liaison officer on your team knows that they’ll be ripe for the picking, sitting ducks for the wolf packs. However, in order to know where they are exactly, you’ll need to find out where either party is, when they start transmitting. Unsecured transmissions can be traced via Directional Finding (DF) techniques. If you get enough radio transmissions, then a squadron of fighter planes could be rushed in to the location to fend off the enemy and save whatever is left of the convoy.

"Did we hit a positron... or a proton?"

There’s a bigger dilemma, and one on which the general outcome of the war effort depends. Knowing that the enemy uses an encryption device and methods to secure its transmissions, you realize that this may be a one-in-a-million opportunity to crack the enemy’s “crib” and enable you to to listen in on his plans, well in advance. Doing so would allow your troops and allies to eavesdrop on him, in future naval campaigns — nay, any given battle or theatre of operation — and give enough time to plan.  As a codebreaker, such things as the “greater good” and lives saved or lost are abstractions that you do not have the luxury of pondering. You have to ignore the death toll and remain focused on the mission at hand: Obtain enough data to glean a common pattern in the code, that would reveal itself over time. But to do so, a ship or an entire convoy, would have to be sacrificed in the process.

This is the dilemma presented  in the spy thriller Enigma. Upon learning about the presence of a hostile force of German U-Boats, ace cryptoanalyst Tom Jericho deduces that adequate data about their code won’t be possible, until a U-Boat breaks radio silence, upon sighting the convoy. At that point, the wolf pack would be busy in radio chatter, passing on short-line transmissions about weather, sea conditions, armaments, battle formation and the like. By Tom Jericho’s estimate, it would take 25 transmissions within a space of day, before his team can piece together an operational code mimicking that of the enemy’s. However in gathering enough data to break the code, they would have to risk sacrificing the convoy.

 

--------"Are you sure you've lost your electrons?" ------"I'm positive!"

The movie further explores the concept of “the greater good,” when it delves into the infamous Katyn Forest Massacre, and the efforts of the British secret service to cover up the potentially-explosive deal-breaker from their American allies. As agent Wigram muses, “It’s what Hitler would give his last ball for!” Ultimately, we know that even American leaders looked the other way as their Russian allies committed unspeakable atrocities. All for the cause of “The Greater Good.” It could be said that many a conflict has been defined, not so much as what was at stake, but at the price of obtaining that prize. People often think of World War II as “The Good War,” when the Evil Axis Powers were soundly defeated by the Allied Forces of Good. I sometimes think of it as a conflict when innovative, often terrible and brutal methods of warfare were developed, all at the cost of untold millions in human life. There is no better example than the inception of the first wartime atomic bomb.

Much is said about Equivalent Exchange in the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist. This Principle dictates that one might obtain something in exchange for something offered, which is of equivalent or greater value. While the series mostly focuses on the human element of reciprocity, it also shows the darker side of Equivalent Exchange, in the form of human transmutation and the Philosopher’s Stone. Unfortunately, we have gone well beyond the benign, quid-pro-quo society that has shaped our early civilization.  Why trade hard work and sacrifice, when you can leverage the odds and play the numbers to your favor? It’s essentially how modern success has been shaped. Purveyors of consumerism would have you believe that such success can be dumbed-down and duplicated, with minimal effort. Of course, many who have been burned by the Financial Crisis of 2008 now know better. Perhaps we ultimately did see Equivalent Exchange at work, albeit in a subtle form. In our mad rush to achieve prosperity, we managed to lose our heads and sell our souls. Hopefully, it’s not permanent. But a little humble pie is in order. After all, as the man said, “When one with experience meets one with money, the one with experience gets the money — and the one with the money gets the experience.”

So how’s that for Equivalent Exchange?

Copyright Anabasius 2012

It’s been nearly a year since my last post. Happily, I’ve been using that time wisely, in an effort to complete a last, definitive draft of my novel. And hopefully, finally, publish before year’s end. It’s been a bit of a rough journey, but I see signs of life, that the end, even if it isn’t close yet, is definitely there, and reasonably within reach. Remembering that old adage about paying the price for success, I discovered how I’d have to do it: In units of Time. To that effect, I quit and all activities that had adverse physical or mental benefits to me, or were of no use whatsoever, in terms of social value. Of course, I couldn’t turn down all invitations; one has to give a little to get a lot.

And of course, I still devote time to my loved ones, and they have given me moral support, especially during those dark times. I am extremely grateful for that.

On the other side of that success equation, I’ve been working hard to please my Muse. This year, I made the decision to hunker down and devote every free minute that I could scrape, to working on the novel, be it actual writing or research. I’ve also done, and have been doing, a lot of reading and learning on the fly. I have become quite a voracious reader and devourer of ideas, however big or small. I’ve learned a lot of things, from the ritual element of capoeira, to the otherworldly interactions of floor brokers in a commodities pit. Heck, I found the last two so interesting, I devoted entire chapters to them.

Reading has become a pleasure these days, especially after a prodigious bout of writing (admittedly few and far between). In my quest for good sci-fi fiction — or just good fiction, in general — I discovered William Gibson and Suzanne Collins. After a slow start, Stieg Larsen is now one my picks as well. So far this year, I’ve finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Hunger Games. I have the trilogies for both books — but other works need to be read, too. Other than all of the above, I have been tackling a heavyweight, Anthony Burgess’ The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy. Also on my reading list: Tesseract by Alex Garland, and a cyberpunk novel by French author Maurice Dantec, Cosmos, Incorporated.

I’m still a little petrified. This is my first novel, and while I’ve gotten some positive feedback from the few who have read some of it, I have yet to pass that acid test of general readership. After some hemming and hawing on the kind of approach I want — Avant-garde artiste? Or commercial author sellout? — I decided to settle somewhere in between. After finishing William Gibson’s  Neuromancer, and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, I realized that I wanted to write good, respectable prose, or one that had strong, elegant symbolism; but I didn’t want my readers to be lost in the haze, the way some cyberpunks may leave the uninitiated. And of course, I wanted to have action in it. Not necessarily because of the inherent commercial value in it, but  because I always love action in fiction. No, really.

So speaking of which, it’s time to go back to the novel. Or the reading. Whatever it is, it’s The Shit for me right now. This Sunday, the 27th L.A. Marathon gets into gear. I ran in the ’98 Marathon, my first and only one. Back then, as in now, I trained hard for it, feeling dread and excitement at the same time. But crossing the finish line in the top third percentile of the racers made all that preparation and agony well worth it, several times over. This time around, I’m doing a marathon of a different sort. Wish us all luck — Bona Fortuna.

———- I just renewed my domain and server use with Go Daddy; I sometimes question the wisdom of shelling out $60 each year. I could be continuing my blog with any one of those free sites, WordPress.com being among them. The main reason I went through all that trouble was so that I could try to make a living off the ads, what few clicks I could get.

Two years and a measly $35 and change in revenue later, earning a living via blogging has turned out to be pretty much a lie and, well, obsolete. The past two years, I was lucky enough to find some kind of filler work to get by, so I never really got a chance to work on the blogging thing. Besides, I was making more than minimum wage, and definitely more than what I make blogging. The economics didn’t make sense, if one thought full-time blogging would pay for one’s bills. I’d have to rack my brains constantly to come up with stuff, and perhaps dumb down my content enough, to attract tons of readers. That is something I am not going to stoop down to.

Speaking of work, I finally became permanent, after temping on this job for nearly eight months. I have to say that, compared to the rest of what I’ve had to endure previous to this… it’s okay. I’m now at a company that does pension planning for people in the movie and TV industry, mostly the technical crew. It’s a short, 15-minute drive from home. I work as a processor, analyzing money and hours coming in, making sure there are no contractual or eligibility issues, and what not. It’s quiet, for the most part. Except for when the two or three individuals in my own department start bitching about how bossy the supervisor is, and how it’s a waste of time doing some stupid little task is; the same people have, apparently, enough time to waste by keeping their yappers open all day long.

I sometimes want to go to their work zones and shake the fuck out of them; I’m not the only one, either. Or, better yet, kick them out in the street, where they can figure out just how lucky they are to even have a fucking job. Here I am, feeling grateful for this opportunity to save and do good, working hard to create a good impression and just do a good job. Then my zen gets disrupted by some bad vibes from these idiots.

The sad part is, they’re not the only ones in the company — or any company, for that matter — who bitch and complain. Quite a few, especially if they’ve been on the job for a long time, seem to focus on the negative. It must be a tendency, human nature, for one to forget what blessings there are, however few or great, and to keep score of each indignity at work.

But, as my brother always reminds me, “It’s still only work.”

Having had to eat a lot of dirt before getting to this point, I am still feeling unbelievably lucky. I intend to stay that way. I feel like I have all that I need right now, to get me on that path, to reach my goals. I’m earning my daily bread, and finally being productive. If some sorry-ass whiners that are fairly harmless (and I’m keeping it that way) are all I have to worry about, then I should feel so lucky. Compared to my previous life (which I’ve long since buried, albeit temporarily), which was full of long working hours, grueling loads of paperwork, lesson plan after lesson plan, problem students, and equally problematic parents and administrators, uncertainty in the summers — this is heaven. I don’t have to take work home, I can enjoy myself, or spend quality time with my loved ones, and then some.

Most important of all, I have enough time to write and reflect. I have a cushion that pays the bills, while I toil on my novel. My million-dollar-or-more insurance policy, lottery ticket-winner, retirement fund, all rolled into one. Ah, yes… I can still dream, while I work on my project; days, I go to day job; then it’s back to the novel, or some other project, and the cycle repeats itself. Then maybe this whole blogging thing might make sense for what it’s best for, namely exposure, publicity. Above all else, an outlet for creativity, for writing, rants, and various other matters of the left and the right hemispheres of the brain.

My target deadline for finishing the Second Draft: June 30, 2011.

Copyright Anabasius 2011

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