51. Failure Modes

Nigel had asked to go with him on a hike, which was a sure bet he wanted to talk about weird time travel stuff. For a guy who would work himself to death without really noticing he sure hated walking more than about twenty yards.

It was a really smart way to handle the security of it, though. Go out in the middle of a mowed or plowed field. Leave your phone — sorry, giant suitcase-sized two-way radio — at home. Check and make sure there weren’t any creeks or gullies or trees or whatever that you were missing. Talk. Shut up if anyone came within a hundred yards.

Nigel went one better — he’d actually suddenly change the subject if anyone even came in sight, like he was worried about lip-reading spies with telescopes. Mateo really hoped somebody would try it, just because he would pay good money to see Tineye’s reaction to somebody trying to explain that one.

“Flowers is going on about your suggestion.”

Nigel was hunched into his coat collar. A year ago he would have looked like a budget old movie spy to Mateo. Now he just looked cold. It turned out fields good for his little security hack also didn’t have windbreaks. There was actually a tiny little dusting of snow that morning on the grass and the wind still tasted like it.

Mateo stared at the distant row of trees and hedge bordering the dirt trail they’d walked up. “Yeah?”

“Yes, he is. He seems to be putting together plans based on it.”

“Great! He knows all about vacuum tubes, it sounds like. He already likes ‘em. Probably would have done it without me.”

“...what’s the design going to be?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“Is this some kind of agreement you made with Tineye?” He blew out a cloud of steam (and smoke, duh). “Why can’t you just tell us what’s going to happen, Mateo? Tell me, since it does have to be so secret you can’t tell us all! What’re we going to build? Does it work?”

“I mean I couldn’t tell you because I don’t know! All I know is that some guy, I guess Flowers or maybe Turing, builds a real computer and you call it Colossus! Don’t ask me the year because I don’t know!”

“...ah.” Nigel visibly took it down a notch. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” Mateo looked away. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know if the Colossus had — is going to have — vacuum tubes. I just got fed up with the paper tapes on the thing we were working on and opened my big mouth.”

“You didn’t?!” Nigel lit his third smoke in three minutes.

“I’m pretty sure, it’s the next step, and this Flowers guy is already really into vacuum tubes.”

“Ugh.” Nigel shuddered and took another drag.

“Those really aren’t good for you, you know.”

“That’s not the immediate threat to life and lung right now!” He sighed again, more smoke.

“I’m really sorry, man, but I think Flowers has the right idea. I want to back him up as much as I can.”

“But you don’t know.”

“I don’t know what happened in history from my point of view because I’m not a computing history freak, or I don’t know what’s going to happen if I push vacuum tubes because it might change everything? Or I don’t know if me pushing vacuum tubes is why my history happens? Because all three of those are true. I’m flying blind, man. Time travel back isn’t even supposed to be possible in theory. There’s not like, a course you can take.”

Nigel just smoked for a while. “So this may not work?”

“The vacuum tube thing? Yeah. I don’t know. It might, it might not.”

He made a noise to show he’d heard and smoked some more.

“What’s your goal?” he said finally. “I mean, what are you trying to do? Are trying to make the history you remember happen, or are you trying to ... improve things?”

“I guess ... I’m trying to improve things. I don’t know if that even makes sense, though. If something happened, does that mean I already made it happen? ...that’s a 2005 ‘already’, not a 1942 one.”

Nigel was quiet again for a while. “I suppose you have to assume for sake of argument that you can affect things.”

“Yeah. That was Tineye’s take on it.”

“Well, he’s not stupid. I suppose you could have ... already changed things, but that’s presumably because you already decided to do so.”

“I’m getting a headache, man. And is this ... now? It feels like now. It’s happening right now, I can see it happening. Maybe this wormhole rewound time, or maybe ... I don’t guess it makes sense to say any time I happen to be in is automatically now. I’m not God.”

“Granted. Maybe time is less like a line and more of a tangle.”

“Then what causes what?”

“Don’t ask me! If the universe has a code, it has more than twelve wheels to it. This doesn’t make any more sense to me than it does you.”

“Ok, ok, fine.”

“So you’re going to do your best to help?”

“Yeah. I don’t wanna shove things too hard and accidentally make it way worse or whatever, though.”

“But valves — vacuum tubes...”

“Yeah. I think they’re a safe bet, if anything is. They’re not a huge jump tech-wise and DANG, you guys need some faster computers in a big way. Something that doesn’t go clackclackclack. It’s up to the boffins or whatever, though. They’re Archimedes and I’m just the bathtub.”

***

It turned out vacuum tubes sucked too, and not just because they were vacuums, ha ha. Apparently everything sucked for fast computing until the computer chip showed up. He was sitting in a meeting — a weird informal mashup like everything else at Station X, and everybody was listening to Flowers. They didn’t look ready to throw roses or money or anything at him, though.

Mateo was focusing on expressions more than specs. Brits wore their faces a little differently than Americans, at least back now, but people were people everywhere. They didn’t look hostile or like they wanted him to fail, but they did look really skeptical. He couldn’t read Nigel at all, except that he looked as stressed out as one of those paper tapes. He hadn’t tried to catch Mateo’s eye, which was fine with him. Goodness knew what his expression would do.

“I’m not sure that this is the time to be sacrificing known reliability for theoretical speed,” somebody was saying carefully. Mateo couldn’t remember his name, but he’d been around a lot. Another pale tweedy guy, but that didn’t narrow it down too much. Heck, he was getting to be pretty pale himself these days but he drew the line at freaking tweed.

“I wouldn’t call it reliable,” one of Mateo’s newer co-workers said. Edith, right? She was another one in the Navy, about five foot nothing, ninety pounds soaking wet, and really timid and soft-spoken like she was afraid she was accidentally going to kick your butt up between your ears if she let go for even a second. “We spend more time managing the tapes and making replacements than anything else. Even after the redesigns.”

Nobody said anything for a minute. It was pretty hard to argue with.

“We’d be replacing one problem with another,” somebody else chimed in. “I’ll grant that the paper tapes fail, but valves do as well. And in the quantities you want they’ll melt solder. They may be faster than relays, but...” She trailed off while people nodded.

“It’s been in use in the Post Office,” Flowers said. “In American universities too, I believe.” He glanced at Mateo.

Mateo went into the conversation like the time he’d gone into a creek-fed pool in early April that one time.

“Yes, sir, it definitely has.” Please let this be the right call and not how I screw everybody up... “A guy named Atanasoff has been running one since 1939.” That had been a pain to look up.

“How did he get around the valves failing all the time?” somebody else put in. It was a fair question. “If it comes to that, how does the post office phone exchange?”

Mateo started to say something, just to keep things going, but Flowers, God bless him, was faster.

“We’ve had good luck at the post office,” Flowers said, humbly. Not sucking up, just easygoing. “The trick is not moving or handling them, and leaving them turned on.”

A few people glanced at Mateo. He tried to look cool and on top of things. It felt more like the time a whitewater raft had flipped over on a crazy stretch of river and pinned him under it.

“Absolutely. Like how lightbulbs last longer if you’re not constantly flipping them on and off. Or moving them around.” Like Christmas lights stuffed in a bag and thrown into the attic. The line between a vacuum tube and a light bulb was a fine one, anyway, right? Please, Flowers, be good enough that I should be sort-of lying to push this. Don’t let me mess this up in either direction.

“How many valves does the Post Office machine have?” Edith asked. She seemed willing to hear him out.

“A few thousand,” Flowers said, almost apologetically.

That got some reactions. People looked interested and started chatting with each other. Mateo tried to look cool, like thousands of tubes were no big deal, but he realized when he started seeing spots that maybe breathing was a good idea too.

“How long would this take to build?” someone asked decisively.

“The Post Office Engineers think about a year.”

“We don’t have a year,” one of the big bosses said. “We can’t neglect codes for a year to build that machine. The war might be over in a year if we do, and not in a good way.”

Mateo winced.

“But,” the bigshot went on, “we can continue with the Heath Robinson while you build this experimental device. I’m afraid the amount of support we can give you will be quite limited, though.”

“That’s all right,” said Flowers.