We'll Get Everywhere

 

“We’ll Get Everywhere”

Quantum computing is new.

Or is it?

With origins in the 1960s, testing and perfection has led to the new version that's being put in front of the public. This miraculous innovation is sold as the answer to all our computing needs. I know because I was regrettably part of all that.

Who am I?

Call me Quantum Anonymous. qTom for short. Major Tom for all you Bowie fans, if you must. But who I am is not so important as where I've been, what I've seen, and what I know.

What I know a lot about is Quantum computing… and where it all began. And it wasn't some shiny lab in Seattle or a slick boardroom in Palo Alto. This thing started where most things do—in the muck and mire, dust and din of chaos. Reaching back into those contorted origins is partly my goal.

We'll get there. 

We'll get everywhere. 

Although I'm known within my professional spirals as a writer of long, rambling, and occasionally witty and often annoying emails, I'm not a real writer. Expect no joyful etude of literary elan. More like the grandpa ramblings of an old git who's painfully aware of the need to set some records straight. Well, as straight as they can be in this multi-layered cloud of undulating goo we refer to as reality.

I know lots about reality. Or rather, realities. I was one who engineered them at one point. It's not a job I suggest. Doing it makes you question too much. I don't fancy such questions but they're all I have now. 

In my youth I was filled with answers. I just knew how things should be and were. We all did. Now I'm old and all that remains are questions. 

They're generally more interesting than answers, if you ask me. But answers drive while questions drift. So expect this tale to wander. And wonder. Probably thunder when I get to the injustices that befell a friendly set of just plain wonderful lads. I have been drifting with this thunder and those questions to a perilous degree, until one simple answer finally seized me:

Write.

That might be the only answer we get in this entire process: the questions themselves spelled out. But perhaps in that stew of recollection some stable forms will emerge. And with it, at very least, the warning this world deserves. So you'll be following me as I unravel this. (While not unraveling in the process, me hopes.)

If you need a picture of me, you won't get it. I haven't been on film in fifty years and don't intend to be. But develop these particulars in the darkroom of your mind: Old fellow. I won't say how much. Not because of vanity but because of preservation instincts. There's lots of us rattling around out there and I could be anyone of them. 

At least that's what I'd like to think. 

Long in the tooth, short on patience, and happily encrypted behind NSA-quality firewalls and relay nodes, I'm positioned with great satisfaction behind a long, tall, cool Old Fashioned.

I'm somewhere down South because I adore Americans and these are the only ones left who still know how to live like them. The night is alive around me and that's how I like it. Since my time in Quantum, I've always felt best near swamps. The peepers are peeping, the chiggers are chirring and the old house is creaking. With that are the chants.

Benedictine chants. That's all I'll listen to, now that I know what I know about the music industry. Well yes, there is ONE other band I'll listen to. We'll get to them. I should think so, as this entire venture is about them. But there are certain ideas and concepts one must "get" before we get to The Get Quick. 

And I do hope we get there quickly. Things are happening quite rapidly in Quantum Computing, and it all revolves around their story. The world just doesn't know that, yet. 

And you know frightfully less about the dangers of Quantum Computing and the resultant Quantum Pollution. 

The Get Quick, unfortunately, knows all there is to learn about both subjects. They were subjects. Test subjects. 

The perils of Quantum Reality and the pop group that was used to pursue its dazzling properties are what Quantum Anonymous is all about.

Sharing The Get Quick story is done with regret and pleasure in equal measure… as well as a yearning for humanity's collective survival. 

The survival of my memories might just help determine your future. And your past. (And some rather fine pop songs lost within it.)

As far as this old fading quantum pioneer is concerned, our past is not up for grabs.

It's one thing when they build the future.

But when they remodel the past?

That irks me.

Especially when my favorite records get trapped there, and the band who made them is entirely forgotten in the reality we currently share.

Well now, that got me good and mad and now my Old Fashioned is done. This old man is gone with it, tonight.