Credit: Emrah Elmasli

2033 AD / -1 QE
LENIN COSMODROME, LUNA

"Hello?" And instantly, that damnable echo from nowhere: "Hello?"

"Dobroye utro, Sergei. You are to return to the Stalin Dome. There is no time to explain."

That news was as ugly as the burst of squealing echoes through the experimental relay. Wincing, I ripped the quantum headset away, hearing tinny words amid the interference:

"... tangled... random decoherence ... cease widescale testing ... "

I fumbled the earbud into place, fingers numb with cold. Xenon arc lights sprayed out across lunar rock from our two-person Mobile Isotropic Rambler Orb. Fine work required the removal of our skin suits, but the MIRrOr's shared environment provided no warmth beyond the bare minimum excreted by its engines and lamps. Interruptions were not acceptable in this environment. Mistakes were not acceptable.

"You are not coming through clearly on this test relay, Gospodin Dov Davidovich." The breath of my words hung in the air. "But I have not yet impressed the last suite of q-dots. Proof of maximum —"

"Return now, Doctor. The lab has shifted payload. You will be on the transport that leaves in six earth-hours."

If the fat, second-rate scientist turned political apparatchik bothered to bid me dasvidanya, another burst of static ate his words.

Left holding the headset, I glared at it for its dead link.

"Doctor?" my Alliance technician asked. Beyond him, the spray of light against the dome, and beyond that, the grey surface of the moon.

I nodded and he keyed the orb's power conservation routine. The sudden cessation of crackling left the atmosphere hushed. Consoles darkened.

Xenon lights winked out. A raised hand stopped the technician from flicking on the outside array lights. Blackness settled around us.

A connection telltale on the headset glinted, the only light. So small, it swelled amid the blackness to an island of light, a spark in a bubble, a tiny star on the surface of the Moon. I raised my eyes to heaven, black, with its spill of a million stars. Nowhere on Earth did the stars drill down with such fixed clarity. My eyes followed the trajectories of a million beams that could have linked us, dot to dots, spark to sparks. Actual pain gripped my heart.

"The bastards are shutting us down. But I still have four hours before we must start back to Lenin," I said. "Power up the array."

86TH YEAR OF THE MAHATMA RAJ / 0 QE
KOLKATA, TECHNOPALITY OF THE INDUS

"You can't shut me down!" The twisted echo came back in my own voice, taunting: "You can shut me down."

Stung, I resisted an urge towards escalating defiance. My fingers tightened, combing a beard more salt now than pepper. I had been a young man once, full of passionate potential, an engineer and scientist, before reality and red ink set in.

The holo of Daud hesitated, jowls quivering with something unsaid.

"A refreshingly realistic response, Sahib Sergei."

At the sarcasm, I slammed a hand onto the toggle, an ungentle 'off' for a delicate piece of experimental quantum equipment. The projection went flat, then showed a holosaver of a spinning mandala. I shouted my fury toward Bengalûru, through eight virtual buddhas and an uneaten plate of lunch: "Son of a pig!"

One year since my recall from the Maharaja's lunar pleasure dome. One year of the mahatmas neither protecting nor acknowledging the work of their pet Muscovite refugee. Instead, one year of suspended funding from the communications behemoth that owned my life. A full month since the United Nordic Nobel Academy and the Delhi Committee again passed over one Sergei Morozov, refusing to acknowledge anyon advancements in the field of quantum telecloning.

"Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Madame Chairman ... you honour not just the man but the future of man ... "

I'd written the acceptance speech half a dozen times.

"Any quantum particle may exist in all states of spin, superposed ... Only when it decoheres through outside stimulus, such as measurement, is one state manifested, one answer 'chosen' ... "

Half a dozen times the profundity of my accomplishment would have eluded the empty crowned heads of the illustrious attendees nodding off in their chairs.

"An anyon is a specific type of quantum particle unique in its ability to be anything — fermion, boson or any state in between, matter or energy ... anything."

Of course that wasn't quite it, but the harping on anything might have made a dent in ignorance.

"Anyon particles exist in a two-dimensional physical space but also possess the dimension of time... The space-time representation of an anyon's location is known as its world line."

Inbred cretins comprehending not a word, and me the fool playing for their pleasure.

"Anyon world lines may cross, or braid, multiple times, with such braiding giving direction, form and stability against interference to the anyon that far surpasses the stability of an individual quantum particle. In this ability to hold the superposed quantum state, rather than to be 'knocked out' by perturbation, is found the anyon's perfection as a data processor ... "