This is a short story I wrote for a writing contest by Quantum Shorts, deadline 8 January 2024. As expected, the goal was to write a story about some aspect of quantum physics (max 1000 words), and it had to contain the phrase “nobody said this was going to be easy”.
As usual, I write these stories in a single evening and that’s that. I frequently participate in NL/EN contests just to keep myself active, keep putting my name out there, see where it leads. I think the idea behind this story is “too big” and needed a much longer story to actually be felt and be explored in interesting ways. Nevertheless, I’m quite proud of this one, as even those with no clue about quantum physics told me it was easy to understand and fun to read.
Thousands of years ago, the most important message ever was sent through the galaxy.
One by one, planets fell. The empire of Garnakan swept through solar systems, conquering all that lived, burning whatever resisted, seemingly without effort. They were the first to invent quantum weaponry and they would be the last, for a mere handful of solar systems were left outside of their control.
Most of those systems were on the other side of the galaxy. They didn’t have great defenses—they merely had the good fortune of being the furthest away from the enemy.
One of them, however, was nearby. A stone’s throw away from Garnakan’s home base, when you could travel at the speed of photons. What made them different? What allowed them to survive?
One message. Sent just before Garnakan made their discovery and started infecting the entire galaxy with their dark disease. Their madness for power.
Unfortunately, that message was encrypted.
“Choose now,” the commander yelled to his Solar Leader. “Weapons or Computer?”
The woman, dressed in a spotless white uniform, knew the choice was coming. Countless solar systems had to make it before. The cowards chose weapons and were destroyed all the same. The brave had lent all their computing power, all their resources, to breaking the encryption.
Thanks to them, they were close to achieving their goal. As with all strong encryption, there was a public key and a private key. The public key was well-known—burned into the brains of all living creatures—but the private key that created it was the issue.
It was like mixing multiple ingredients to get a single dish. Anybody could see the dish and identify it. But without knowing the exact amount of each ingredient that went into it, you couldn’t perfectly recreate it.
The only solution was brute force: try all options until you find the right one.
“Computer,” their leader solemnly stated.
A young girl pointed at her screen. Her trembling fingers betrayed that this was her first day on the job. “The others aren’t cooperating.”
The leader managed a warm smile. “We stay true, my dear Aluce.”
Several people cursed, destroyed their device and left the control room.
“You’re wasting your god damn time!” their second commander yelled. He called up his personal spaceship and ran away.
But he didn’t flee. He turned right, right again, and used his passkey to open the communications center. Just in time before they revoked his access.
“Execute Plan Imposter,” he shouted. Their beam was moved around until it pointed at the incoming Garnakan forces.
They sent the exact same message. What was inside? A threat? Blueprints for quantum weapons, proving they had them too? Whatever it was, it spooked Garnakan then, and he hoped it’d spook them now.
They held their breath. The message arrived quickly—received successfully.
The enemy weapons slowed down. Right? Or was it—
Their solar system was blown to pieces.
A short distance over, the same question was posed to the dictator of another solar system, but with a third option. “Weapons, Computer or Message?”
“Message.”
They scrambled to execute a different approach.
Using the public key, they could send their own encrypted message. After all, Garnakan held the private key to read it, but nobody else did.
Spare us. In exchange, we will obstruct the efforts of others to break your encryption.
They attached their own public key to their message, so Garnakan could reply in secret too.
The message arrived quickly. Their hearts stopped as the confirmation of delivery was delayed.
A reply came—unencrypted. A laughing emoticon.
Their solar system was blown to pieces.
Not too far away, the same question was posed to the solar council. They were in constant communications with all planets, especially the final one, confirming they’d almost exhausted all possible private keys.
“Idiots!” an old man cried out, face red. “If they’d dedicated their computing power, we could’ve won!”
“Please vote in silence,” a group of robots repeated.
They voted. A unanimous vote to instantly fire all weaponry they had. They had quantum sensors—able to detect the slightest change in some variable—and quantum spacecraft—able to teleport small distances. But they didn’t have quantum weapons.
Their solar system was blown to pieces.
At the final system, nobody had any clue what was going on. They hadn’t been in contact. They hadn’t wasted resources observing anything. They had poured everything, even their clothes, their babies, their health, into building quantum computers.
Regular computers had bits that were either 0 or 1. You could only do one calculation at a time, which was slow.
Their quantum computers had qubits that could be superimposed: multiple values between 0 and 1 at the same time. This meant they could do millions of calculations at the same time, as long as there was regularity to it.
The real problem was reading the result. For observing the output meant changing the output. They’d just receive one answer from one random calculation.
Fortunately, all the other galaxies had calculated all values that were not correct. This allowed them to manipulate the data such that all answers contained the results of multiple calculations. Reading a random one didn’t matter anymore. Until, with enough time and computers …
As they huddled in the cold, worn out and terrified, their non-human leader spoke their final brief speech. “Well, nobody said this was going to be easy. We knew that from the start. But I’m happy to report …”
All their faces lit up. Also because of an exploding star in the distance and lights from enemy spaceships.
“We did it.”
Their systems read the message out loud, all across their solar system.
Dear lover, what a great plan. Let them waste time trying to decrypt this. Let them miss the real danger as we conquer the galaxy together.
Their solar system might have been blown to pieces. We’ll never know—there was nobody left to observe it.