Solution Geneva part 7

"_Madame_," said Mathiason nodding at Samantha. He extended his hand to shake hers. He saw Jolie and said, "_Mademoiselle, très jolie. Enchantee_."

Sam introduced Jolie. "Monsieur Mathiason, this is Jolie Luc-Paul. Jolie, this is Monsieur Mathiason."

Mathiason kissed Jolie on both cheeks in the European style. "_Très, très Jolie, d'accord. Vos mésanges sont ravissantes. J'aimerais enculer jusqu'à ce que vous criez pour la Saint-Christophe pour vous sauver de la vingtième orgasme_," he said.

Sam screwed up her face in disgust. Jolie smiled and said, "_Je suis sûr que votre bite est petite et je ne me sentirais pas tout_."

Mathiason switched to English for Samantha's benefit. "Ah, she is feisty, _non_. I like it. Please, sit down with me and we will have some dinner." Mathiason stood behind a chair and pulled it out for Jolie to sit down. Samantha pulled her own chair out and sat down.

"That's disgusting," Sam said to Mathiason as he sat.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you're French," she said.

"But I can look at a beautiful bosom such as the one in front of me and I must speak about how wonderful it is." He nodded and stared at Jolie.

"Boobs are food," Sam said.

"Boobs are sexual, as well," said Mathiason and smiled at Jolie. Jolie looked perplexed. "Just as the asshole is the asshole. But it can also be sexualised."

Sam harrumphed and looked at her menu.

"_Ça ne vous dérange si nous parlons anglais_?" asked Mathiason

"_Non, je peux suivre_," answered Jolie.

Samantha looked for the most expensive item on the menu. "What's the tip on 180 francs?" she asked. "I'm not good at math," she explained.

Mathiason nearly spit out the water he was sipping and Jolie covered her mouth.

Sam looked at both of them and turned her attention to the menu. "Normally I would pay for my own dinner." she announced finally. "But I will get reimbursed anyway. So the gesture would be largely symbolic. Therefore I will allow you to pay for the meal."

"You are astute and logical as ever," he said. "Garçon," he called.

The waiter came over and leaned close to Mathiason. They whispered back and forth for a while as the waiter took notes and nodded. The waiter gathered their menus and then bowed and left.

"You ordered for us?" Samantha asked.

"_Mais bien sur_," said Mathiason, stroking his lapels as if cleaning them. Mathiason began to speak in French with Jolie who answered politely and smiled and nodded.

Samantha sat fuming and tried to come up with witty retorts in French. She couldn't bring herself to stoop to his level and gave up.

The waiter brought a bottle of wine and performed the elabourate ritual of opening the bottle, pouring a sample and waiting for Monsieur's approval. Mathiason performed the elabourate ritual of pretending to examine every aspect of the glass and wine sample until he nodded, grudgingly, his assent.

"L'eau seulement, s'il vous plaît," Sam said when the waiter held the bottle toward her glass. "Merci," she said.

Jolie nodded when the wine was offered and thoughtfully lifted the glass, inspected it, sniffed, swirled, and then drank. She smiled. Mathiason nodded and smiled at her.

Sam waited as long as she could while Mathiason flirted with Jolie. Finally she said, "Mr. Mathiason, I don't like small talk. Please tell me what you wanted to discuss."

"Ah yes," he said and turned to look at her. "You are a brilliant physicist and lab engineer." He added an emphasised, "Obviously," which he shouldn't have added and emphasised if it really was that obvious. "But you are not politically savvy and you have no understanding of business objectives. That is why you are not an executive, and never will be."

"I'm not an executive because I'm a woman and I am not incompetent enough to be qualified for the job."

"Oh, I'm sure you could be trained to become incompetent enough," said Mathiason.

"It helps that I'm short, fat, ugly, and stupid," said Sam.

"You aren't _that_ stupid," said Mathiason. "But enough about that. The problems with the solid state circuits are actually well known. We've been adjusting the calibrations on the substrates that most of our materials use for a few years. We have offset so much error that our calibrations exceed the precision of our tolerances."

"You have a quality control issue," Sam said.

"You would think. But our best and brightest, no offense, haven't found any problems. Your work in the lab has shown that the equipment needs to be calibrated. But then it keeps getting calibrated and calibrated until there aren't any more knobs to turn and we're maxed out."

"The speed of light can't increase," she said.

"Usually a theoretical physicist is not so certain of something," he said.

"It's the one thing that seems to genuinely be fixed in this universe. Everything else derives from it. The speed of light hasn't changed from the beginning of the universe."

Four waiters arrived and performed an elabourate ritual delivering a large platter of escargot.

Mathiason stuffed the collar of his shirt with his napkin and began to dig into the snails. He said between mouthfuls, "Ah, but let's say that we could have come up with an experiment. I don't know, let's say some version of Young's experiment that we could use to see diffraction pattern at the same time that we could measure the gate through which each particle travelled."

"Impossible," Sam said. She took several snails and began to eat them.

"Not impossible," said Mathiason. "What if we could capture the data about the 'which way' information and store it for later retrieval. In the mean time, we could use a slight viewing delay to see the diffraction pattern after it was already formed?"

"What kind of viewing delay?" asked Sam.

"Suppose we sent the pattern off a far distance to be viewed? Say, from a sattelite?"

"And then you would propose to look at the 'which way' data at the same time that another observer would record the information about the diffraction pattern?" asked Samantha.

"I think you have figured it out," said Mathiason. He dipped a slender snail meat chunk into the butter dish and ate it. He smiled and nodded at Jolie as she ate several snails.

"The delay would be small, even to a satellite. But you'd need something that could record the data and process it. I'm not sure which satellite would be able to do that. Probably a geosynchronous mapsat or. . ." Sam trailed off.

"The NSA has been deeply interested in spying visually on people since they have been caught stealing electronic data," said Mathiason in a strange non-sequitor. "There are a lot of imaging satellites flying around up there but none of them have an aperature of two metres and a focal length of, oh, say, 60 metres."

"Hubble?" asked Sam.

"Your step-father worked on the project, yes?" Mathiason asked.

"What?" Sam asked but it came out in two syllables.

"No matter. I was not in charge of the optics division at the time. Julian left his son in charge and you know what happened to the mirror for the Hubble. Your step-father, meanwhile, was in the astrophysics lab testing the quality of the mirrors. In fact, he oversaw the quality process, _non_? Ach, what an embarassment for your step-father."

"My father," she emphasised, "always claimed he was setup." Sam said. "His team noted there was spherical aberation but NASA and Mr. Thorne ignored his objections."

"Griffens are always the victim," Mathiason said. Four waiters arrived and performed an elabourate ritual of uncovering the entree courses beneath huge silver domes and presenting the platters. They were each served in perfect timing and the waiters bowed as they left.

"I'm not a Griffen," Sam said evenly.

"No," agreed Mathiason. He held his fork and knife in the continental style and chewed his food slowly. "You are not actually as smart as your step-father. Or your step-mother, for that matter. But no matter. This is not the time to argue and hurl insults. You are a good employee and that is all that matters. You defended us and our products, and we will reward you like we rewarded your step-father."

"My father," she corrected again, "was rewarded with being marginalised and being the laughing stock of the academic world. What happened with the experiments?" she asked.

"The data that the Hubble collected were very surprising. I am not actually at liberty to discuss it. But these anomalies that we keep seeing have related to some sort of interference or problems with all of the products in our solid state and nano-technology line."

"Only yours?" Samantha asked. "What about other production facilities?"

"They have noticed problems too," Mathiason said. "But not until we mentioned them. It is as if the observational wavefront keeps expanding and spreading out."

"That doesn't seem possible. This is not a movie or a play. This is the real world. The laws of physcis don't just magically change."

"The whole world is farce and satire," said Mathiason. "When Einstein derived the laws of relativity, wouldn't that have seemed like magic at the time?"

"And then quantum physics turned relativity on its head. But the universe didn't change to meet our observation. It only allowed us to see behind one more curtain. The effects were always there, but we did not realise them. We did not create the effects by seeing them."

"What's the difference?" asked Mathiason. He shrugged and smiled at Jolie. She eyed him coyly while she chewed her food.

"The difference is that we can slowly see more of the patterns as they are revealed in the fog of discovery. By groping along the edge of one branch we can find a trunk and more branches, and so on."

"A fine metaphor," said Mathiason. "But I grow weary of this technical talk. I am more inclined to the discovery of the hidden secrets hidden by lace and cotton. I love that asshole near vagina pungency in a woman's underwear," he said. At this Jolie smiled and giggled, hiding behind her wine glass.

"Ugh," said Sam. "Asshole near vagina is the story of my life."

"Ha," said Mathiason.

"I'm leaving," Sam said abruptly. "I'll walk back. It isn't far."

Mathiason waved without looking at Sam. Jolie waved goodbye and stood to offer her cheek.

"_Bonsoir_," Sam said, and walked off. She looked over her shoulder after she heard a woman's gleeful shriek. Jolie was sitting on Mathiason's lap as he held a cherry over her lips.