© 2023 Richard Taylor
"I am very sorry Miss Carson, but I cannot tell you why it has to remain a secret. You must accept it as a fact. The reason behind that fact is above your pay grade."
There were several things in that statement that made me angry. But I started with the most banal:
"It's Doctor Carson, for the record."
"Yes, Doctor Carson, I am sorry, but..."
"And" I interrupted "Don't you think above your pay grade is just about the dumbest phrase invented in the twentieth century? I mean, how much does the President of the United States get paid?"
"I cannot say I know that fact Doctor Carson." replied the man, edging slightly toward being rattled.
"No need to worry, Mister Roberts, it's not a secret. According to the public record it's about four hundred thousand dollars a year. And you probably do know, if you did your homework that I was paid approximately two million dollars last year. By my company."
Roberts did not respond. So I rammed the point home:
"So unless you are telling me that the reason you want to lock away my greatest achievement, by labelling it a national security issue, is also above the President's pay grade, then you are bullshitting me."
There was a silence, which I left to linger.
"Please accept my apology for using a colloquial phrase, Doctor Carson." said Roberts, doing well not to sigh "The classification of your patent has been made following the appropriate process and reviewed at the highest level."
More silence.
"I do not know the details. I am just the messenger." he offered, finally.
"And there's no right of appeal?" I asked, knowing the answer.
"No." he said wearily, shaking his head.
He seemed genuinely sad. There was nothing to be gained by shooting the messenger, but I wasn't inclined to tip him either. I offered a moderately withering stare, smiled insincerely and left.
I first read about REDACTED in the context of code breaking. So I guess it should never have been a surprise that the government might have a keen interest in it's status. And it wasn't a surprise, really. I knew all along but chose to dream.
Because there was something in that article that intrigued me. It said something like "Solving the REDACTED problem is very hard indeed and there is currently no published method of doing this using classical technology". Emphasis mine, as they say.
No published method. That suggested there were unpublished methods, right? There were known solutions to the very hard problem. But they were secrets.
This was like a red flag to a bull. I loved puzzles. This was a challenge that I couldn't let go of... although, looking back now, often I wished I had just let it go. So many hours. So many dead ends.
The pattern went something like this: I would have an idea and work on it obsessively for a few days, or weeks even. Eventually I would realise that there was some flaw in my thinking and it could never work, so I'd abandon it. Then I'd be disillusioned for a while and take a break from it. Days, weeks, years sometimes.
Often an idea would prove to be equivalent to a previous attempt. The same sheep in a different wolf's clothing. Those failures were the hardest to bear, when I realised they were doomed from the start. After those I took the longest breaks.
In those breaks I dreamed of the fame, in narrow circles, I would acquire if I did finally solve it. I say "narrow circles" because REDACTED isn't the sort of thing they could explain on the evening news - "And finally, Dr Evangeline C. Carson has solved the REDACTED problem which was thought for decades to be impossible. She is also the mother of twin girls and has a cat called Spider..."
It didn't seem to matter that I thought I knew the problem had already been solved. If you don't see the earlier solution then solving it second is just as hard as solving it first... isn't it?
Anyway, it didn't matter to me. I just wanted to solve it. And then one cold February day, I did!
Maybe I never thought I would solve REDACTED, but once I had, I didn't know what to do. I was elated and terrified at the same time. A lot of people would "kill" for this knowledge. Maybe some people would literally kill to keep it quiet?
Who could I trust? And if I trusted them with this would I be putting them in danger too? It was agonising. Was I being paranoid? Should I just publish what I'd done somewhere? What if my comms were intercepted and they came for me in my sleep?
I put my first wave of panic down to lack of sleep. I'd been awake for many hours over the previous few days mulling over the finer details that had eventually provided the leap from nearly working, where I'd been many times before, to actually working.
And then it took me another few caffeine fuelled hours to convince myself that it really was a valid solution.
So I sat on the result for a long time. Just as with REDACTED I would lie awake at night throwing ideas around in my head. Constructing different scenarios, then tearing them apart. I'd wake in the night happy I had it all worked out, only to realise that I was dreaming of the glory again and there was no plan.
Everything I could think of seemed like something from a spy movie... because it was. Send sealed copies to friends and colleagues with "In the event of my mysterious death" written on it. Elaborate mechanisms to email the information to journalists if I failed to manually reset a timer. It was all too complicated and fallible. In every scheme it only took one person to tell them and they would shut me down faster than a speeding bullet... hopefully not with an actual extra-fast bullet.
One night I woke up with a clear decision in my head. I would go to the authorities and tell them I had a solution for REDACTED that I wished to patent. Then they could decide what to do. At the same time I would write a series of inspirational articles for my company's blog about the big unsolved problems in science and mathematics. Somewhere in one of those articles it would be my turn to write "Solving REDACTED would have many practical implications, but currently there are no published methods using classical technology."