Her hair smells like lavender. She has been traveling for months as her cryptocurrency company is working out legal issues across the globe. A few days in Singapore, a week in Japan, an afternoon in Germany. She just got back from New York City. It is not really her company, but she is the head lawyer.
“Lavender” Sam mutters as he pulls away from her embrace. It must be a hotel shampoo. It’s strange. She usually travels with her own shampoo that smells citrusy like grapefruit. Maybe it was confiscated at a security line. Maybe she ran out. It was a long trip.
“Any luck destroying my business? Is there anything to eat?” Delia asks as she drops her suitcase and laptop bag by the door and heads to the kitchen.
“There is some leftover soup in the fridge. Butternut squash. I made it yesterday. Let me heat it up.” Sam follows her to the kitchen and puts the soup in the microwave. “How is business? Are you set for the global launch?”
“The trip was good but the quantum bullshit your team is pumping out is making it hard for people to believe in crypto. They say, “Didn’t Google just show that quantum computers will kill crypto in 5 years,” and I tell them “my husband Dr. Sam Nazareno is an expert in quantum information and there is no quantum algorithm that breaks the shortest lattice vector problem,” and then they ask me what is the shortest lattice vector problem and I say “I don’t know. I just know it beats quantum computers. Ask NIST.” Can you get your guys to stop the hype until at least the deal closes.” Delia smiles at Sam as he puts a bowl of soup in front of her with a piece of baguette.
Sam rubs his eyebrows. They are rough and tangled. He squints and mutters “Delia… I think I might have found a quantum algorithm that breaks the shortest lattice vector problem. Sorry.”
Delia embraces him. “That is amazing! I wish you could have done it before this trip.” She returns to eating her soup. “ Can you not post it on the arXiv for a few weeks? I can cash out and have some time to send out my resume.”
Sam is puzzled “ It might be really bad news for your crypto company, but the proof might also be wrong. I thought that I solved it once before. I was wrong then, I could be wrong now. I am presenting my sketch at the Simon’s Institute tomorrow”
Delia stares at him, “Did you announce the result already?”
Sam shakes his head. “No, my title is Progress on Quantum Algorithms. It signifies nothing. I probably gave ten seminars with that title and only two had any progress.”
Delia laughs. “Well good luck tomorrow. Wait a second. Let me fix your eyebrows. You look like the love child of Frida Kahlo and Grossenbeak.”
“Grossenbeak?”
“The hermit mathematician from “When we cease to understand the world.””
“Grothendieck. He was a real person. How is the soup?”
In the morning, Delia has found the scissors and tweezers and is attentively fixing Sam’s eyebrows. “You need to take care of the beard yourself.”
She smells like grapefruit. Sam is relaxed by the familiar scent and thinks about where he put the beard trimmer.
“What are you going to do if I am right?” Sam asks as Delia plucks an eyebrow hair.
“I am a corporate lawyer Sam, not a crypto bro. I’ll be fine.” Delia snips the eyebrows into a manageable form.
At the Simon’s Institute, Sam steps up to the whiteboard with his notes in one hand and a blue marker in the other. The audience of ten people are mostly checking emails on their phones or laptops. He hasn’t had an algorithmic breakthrough in a long time, which is usual when you are a theoretical computer scientist.
“Today I want to talk about quantum attacks on cryptosystems.” He looks at his notes. They look wrong. The second page has an error. Did he miscopy from this notebook?
He rubs his eyebrows. Smooth and aligned there is little friction. He begins to rub his eyes.
Abe who is sitting in the front row says “Sam are you okay? It looks like you are trying to gouge your eyes out?”
Sam looks up blearily. “I am okay. Let’s start with Shor’s algorithm.” A pillar of quantum computation. A few people in the audience sigh disappointed. Everyone knows Shor’s algorithm.
“We focus on factoring but equally important is the efficient solution to the discrete logarithm” A pillar of public-key cryptography. Sam rubs his smooth eyebrows again. He has been chained to these pillars his whole adult life. They have defined his work, his student’s work, and his chance to move on is lost. He looks at the notes again. Tries to remember his insight.
He is startled when he writes on the board “An efficient classical algorithm for the discrete logarithm.” The laptops close. The columns collapse and the temples of quantum computation and public-key cryptography with them.