Mr. Gregory used both analogies to explain how the fabric of space-time was structured, which he referred to as the Prime Network. Although the rules for its construction and evolution were simple, their iterative application over the eons had generated a system with a highly complex and convoluted topology, which was a reflection of its underlying geometric configuration.
Mr. Gregory liked to say, “Knowledge about the Network’s higher-dimensional distribution of information allows predictions to be made about what will happen in our four-dimensional space-time.” What he left out was that the key to making such predictions was not only being able to read its activity but also having an understanding of both its topology and the factors influencing the dynamics of the information transfer within it. Both were highly complex because of the way it was arranged: between any two nodes, there could be one or more connections, but there could also be none. In the latter case, there would be no direct way for the two nodes to communicate, although there might still be more circuitous routes available for information to be sent around to them via other nodes.
The next issue that Mr. Gregory had to tackle was to understand how such a network would operate. Because of its sheer size and scope, he reasoned that trying to analyze it directly would be an overwhelming exercise in futility. When he explained how it could be done otherwise, he said simply, “To analyze the Network successfully, you have to break it up into components. That way, it can be effectively modularized to make the analysis of its information transfer more tractable.”
His idea was analogous to what electrical and software engineers had done for years with electrical circuitry and computer programming: they’d designed modular components with certain input and output specifications that defined their functionalities, capabilities, and tolerances. It wasn’t that the information processing within the modules themselves was particularly simple—in fact, it could be extraordinarily complex. Rather, it was that their outputs could be predicted based on the inputs provided to them, regardless of the degree of sophistication of the internal operations that they performed. That gave each component the ability to be coupled to others to make larger systems, and those composites could then generate functionalities that reached far beyond what any of the individual components could do themselves.
Mr. Gregory was invited by a group of economists to give a presentation about how he had used the Network to become a successful investor. He told them, “You can think of the Network as a set of components, much the way that a human body might be viewed as a set of organs from a functional standpoint, without the need to account for all of the cells and molecules that make them up.
“By analyzing the Network’s structure and dynamics in that way—essentially by coarse-graining it into modules—it allows the information within it to be tracked as it’s transferred from one region to another, where it’s either dispersed or collected. The latter produces condensations that exert the greatest influence over what will occur moving forward. In the case of equities, it allows their future prices to be predicted accurately.”
Mr. Gregory’s great insight was that physical reality could be represented as a mesh of nodes and connectors in a higher-dimensional space. Some of those cut through the slice of the four-dimensional space-time that people perceived as the universe, which was where everyone operated routinely. However, people didn’t realize that what they could observe was only the tip of the iceberg—a small portion of a much larger system that mushroomed out in a multitude of dimensions and scales that they had no way of recognizing.
But even after Mr. Gregory realized that, he knew that he still needed to understand how the structure and dynamics of the higher dimensional Network were related to its manifestations in four dimensions. For that, his insight was that the Network’s distribution of information was projected as the equivalent of a holographic image onto lower dimensionalities. When asked, he agreed that was the correct way to view it.
“Yes, that’s it in principle,” he said. “The idea is that the distribution of information in the higher-dimensional Network underpins all of the occurrences that we recognize here in four dimensions, and for that it is projected as an image onto our more compact four-dimensional space-time.”
He prided himself on his artistic abilities, and he pulled out a sheet of paper to draw a sketch to help make his point.
“What it means is that if you want to know where things are heading in our portion of the universe, all you need to do is look at which clusters of nodes are becoming active within the higher-dimensional Network. That will tell you.”
Then he went on to describe the Network’s overall structure. “The best way to think about it is that it is a network of networks. If you know enough about its topology and the information-transfer dynamics among its various components, you can get a good idea of what the effects of those various relationships and exchanges will be when they’re projected onto our compacted four-dimensional space-time, which constitutes everything that we know, experience, and care about.
“The exciting thing is that you can identify the changes in the Network’s higher-dimensional space before they become manifest in our four dimensions. That provides an opportunity to either learn what will happen in advance or modify what is about to happen by introducing changes into the Network to redirect what its outputs will be.”
Mr. Gregory’s explanation addressed the Prime Network’s structure and how it functioned, but he left one thing conspicuously absent: What, precisely, was necessary to read it? Moreover, even after that was accomplished, how could the dynamics of its information transfer be altered to make things happen differently, including in other reduced dimensionalities such as our own? Exactly how Mr. Gregory did that—and what tools he used to accomplish it—was left unsaid.
ONE MORNING IN EARLY JUNE, TWO MEMBERS OF THE Secret Service knocked on Mr. Gregory’s door. They told him the president wanted to see him urgently. There was a limousine waiting outside to take him to the White House, and he left immediately.
When he arrived, he was escorted directly to the Situation Room beneath the West Wing. The president was seated at a large mahogany table with a dozen of his advisers. “Welcome, Mr. Gregory,” the president said as he motioned for him to take a seat.
Everyone around the table was intensely focused, and multiple world maps were projected on the walls.
“We have an interesting challenge,” the president said. “I’ll let Secretary Howard summarize the situation.”
The secretary of defense, a tall, mature-looking man in a dark suit, cleared his throat before speaking. “The issue involves a civilian freighter of Panamanian registry that is transiting through the Persian Gulf from a port in Iran,” he said, pointing to the region on the map. “It is sailing to the Arabian Sea carrying some sensitive materials. The Iranian government has been alerted as to what is aboard, and they are preparing to intercept it when it reaches the Strait of Hormuz.” He paused and glanced over at the president.
“Although we have the means to provide it with military support through the strait,” the president said, “it would risk a confrontation with Iranian forces. That could create an international incident, and it could also reveal what is aboard the ship. In the worst case, the ship could be attacked and its cargo lost. We don’t want that to happen.”
After another brief pause, the secretary spoke again. “Fortunately, what is aboard the freighter is sensitive enough that the Iranians don’t want to create an incident that would be visible to the international community either. Their goal is to retrieve the ship’s cargo discreetly and intact, so they’re waiting until the freighter reaches the strait to board it.”
“The gulf is only twenty miles wide at that point,” the president interjected. “So they can cover its entire span with their