Touch of Magic

A genius explains his idea to idiots:

"Well, in defining the box, I came up with the idea for this project, to remove things _from_ the box," said the beaming man, who was actually a top theoretical physicist with a reputation for experiments which challenged the state of the art. "While applying the mathematical tool of extremal surfaces to model an evaporating black hole, a strange thing happened. Early in the evaporation process, I found, as expected, that the entanglement entropy of the boundary of the extremal surface split what was inside from the rest of the universe. There are no hairy singularities. There was an absolute boundary between the inside and the outside, which was the majority of the universe. On the other side was a here-there-be-dragons realm about which the boundary had no information. The position of the quantum extremal surface was highly significant. It was located just inside the horizon of the singularity I was examining."

"You still haven't explained how this thing can hold Malak," said the heavy one, whom Dr. Pynchon had by now identified as the person in charge. He seemed irritated, bordering on angry.

Dr. Pynchon repressed an exasperated sigh. He had _already_ explained. However, from his previous experience with people like this he could tell that the bossy individual suffered from an exaggerated impression of his own intelligence and education. Ignoring the fact that this man had come to _Pynchon_ to solve a problem which was beyond him, he would perceive any sign that Pynchon did not consider him at least an intellectual equal as criticism. Dr. Pynchon also had learned - the hard way - that people like the big man did _not_ react well to criticism. No matter how well deserved. So, he needed to offer a simplified explanation.

"It's... it's a discontinuity in the structure of spacetime," said Pynchon, trying desperately to find an analogy which these simpletons could envision. He had a sudden inspiration. "It's like a snow globe! The surface of the globe consumes no energy, but it is a barrier between what's inside and what's outside. In the case of the extremal surface, the only significant energy expenditure is in establishing the surface, with just a trickle needed thereafter to maintain it. The contents are irrelevant to that energy requirement. What's inside is completely isolated from our universe. The path integral closes to unity!"