@ironmade

@zama #ZamaCreatorProgram “Well, what do you think, professor?” Albert Einstein stood half-turned toward the large school blackboard, chalk in hand, watching the man seated across from him at the small round table. Professor Pailler stared thoughtfully at the board covered in uneven handwriting. The cigarette in his fingers released slow, lazy streams of smoke that swayed in time with the window curtains hiding the lively streets of Alamo. Rumbling trucks passing by, army commands barked by impatient sergeants, Glenn Miller playing from loudspeakers hung all over the town - all of it was muted behind the dusty brown curtains, like an iron screen separating two of the brightest minds of their era from the noise outside. “I believe I understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Pascal Pailler finally said, lifting his gaze from the board and looking at Einstein with a heavy, piercing stare. He raised the cigar to his lips, and for a moment his figure vanished behind a thick cloud of acrid smoke. “But one thing I still don’t understand - what exactly do you expect from me? Why summon me from the other side of the world, and with such urgency?” His eyebrows rose questioningly, deepening the uneven lines on his forehead. “My knowledge of nuclear physics goes no further than the introductory applied physics course I took at the Sorbonne. I doubt I can be of much use to you in such a delicate matter, dear professor.” Einstein ran a hand through his gray, unruly hair. “I’m not asking you to help with the technical side of the Manhattan Project. That would be both unethical and unprofessional.” A brief smile flashed beneath his mustache, showing yellowed teeth. “The project is ready. The best minds in the United States have worked on it, and I’m confident it’s fully prepared for its first tests. The real issue is uranium enrichment.” “I’m afraid I understand no more about uranium enrichment than about nuclear physics,” Pailler replied with a small smile. Einstein set the chalk aside, slowly walked over, and sat across from him. “The British,” he said, pouring water from a crystal carafe. “It all comes down to the British. To build "Device No. 1", we need a certain amount of enriched uranium - and we simply don’t have the facilities to produce it. The British do. But for them to assist us, they need the blueprints and the calculations. That’s why I brought you here.” Pailler listened without taking his eyes off Einstein. “As you probably know, almost all messages, telegrams, and coded communications sent to the European continent are intercepted by the Nazis. We can’t allow a leak of this scale. Which means your knowledge of encryption and FHE is, at this moment, the only safe way to deliver information to Europe.” Pailler leaned forward, suddenly focused, narrowing his dark eyes. “So you want me to encrypt all this material for London - and ensure that no cryptographer in the world could ever decipher it?” he asked, studying Einstein with sharp, inquisitive eyes. “Exactly,” Einstein replied, leaning back and releasing a slow cloud of smoke from his freshly lit pipe. Pailler froze for a moment, staring past him as though into something unseen. “Well…that can be arranged,” he said at last, straightening in his chair and reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket for his cigarette case. “But I’d like to understand more about your method - and how safe it really is. One mistake, and priceless information that could change the course of the war lands in the hands of the enemy. We cannot let that happen.” - Albert Einstein said Pailler clicked open the cigarette case and lit a new cigarette, thinking for a moment before speaking. “You see, Albert…you didn’t call me here as a physicist. You called me as someone who thinks a little differently. I suspect you’ve heard something about my work on what I call functional ciphers - or, in simpler terms, fully homomorphic encrytion.” “Of course! That’s exactly why I had to bring you here so quickly!” Pailler nodded, brushing his fingers lightly over the smooth metal of the case. “Let me put it simply. Ordinary encryption is like a lock. You can open it with a key. You can break it if you try hard enough. But it’s still just a safe: to use the information inside, you must open it - even if only for a moment.” He gestured toward the blackboard. “Your calculations, your drawings - the British must receive all of it. But if someone intercepts the message, decrypts it, or even steals the key -everything is lost.” Einstein nodded slowly, turning the pipe between his fingers. “My method is different,” Pailler went on. “Imagine a box so secure that opening it is impossible, no matter how hard anyone tries. And yet…” - he snapped his fingers - “you can work with what’s inside without opening it. Add, multiply, compare, run complex operations. That is what fully homomorphic encryption allows.” Einstein brightened, nodding eagerly. “That is exactly what we need!” “Exactly,” Pailler agreed. “The British will be able to refine your designs, recalculate the reactor formulas, adjust the uranium enrichment parameters - all without seeing a single line of the actual data. To them it will look like nothing but strange numbers, meaningless codes. For the Nazis - even more so.” “But, mathematically, is such a thing even possible?” Pailler smiled faintly, enjoying the skepticism in Einstein’s tone. “Formally - yes. Practically - for now it borders on madness. I’ve worked on this for many years. In our Paris lab we called it ‘Le projet Z.A.M.A.’ - Zero-Access Mathematical Architecture. An architecture even its creator cannot access. But the point isn’t access - it’s the idea.” He tapped the tabletop with his finger. “The key - the only key - will exist in Britain. Only they will be able to decrypt the final result. Neither I, nor you, nor any German cryptographer will ever see the original data. We’re building a shell in which information can live, change, and interact - without revealing itself.” Einstein let out a long breath. A moment of silence followed. Another truck rumbled past behind the dusty curtains. The clock ticked too loudly on the wall, as if marking the weight of the moment. Suddenly the door flew open, and a breathless man in army uniform with sergeant stripes appeared. “Mr. Einstein. You’re wanted on the phone. Urgent. The Pentagon is on the line.” Einstein stood up quickly, slipping his pipe into his inner pocket. “Please excuse me, professor. We’ll continue in forty minutes, in my office in the east wing.” He hurried out. Pailler remained seated for another minute, staring at the gently swaying curtains. Then he rose slowly, approached the blackboard, and wiped away one of the formulas with a firm stroke of his palm. “Yes… it should work. It has to work. After all, Zama is everything,” he murmured to himself. “And the fate of the world may depend on it.”

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