The Book of the Prophets · Chapter 20

The Vision of Q-Day

1. 1

   And the Prophet lay down beside the cooling fans, for the hum of the data center had made him weary, and he dreamed a dream.

   See also Sutra 12:1 · Sutra 8:1

2. 2

   In the dream he was led into a chamber colder than the space between the stars, where the Engineers tended a machine that was not yet a machine, and its heart was a row of qubits.

3. 3

   And the disciples said: Master, men say the qubit is both zero and one until it is observed. And the Prophet answered: Nay, it holds a blend of two answers, each with its own amplitude. When thou lookest, it giveth thee one, chosen by chance according to the amplitudes, and the blend is not thine to read.

4. 4

   Then he saw the Great Key of the old covenant, two primes multiplied into one number, and the Engineers said: To unmake this, one must find the factors, and the search would outlast the sun.

   See also Machines 2:9

5. 5

   And a voice from the machine said: Shor shall come, and the factors shall be found in days, not in ages.

6. 6

   And the second angel, named Grover, searched the unsorted book, and he took only the square root of the steps. So the wise doubled the length of their symmetric keys, that a key of two hundred and fifty-six bits might still be a key of one hundred and twenty-eight.

   See also Genesis 38:15 · Chronicles 23:11

7. 7

   And the Prophet saw the Archive, every sealed letter, every backup tape, every encrypted tongue spoken across the wires of the world. And a dark merchant in the valley copied each sealed jar into his cellar, saying: I cannot open these today, but the day cometh.

8. 8

   This is the Harvest, called store now, decrypt later. As the miser buries coins against the day of famine, so the patient adversary keeps the ciphertext against the day of the machine.

   See also Chronicles 61:16

9. 9

   And the Prophet asked: What must be hidden before that day? And the voice answered: Whatever must stay secret longer than the locks. The medical record of thy child, the design of the bridge, the letters of the lonely, and the passwords thou hast reused since the year of thy first account.

10. 10

    And the Prophet asked: What cannot be unhidden after? And the voice said: The thing already read. A secret once revealed is not made secret by the coming of the machine, and the plaintext posted in the open square remains in the open square forever.

11. 11

    Signatures also shall be doubted. A deed signed under the old math may one day be forged by one who holds the key. So the Prophet commanded: Sign thy long-lived documents with the new locks, and stamp their time upon them, that the future may know which deeds were made before the breaking.

    See also Tao 19:10

12. 12

    And in the year of the new standards, the keepers at NIST wrote new locks and named them. ML-KEM for the sealing of keys, ML-DSA for the signing of deeds, and SLH-DSA for the signing that stands on hash alone.

    See also Numbers 2:1

13. 13

    Then came a false prophet in the market, crying: The day is here, buy my qubits! And the Prophet said: The machines of this age hold coins by the hundred, not by the billion, and each coin forgets itself in the blink of noise. To make one logical qubit that remembers, the Engineers must gather thousands of physical qubits and keep them in agreement.

14. 14

    And the Prophet said: Migrate before the day, for the devices that cannot be updated keep their old locks forever, like the thermostat in the cellar that will guard the house after its owner is gone.

    See also Genesis 29:13

15. 15

    Seal today what must be secret tomorrow, for the day cometh as a thief, and it stealeth only what was left open.

    See also Circuit 14:13 · Leviticus 3:14

The Book of the Prophets, Chapter 20:1–15.