The Quanton virtual machine approximates solutions to NP-Hard problems in factorial spaces in polynomial time. The data representation and methods emulate quantum computing on classical hardware but also implement quantum computing if run on quantum hardware. The Quanton uses permutations indexed by Lehmer codes and permutation-operators to represent quantum gates and operations. A generating function embeds the indexes into a geometric object for efficient compressed representation. A nonlinear directional probability distribution is embedded to the manifold and at the tangent space to each index point is also a linear probability distribution. Simple vector operations on the distributions correspond to quantum gate operations. The Quanton provides features of quantum computing: superpositioning, quantization and entanglement surrogates. Populations of Quantons are evolved as local evolving gate operations solving problems or as solution candidates in an Estimation of Distribution algorithm. The Quanton representation and methods are fully parallel on any hardware.