From: Mermaid . (britannica@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 27 2002 - 21:07:27 MST
hmmm...well..there is always time for story telling. One of my favourite
short stories of all time..
http://www.geocities.com/logical_inferences/namesofgod.html
The Nine Billion Names of God
By: Arthur C. Clarke
"This is a slightly unusual request," said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped
was commendable restraint. "As far as I know, it’s the first time anyone’s
been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with anautomaticsequence computer.
I don’t wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly thought that your --ah--
establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what
you intend to do with it?"
"Gladly," replied the lama, readjusting his silk robe and carefully putting
away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. "Your Mark V
computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to
ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers.
As we wish you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be printing
words, not columns of figures."
"I don’t understand . . ."
"This is a project on which we have been working for the last three
centuries -- since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien
to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I
explain it."
"Naturally."
"It is really quite simple. We have been compiling a list which shall
contain all the possible names of God."
"I beg your pardon?"
"We have reason to believe," continued the lama imperturbably, "that all
such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we
have devised."
"And you have been doing this for three centuries?"
"Yes. We expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete
the task."
"Oh." Dr. Wagner looked a little dazed. "Now I see why you wanted to hire
one of our machines. But exactly what is the purpose of this project?"
The lama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had
offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance in the reply.
"Call it ritual, if you like, but it’s a fundamental part of our belief. All
the many names of the Supreme Being -- God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on --
they are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some
difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all
the possible combinations of letters which can occur are what one may call
the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been
trying to list them all."
"I see. You’ve been starting at AAAAAAAAA . . . and working up to ZZZZZZZZZ
. . ."
"Exactly -- though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the
electromatic typewriters to deal with this is, of course, trivial. A rather
more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate
ridiculous combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three
times in succession."
"Three? Surely you mean two."
"Three is correct. I am afraid it would take too long to explain why, even
if you understood our language."
"I’m sure it would," said Wagner hastily. "Go on."
"Luckily it will be a simple matter to adapt your automatic sequence
computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will
permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us
fifteen thousand years it will be able to do in a thousand days."
Dr. Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhattan
streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not
man-made, mountains. High up in their remote aeries these monks had been
patiently at work, generation after generation, compiling their lists of
meaningless words. Was there any limit to the follies of mankind? Still, he
must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right . . .
"There’s no doubt," replied the doctor, "that we can modify the Mark V to
print lists of this nature. I’m much more worried about the problem of
installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet, in these days, is not
going to be easy."
"We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air --
that is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India,
we will provide transport from there."
"And you want to hire two of our engineers?"
"Yes, for the three months which the project should occupy."
"I’ve no doubt that Personnel can manage that." Dr. Wagner scribbled a note
on his desk pad. "There are just two other points--" Before he could finish
the sentence, the lama had produced a small slip of paper.
"This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank."
"Thank you. It appears to be--ah--adequate. The second matter is so trivial
that I hesitate to mention it -- but it’s surprising how often the obvious
gets overlooked. What source of electrical
energy have you?"
"A diesel generator providing 50 kilowatts at 110 volts. It was installed
about five years ago and is quite reliable. It’s made life at the lamasery
much more comfortable, but of course it was really installed to provide
power for the motors driving the prayer wheels."
"Of course," echoed Dr. Wagner. "I should have thought of that."
The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time one gets used to
anything. After three months George Hanley was not impressed by the
two-thousand-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields
in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smoothed stones and
staring morosely at the distant mountains whose names he had never bothered
to discover.
This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him.
"Project Shangri-La," some wit at the labs had christened it. For weeks now,
Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish.
Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all
their possible combinations,
exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged
from the electromatic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and
pasted them into enormous books. In another week,
heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what obscure calculations
had convinced the monks that they needn’t bother to go on to words of ten,
twenty, or a hundred letters, George didn’t know. One of his recurring
nightmares was that there would be some change of plan and that the High
Lama (whom they’d naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didn’t look a bit
like him) would suddenly announce that the
project would be extended to approximately 2060 A.D. They were quite capable
of it.
George heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as Chuck came out onto
the parapet beside him. As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that
made him so popular with the monks -- who, it seemed,
were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures
of life. That was one thing in their favor: they might be crazy, but they
weren’t bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down
to the village, for instance . . ."
"Listen, George," said Chuck urgently. "I’ve learned something that means
trouble."
"What’s wrong? Isn’t the machine behaving?" That was the worst contingency
George could imagine. It might delay his return, than which nothing could be
more horrible. The way he felt now, even the sight of
a TV commercial would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would be some
link from home.
"No -- it’s nothing like that." Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which
was unusual, because normally he was scared of the drop.
"I’ve just found out what all this is about."
"What d’ya mean -- I thought we knew."
"Sure -- we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn’t know why.
It’s the craziest thing --"
"Tell me something new," growled George.
" . . . but old Sam’s just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in
every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed
rather excited, or at least as near as he’ll ever get to
it. When I told him we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute
English accent of his, if I’d ever wondered what they were trying to do. I
said, ‘Sure’ -- and he told me."
"Go on, I’ll buy it."
"Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names -- and they
reckon that there are about nine billion of them -- God’s purpose will have
been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do,
and there won’t be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is
something like blasphemy."
"Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?"
"There’s no need for that. When the list’s completed, God steps in and
simply winds things up . . . bingo!"
"Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world."
Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.
"That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at
me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said, ‘It’s
nothing as trivial as that’."
George thought this over for a moment.
"That’s what I call taking the Wide View," he said presently. "But what d’ya
suppose we should do about it? I don’t see that it makes the slightest
difference to us. After all, we already knew that they were crazy."
"Yes -- but don’t you see what may happen? When the list’s complete and the
Last Trump doesn’t blow -- or whatever it is that they expect -- we may get
the blame. It’s our machine they’ve been using. I don’t like the situation
one little bit."
"I see," said George slowly. "You’ve got a point there. But this sort of
thing’s happened here before, you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana
we had a crackpot preacher who said the world was going to end next Sunday.
Hundreds of people believed him-- even sold their homes. Yet nothing
happened; they didn’t turn nasty as you’d expect. They just decided that
he’d made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess
some of them still do."
"Well, this isn’t Louisiana, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are just two
of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I’ll be sorry for old
Sam when his lifework backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was
somewhere else."
"I’ve been wishing that for weeks. But there’s nothing we can do until the
contract’s finished and the transport arrives to fly us out."
"Of course," said Chuck thoughtfully, "we could always try a bit of
sabotage."
"Like hell we could! That would make things worse."
"Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run
four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport
calls in a week. O.K., then all we need to do is to find something that
wants replacing during one of the overhaul periods -- something that will
hold up the works for a couple of days. We’ll fix it, of course, but not too
quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when
the last name pops out of the register. They won’t be able to catch us
then."
"I don’t like it," said George. "It will be the first time I ever walked out
on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I’ll sit tight and
take what comes."
"I still don’t like it," he said seven days later, as the tough little
mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. "And don’t you think I’m
running away because I’m afraid. I’m just sorry for those poor old guys up
there, and I don’t want to be around when they find what suckers they’ve
been. Wonder how Sam will take it?"
"It’s funny," replied Chuck, "but when I said goodbye I got the idea he knew
we were walking out on him -- and that he didn’t care because he knew the
machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After
that -- well, of course, for him there just isn’t any After That . . ."
George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was
the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The
squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the
sunset; here and there lights gleamed like portholes in the sides of an
ocean liner. Electric lights, of
course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they
share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their
rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit
down quietly and begin their calculations all over again? He knew exactly
what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The High Lama and
his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets
as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them
into the
great volumes. No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the
incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm, of the keys hitting the paper,
for the Mark V itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands
of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough
to start anyone climbing up the wall.
"There she is!" called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. "Ain’t she
beautiful!"
She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC-3 lay at the end of
the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them
away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine
liqueur. George let it roll around in his mind as the pony trudged patiently
down the slope.
The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately
the road was very good, as roads went in this region, and they were both
carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain
discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear and
ablaze with the familiar,
friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the
pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been
his only remaining worry.
He began to sing but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains,
gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such
ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.
"Should be there in an hour," he called back over his shoulder to Chuck.
Then he added, in an afterthought, "Wonder if the computer’s finished its
run? It was due about now."
Chuck didn’t reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see
Chuck’s face, a white oval turned toward the sky.
"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is
always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
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