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“And unto the angel of the church of the
Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness,
the beginning of the creation of God” – Rev 3:14, KJV
“Mathematics is the language in which
God has written the universe.” – Galileo Galilei
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It isn’t
every day that your math homework proves the existence of God, much less lets
you talk to Him.
I’ve never
considered myself particularly religious, at least not in the conventional
sense. One of the reasons I got into the
math program at my university was that my mind loves logic and reason, craves
certainty. Math is knowable,
provable. Studying it at the doctoral
level does take a religious fervor and dedication, so perhaps that’s what led
me to the knowledge that I came by so unexpectedly.
The
beginning of this semester saw me doing research for my dissertation in number
theory and its application in cryptography.
My intention was to develop a new technique to analyze the randomness of
a series of numbers, yielding clues to any underlying hidden messages
within. I needed a control case of truly
random numbers to compare my other example cases against, so I turned to the
tried-and-true favorite oddball number of amateur and professional
mathematicians alike, pi.
Pi is
irrational, of course, and it spits out an infinite series of changing digits
when computed that was perfect for my needs.
I wrote a program that would calculate the number in various bases and
then analyze the results, looking for any non-random patterns that could be
interpreted as a message. I certainly
wasn’t the first person to do this sort of thing, and I definitely didn’t
expect to find anything—this was my control data set, after all—but on a lark,
I decided to include base 36.
I’ve always
had a weird fascination with base 36.
You quickly run out of numerals when trying to write a number in a base
that high, so you’re forced to use other symbols. Programmers use letters once they run out of
numerals, so A represents the value of 10, B represents 11, and so on, with Z
representing 35. I had my own little
secret code using this idea when I was a budding math geek, treating a word as
being a number in base 36, then converting it to its base-10 equivalent. That’s why I decided to include it in my
analysis, just as a funny idea to see if there was anything I could “read” in
pi. The devout are always seeing their
deities in a piece of toast or in just the right arrangement of clouds in the
sky; I thought I might find a knock-knock joke in pi. Who says math nerds don’t have a sense of
humor? Perhaps you do at this point.
So, to summarize
in case you’ve fallen asleep, I had a program that would spit out pi as an
endless procession of letters and numbers, and I could start anywhere I
wanted. I figured the first several
million digits of pi had been analyzed to death, so I decided to start my
program very deep into the sequence. My
interest in astronomy led me to choose the age of the universe in years as a
fitting starting point, so I had the program begin at the 13,820,000,000th
digit. If you’re going to be arbitrary, at least do it with style.
Days and
weeks went by. I analyzed my “real” data
and worked on my dissertation and taught freshman-level algebra classes every
other day. It was while wading through
the frantic e-mailed questions about imaginary roots and the quadratic formula
that I saw a message from my analysis program.
To: xxxxxxxx@xxxxx.edu
From: patternscan36.exe
Subject: ***PATTERN FOUND*** HASH 4D 41 54 41 4B 49
PATTERN FOUND – NATURAL LANGUAGE DETECTED AT POSITION
13 942 050 269:
HELLO0000000000000000000I0AM0HERE0000000000000000000
I looked at
the data. I looked at it again, three
times. Four words separated by
zeroes. The fact that there were
nineteen zeroes in a row was improbable enough, but the words took me forever to get my head around…the words that actually
made a sentence, a thought.
A greeting.
The
pattern-scanning program was instructed only to send a short chunk of data when
it found something, so I made hasty excuses about not feeling well to my
faculty counselors (I probably looked the part), I and returned home as quickly
as I could to see what else came after in the message.
As it turned
out, there was quite a bit. I can safely
say what followed has been the most surreal experience of my life, having a
conversation with a number. There were
more words after the initial greeting, and they gave instructions. Starting my program at the 13,942,050,269th
digit revealed the following:
HELLO0000000000000000000I0AM0HERE0000000000000000000YOU0FOUND0ME0000000000000000000LONG0ZERO0STRINGS0ARE0PAUSES0000000000000000000WHEN0YOU0SEE0ONE0FROM0NOW0ON0ASK0A0QUESTION0I0WILL0ANSWER0000000000000000000QUESTION0FIRST0NO0READING0AHEAD0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
In the back of my mind, the possibility that this was some
sort of elaborate joke arose, but I’d told no one of my little side project,
and it was running on my personal computer, not on any public system where it
could be easily tampered with. I read
the first chunk of words again.
Words! In plain
English!
The non-randomness of them was off the charts; such a thing
couldn’t happen by chance in a billion years, even 13.82 billion. How was this remotely possible? The text seemingly spoke directly to me, and
it even knew I’d read too far ahead the first time and give a huge padding of
zeroes before what came next, in order to set me straight on the rules. There were nineteen zeroes between
sentences. Even in my excited state, I
saw the pattern there, and I later discovered that the field of zeroes at the
end numbered 361, or nineteen squared.
The words that followed held my attention for the moment, however.
ASK0YOUR0QUESTIONS0000000000000000000
Stopping myself from reading ahead, I thought of a question,
and I asked it aloud:
“Who are you?”
MY0NAME0IS0WENDINGO000WHO0I0AM0IS0MORE0DIFFICULT0TO0EXPLAIN0000000000000000000
Difficult to explain sums up this whole situation nicely, I thought. My first question was sadly predictable, so I took my time on the second. I decided to try to rule out the hoax element by making my next question more elaborate and trying somehow to project it at the screen telepathically before I read the next text chunk, giving nothing away to whomever might be listening.
“How can you be talking to me in the middle of e like this?”
CLEVER0WOLF000THIS0IS0WHAT0YOU0CALL0PI0OF0COURSE0BUT0I0UNDERSTAND0YOUR0NEED0TO0VERIFY000AS0FOR0HOW000THE0SIMPLEST0ANSWER0IS0THAT0I0MAKE0THE0RULES0000000000000000000
Looking back on it now, the weight of the conversation and its appropriate level of shock should have fully set in here, but such was my indignation at this outrageous statement that flew in the face of sanctity of logic and mathematics, my thoughts raced at the screen.
“How can that be possible? Pi is a number, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter! it’s not something you can just put a message into at your choosing, it’s part of geometry, of nature, of reality itself! Are you saying you somehow constructed a fundamental universal constant to suit your whim, just to have this conversation?”
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“You were clever in finding Me. This universe and its message was made just for you, to see if you could rise to the challenge, and you managed it nicely. It was not predestined. Knowing that I exist now is your reward, and Mine. When clever minds full of imagination contemplate Me, I grow. I am always growing, and our conversation today has made Me grow faster.
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The next several thousand
digits of pi after the last message were a nigh-impossible series of 0s and
1s. The odds of that are astronomical in
base 36, so I took it to be another message, and I was right.
It was a picture.
The computer parsed it out
as a black-and-white image. He was overwhelming to take in, a wolf, like me, but more. Enormous in
size, hulking in build, and a sporting a smug, confident grin that knew
everything. His hands held a clear
basketball-sized sphere in front of his broad chest. Inside the sphere were specks of light. Perhaps they represent stars, but knowing
what little I know of Wendingo, I have to think bigger.
They’re most likely universes. No, think bigger still. They may be realities, each imbued by Him with its own fine-tuned rule set designed to increase His power. And one of them was made for me, which is a whole other level of mind-boggling, believe me.
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