Atropos
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Richard Preston stands on the sea shore, calm and
quiet amid the noise and smell of the waves as they wash almost to his
feet, and thinks about his life. The decimated carcass of a computer sits
quietly near him, half-buried in the sand. And he remembers, and not
totally without regret.
For Richard Preston is the smartest man in the
world.
And in a way, it is a pity that the scientific
community will never be able to use his intellect. Richard Preston's I.Q.
is a mere 138, and he holds no college diploma; and yet, for this morning
anyway, Richard Preston knows more than anybody alive. But the scientific
community will never be able to use Richard Preston's genius or his
discoveries, because most of the scientific community has never heard of
him, nor will they ever, now.
Richard Preston is the smartest man in the world
because he is a computer programmer. And this morning, with one of his
programs, running on a cheap home computer, he unraveled the puzzle of one
of the world's most fundamental constants. A constant which scientists
have been trying to prove, or alternately to disprove, for generations.
And Richard Preston has solved this problem, finally and forever, with his
computer.
Richard Preston stands on the sea shore, past his
small red convertible parked out on the sand, still warm from its last
trip. And he thinks. Richard Preston thinks about the fundamental
constant he has very conclusively solved, and knows that he can never tell
a soul about his incredible discovery.
Richard Preston stands on the sea shore, looking out
onto the slowly rolling breakers capped with foam, and he reflects upon
his discovery. He remembers the beginning: a simple experiment in
computer programming. The source, a small innocuous book on artificial
intelligence telling of a simple theory: that a true electronic brain can
be made, not from a complex algorithm, but with a few simple rules,
self-reinforcing and self-improving, and a computer analogy of growth and
development.
That night, Richard Preston went home and typed a short fifty-line
computer program. Then, on a whim, he left it running and by very
early next morning the program had grown to a total of four million
lines and gradually Richard Preston realized that he had created
the blindingly fast computer brain that scientists had searched for
since 1960.
And so Richard Preston took the next logical step; he
asked his computer to prove, or alternately to disprove, a simple
question, the basis of all arts and sciences, a question which has
influenced the actions of more people over the years than all other
factors combined.
The computer mulled over the problem for half a day. And when
Richard Preston sat down to his computer after lunch, the computer
answered him. In its simple, electronic way, the program delivered
a simple, electronic, flawless proof, and presented Richard Preston
with a simple, electronic answer.
Richard Preston stands on the sea shore, clutching
tightly to his chest the small bottle of sleeping pills which rattles as
he slowly closes his eyes to the sunset. This morning, Richard Preston
slowly and methodically deleted all traces of the program and its proof
from his computer and quietly drove his red convertible to the beach, to
the only remaining peaceful spot he could find.
Because Richard Preston knows that his program must never make its
way into the public. For Richard Preston created a powerful brain,
and asked it a simple question, and received a simple answer, and the
wheels of Fate turned on.
Richard Preston wanted to know if God existed.
Richard Preston stands on the sea shore, calm and
quiet amid the noise and smell of the waves as they wash almost to his
feet, and slumps over in the sand, and carries with him to oblivion the
last secret of the Universe.
total accesses since 2:00pm February 4, 1996.
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Illustrations by Francisco Goya
Andrew Ho
(ag-ho@uiuc.edu) |
writings