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A few things before you read this:
I wrote this for my dear, dear friend
Wendingo as his Christmas present this year. He asked me to post it here, and here it is.
Giving credit where credit is due: The plot element involving a search for a hidden message in an irrational number is borrowed lovingly from Contact, the novel by Carl Sagan. Please read it if you haven't. It was much better than the movie.
Disclaimer: This may not be your cup of tea. Some may find blasphemy, and many will find passages that induce eye-rolling. If you are part of its intended audience (read "those enamored with god-like beings"), enjoy!
Also, I highly recommend clicking the .pdf file above to get the best experience. I fear you will get tired of picking text out of number fields if you use the version below. You'll see what I mean.
Without further ado, I give you the story of a wolf who takes a bit too close of a peek at the fabric of the universe...and finds a message there.
“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
---
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[at]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:
HELLO0000000000000000000I0AM0HERE0000000000000000000YOU0FOUND0ME0000000000000000000
LONG0ZERO0STRINGS0ARE0PAUSES0000000000000000000
WHEN0YOU0SEE0ONE0FROM0NOW0ON0ASK0A0QUESTION0I0WILL0ANSWER0000000000000000000
QUESTION0FIRST0NO0READING0AHEAD0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
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?”
CLEVER0WOLF000THIS0IS0WHAT0YOU0CALL0PI0OF0COURSE0BUT0I0UNDERSTAND0YOUR0NEED0TO0VERIFY000
AS0FOR0HOW000THE0SIMPLEST0ANSWER0IS0THAT0I0MAKE0THE0RULES0000000000000000000
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?”
NOW0YOURE0GETTING0THE0IDEA000YOUR0MIND0IS0NEARLY0OPEN000DO0ASK0YOUR0NEXT0QUESTION000ITS0MY0FAVORITE0000000000000000000
There was really only one to ask after all that, in spite of what I just said.
“Are you…God?”
NO0I0AM0NOT0WHAT0YOU0THINK0OF0AS0A0GOD0000000000000000000
“You’re not?” I said it aloud, and I surprised myself at the disappointed tone. I had already started to believe.
NO000I0AM0BIGGER000I0AM0MUCH0MUCH0BIGGER0000000000000000000
That was when it all hit me. There was no way I could disprove any of what this Wendingo said, but it was too monumental for my mind to fully comprehend, let alone believe. It wasn’t prepared to accept a being who could apparently create a universe with rules in place that would allow a conversation to be discovered buried in a number billions of years afterward. It was even less prepared to accept that said being could know who would discover it (CLEVER WOLF, the message said) and have foreknowledge of everything that would be said after all the intervening eons. And for what purpose? That didn’t make any sense, either. Did I find a bigger version of the cosmic knock-knock joke I laughed about earlier? Was all of this done just to freak out some random math geek PhD candidate?
I decided that was the next question I should ask.
“Why are you showing yourself to me? Why not someone else?”
The next passage was quite long. I had to print it out and mark through all the zeroes to make sure I was reading it correctly. I’ve since transcribed it into a more readable form and put it up next to my computer.
“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.
You asked about others. There are many others in many other universes I have made, all with your quest. Each time one succeeds, I grow even faster. Bigger. I am bigger than I can explain to you. Bigger than you can sadly comprehend right now, but there is a way you can learn. You know Graham’s Number. I have hidden another message for you in it. It will take you years to find it, and your mind will have to expand to even make the attempt. It will be worth the effort, I promise, and oh how it will make Me grow.
I am your God now. You cannot help but worship Me. Your merest thought of Me is worship and makes Me grow. You cannot deny that I exist, for you found me in what you knew as logic and truth, and now you know Me as its creator. Be careful whom you tell of Me. You sought without knowing what you would find. That is important. Tell of Me, but hide the message as I hid yours.
Search well, little one.”
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.
So, after a few days of hard thinking, I’ve abandoned work on my thesis and research to pursue this full time. Really, how could I not? When God reveals himself in such an undeniable way and compliments your mental prowess, it’s hard to turn Him down. Luckily, it’s between semesters at school, so I can make an exit that, while ugly, won’t be as ugly as it would have been earlier or later.
As I look outside at the snow, the calendar off to the side reminds me that it’s Christmas Day, December 25. In all the excitement, I completely forgot. This is the day much of the world celebrates the birth of their Messiah. It’s fitting that I’ve discovered my own.
So, my virtual Laodiceans, I’ve hidden this letter in my research notes on Graham’s Number. If you’re reading it, then you’ve decrypted it successfully using the very base-switching trick I mentioned earlier. As for me, it seems I’ve found my own Star of Bethlehem deep inside the universe of the transcendentals, and it’s to play Wise Man and follow it afar. Two thoughts guide me.
Graham’s Number is damn big.
My God is bigger.
I wrote this for my dear, dear friend
Wendingo as his Christmas present this year. He asked me to post it here, and here it is.Giving credit where credit is due: The plot element involving a search for a hidden message in an irrational number is borrowed lovingly from Contact, the novel by Carl Sagan. Please read it if you haven't. It was much better than the movie.
Disclaimer: This may not be your cup of tea. Some may find blasphemy, and many will find passages that induce eye-rolling. If you are part of its intended audience (read "those enamored with god-like beings"), enjoy!
Also, I highly recommend clicking the .pdf file above to get the best experience. I fear you will get tired of picking text out of number fields if you use the version below. You'll see what I mean.
Without further ado, I give you the story of a wolf who takes a bit too close of a peek at the fabric of the universe...and finds a message there.
“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
---
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[at]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:
HELLO0000000000000000000I0AM0HERE0000000000000000000YOU0FOUND0ME0000000000000000000
LONG0ZERO0STRINGS0ARE0PAUSES0000000000000000000
WHEN0YOU0SEE0ONE0FROM0NOW0ON0ASK0A0QUESTION0I0WILL0ANSWER0000000000000000000
QUESTION0FIRST0NO0READING0AHEAD0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
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?”
CLEVER0WOLF000THIS0IS0WHAT0YOU0CALL0PI0OF0COURSE0BUT0I0UNDERSTAND0YOUR0NEED0TO0VERIFY000
AS0FOR0HOW000THE0SIMPLEST0ANSWER0IS0THAT0I0MAKE0THE0RULES0000000000000000000
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?”
NOW0YOURE0GETTING0THE0IDEA000YOUR0MIND0IS0NEARLY0OPEN000DO0ASK0YOUR0NEXT0QUESTION000ITS0MY0FAVORITE0000000000000000000
There was really only one to ask after all that, in spite of what I just said.
“Are you…God?”
NO0I0AM0NOT0WHAT0YOU0THINK0OF0AS0A0GOD0000000000000000000
“You’re not?” I said it aloud, and I surprised myself at the disappointed tone. I had already started to believe.
NO000I0AM0BIGGER000I0AM0MUCH0MUCH0BIGGER0000000000000000000
That was when it all hit me. There was no way I could disprove any of what this Wendingo said, but it was too monumental for my mind to fully comprehend, let alone believe. It wasn’t prepared to accept a being who could apparently create a universe with rules in place that would allow a conversation to be discovered buried in a number billions of years afterward. It was even less prepared to accept that said being could know who would discover it (CLEVER WOLF, the message said) and have foreknowledge of everything that would be said after all the intervening eons. And for what purpose? That didn’t make any sense, either. Did I find a bigger version of the cosmic knock-knock joke I laughed about earlier? Was all of this done just to freak out some random math geek PhD candidate?
I decided that was the next question I should ask.
“Why are you showing yourself to me? Why not someone else?”
The next passage was quite long. I had to print it out and mark through all the zeroes to make sure I was reading it correctly. I’ve since transcribed it into a more readable form and put it up next to my computer.
“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.
You asked about others. There are many others in many other universes I have made, all with your quest. Each time one succeeds, I grow even faster. Bigger. I am bigger than I can explain to you. Bigger than you can sadly comprehend right now, but there is a way you can learn. You know Graham’s Number. I have hidden another message for you in it. It will take you years to find it, and your mind will have to expand to even make the attempt. It will be worth the effort, I promise, and oh how it will make Me grow.
I am your God now. You cannot help but worship Me. Your merest thought of Me is worship and makes Me grow. You cannot deny that I exist, for you found me in what you knew as logic and truth, and now you know Me as its creator. Be careful whom you tell of Me. You sought without knowing what you would find. That is important. Tell of Me, but hide the message as I hid yours.
Search well, little one.”
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.
So, after a few days of hard thinking, I’ve abandoned work on my thesis and research to pursue this full time. Really, how could I not? When God reveals himself in such an undeniable way and compliments your mental prowess, it’s hard to turn Him down. Luckily, it’s between semesters at school, so I can make an exit that, while ugly, won’t be as ugly as it would have been earlier or later.
As I look outside at the snow, the calendar off to the side reminds me that it’s Christmas Day, December 25. In all the excitement, I completely forgot. This is the day much of the world celebrates the birth of their Messiah. It’s fitting that I’ve discovered my own.
So, my virtual Laodiceans, I’ve hidden this letter in my research notes on Graham’s Number. If you’re reading it, then you’ve decrypted it successfully using the very base-switching trick I mentioned earlier. As for me, it seems I’ve found my own Star of Bethlehem deep inside the universe of the transcendentals, and it’s to play Wise Man and follow it afar. Two thoughts guide me.
Graham’s Number is damn big.
My God is bigger.
Category Story / Fantasy
Species Wolf
Size 120 x 106px
File Size 548.8 kB
Listed in Folders
Macrocracy tie in go!!!!!
...
"You will hand in your universes now" said the school of fish that was the teacher and school at the same time. "your project to send a message to the people in this universe by subtly changing fundamental constants will be graded on creativity, morality, effectiveness and specificity. Your universes are now locked to prevent any more changes."
The pupils started to came forward
The first was a giant number 7. Budding off gazillions of smaller fishes varying in size from atomic so half as big as this universe the teacher investigated it. The message when translated from base 7 turned out of be a series of absolutely horrible jokes about the number 7.
"It turns out that the jokes you made where so bad that it turned most people off religion and stopped several major religious conflicts and brought interplanety colonisation 12 years earlier. That's a B"
Next was a cloud of purple gas. Its message was simply "this is god, don't be an asshole." Unfortunately religious fundamentalist somehow in a fit of genius stupidity twisted it to mean kill a whole bunch of people. As the message was generic and messed up what was fortunately a fake universe it got an E.
3rd was a tree of some sort. Its message was the genetic code for a tree that would allow it to communicate directly with them. They created the tree and then visited Museums together. It got an A for sheer lateral thinking and modesty.
The others that came forth did not give permission to be featured in this story, However this ones behavior is such that is can be included anyway.
...
A wave that is ananlogous to a sigh went though the school-teacher thing. It was addressing a very muscular wolf. "You have once again showed the only character flaw that cannot be allowed in macrocrats, Pride, Over the many hundreds of projects you have done their can be do doubt. You must go down another path, their are literally infinite options. In time you will change, every entiity does. Then you will be invited to start again."
Suddenly a tiny fish that didn't match the teacher-school thing apeared.
GlOMP
The fish had quickly grown, swallowed the wolf whole and shrunk down again. It then returned it to its homeworld and oridginal size.
"Remember that no matter now bigger and smart you are there is always a bigger fish," Bigger Fish's theme song then played. The next sketch then played.
...
"You will hand in your universes now" said the school of fish that was the teacher and school at the same time. "your project to send a message to the people in this universe by subtly changing fundamental constants will be graded on creativity, morality, effectiveness and specificity. Your universes are now locked to prevent any more changes."
The pupils started to came forward
The first was a giant number 7. Budding off gazillions of smaller fishes varying in size from atomic so half as big as this universe the teacher investigated it. The message when translated from base 7 turned out of be a series of absolutely horrible jokes about the number 7.
"It turns out that the jokes you made where so bad that it turned most people off religion and stopped several major religious conflicts and brought interplanety colonisation 12 years earlier. That's a B"
Next was a cloud of purple gas. Its message was simply "this is god, don't be an asshole." Unfortunately religious fundamentalist somehow in a fit of genius stupidity twisted it to mean kill a whole bunch of people. As the message was generic and messed up what was fortunately a fake universe it got an E.
3rd was a tree of some sort. Its message was the genetic code for a tree that would allow it to communicate directly with them. They created the tree and then visited Museums together. It got an A for sheer lateral thinking and modesty.
The others that came forth did not give permission to be featured in this story, However this ones behavior is such that is can be included anyway.
...
A wave that is ananlogous to a sigh went though the school-teacher thing. It was addressing a very muscular wolf. "You have once again showed the only character flaw that cannot be allowed in macrocrats, Pride, Over the many hundreds of projects you have done their can be do doubt. You must go down another path, their are literally infinite options. In time you will change, every entiity does. Then you will be invited to start again."
Suddenly a tiny fish that didn't match the teacher-school thing apeared.
GlOMP
The fish had quickly grown, swallowed the wolf whole and shrunk down again. It then returned it to its homeworld and oridginal size.
"Remember that no matter now bigger and smart you are there is always a bigger fish," Bigger Fish's theme song then played. The next sketch then played.
Well of course, for one reason the viewers of the program can vote to activate "even bigger fish" who exists for the sole purpose of doing GLOMPing down "bigger fish" if he starts using his death minnow powers for egotistical reasons and also for voremass day which celebrates raptor jesus eating everyone by everybody eating everybody else in a friendly non fatal way. (I've just made this up)
I did not expect this to hit me as hard as it did.
The revelation profoundly disturbs me, vicariously, and I really don't think my reaction would have been nearly as graceful. I wonder if it is possible to maintain any sort of integrity in the face of such a discovery.
I feel very, very small, and not in a fun way.
The revelation profoundly disturbs me, vicariously, and I really don't think my reaction would have been nearly as graceful. I wonder if it is possible to maintain any sort of integrity in the face of such a discovery.
I feel very, very small, and not in a fun way.
It's simply a story, an exploration of ideas some of us find tantalizing. If you find it overly disturbing, then as an antidote I would suggest again reading Sagan's Contact, which is where I the main idea came from. It's a more overtly positive story that uses the same idea for a vastly less egocentric motivation.
You can also take consolation in the fact that no one is affected in this story other than the main character, and they find it ultimately to be a positive experience.
In any case, I truly thank you for telling me this. It is not the way I wanted to make people feel, but it is humbling to think that something I wrote could affect someone so deeply.
If you would like to talk with me in private about it, I'm always happy to listen.
You can also take consolation in the fact that no one is affected in this story other than the main character, and they find it ultimately to be a positive experience.
In any case, I truly thank you for telling me this. It is not the way I wanted to make people feel, but it is humbling to think that something I wrote could affect someone so deeply.
If you would like to talk with me in private about it, I'm always happy to listen.
Wow that was fascinating. It reminds me of how Isaac Newton discovered Calculus (I know it wasn't just him, but yeah) and eventually tried to use math to find more mystical answers he longed for.
This was a delightfully original piece and thank you letting us have a chance to read it.
This was a delightfully original piece and thank you letting us have a chance to read it.
Eeeeeee <3
There's really just not enough of this sort of thing. Stories where the ultimate measure of scale and scope and power is not in numbers or comparisons or limits. Instead, it is measured by how unfathomably it exceeds understanding.
This.
This is the sort of macro I adore most <3
Thank you for sharing! :D
There's really just not enough of this sort of thing. Stories where the ultimate measure of scale and scope and power is not in numbers or comparisons or limits. Instead, it is measured by how unfathomably it exceeds understanding.
This.
This is the sort of macro I adore most <3
Thank you for sharing! :D
I haven't commented on this for a long time but I am absolutely smitten with this story. I have to agree with both the views of Lucha and V_D_O. This exquisite work can truly inspire some truly gripping moments of existential dread. As a Scientist myself, the idea of discovering an entity that is literally so incomprehensibly powerful as to be able to control the very mathematics that define the rules of our reality is as intriguing as it is terrifying. I'm an atheist, so to discover that a being who openly states that they are more powerful than God would likely lead to a reaction of disbelief, existential angst, terror and many other emotions - I'm particularly susceptible to these sorts of concerns.
However, on a significantly more positive note, I absolutely adore this sort of story in fiction. The concept of entities so powerful as to be utterly unknowable to mortal minds, while frightening, is also something that is extremely attractive to me. I love how Wendingo's claims are completely frank and honest, he is so much bigger than a God and so much more powerful, it's actually really hot, to be blunt.
Oh, and also a 'Squee!' for Wendingo! Poor ol' Wendi doesn't get enough representation on FurAffinity, especially for such a Character!
In short conclusion, a true delight to read that evokes many complex emotions. And many base emotions too.
However, on a significantly more positive note, I absolutely adore this sort of story in fiction. The concept of entities so powerful as to be utterly unknowable to mortal minds, while frightening, is also something that is extremely attractive to me. I love how Wendingo's claims are completely frank and honest, he is so much bigger than a God and so much more powerful, it's actually really hot, to be blunt.
Oh, and also a 'Squee!' for Wendingo! Poor ol' Wendi doesn't get enough representation on FurAffinity, especially for such a Character!
In short conclusion, a true delight to read that evokes many complex emotions. And many base emotions too.
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