The nine billion names of God

Short story of Arthur C. Clarke, comment taken from the blog peschavivo

"A friend asked me what the cloistered nuns, their life of prayer, compared to concrete aid such as medical assistance to the poorest, were used at. Why waste time of one's life praying? We do not want to be exhaustive to give arias without the necessary competence. I expose only one of my very personal theories about it: perhaps if the people who pray stop doing it, the world could cease to exist ", almost as happens in the story"The nine billion names of God "(1967) of Arthur Clark (Minehead, December 16, 1917 - Colombo, March 19, 2008), Unforgettable science fiction author known to most for his novel "2001: Odyssey in space".
Dr. Wagner managed to control himself. It was worth it. Then he said: “Your request is a little disconcerting. As far as I know, it is the first time that a Tibetan monastery orders an electronic calculator. I don't want to be indiscreet, but I was far from thinking that such a community could need that car. Can I ask you what you want to do? "

The lama straightened the edges of his silk robe and placed the ruler with which he had calculated the pound-dollar exchange rate on the table. “Gladly, your type 5 electronic calculator can perform, according to your catalog, all mathematical operations up to 10 decimals. However, I am interested in letters, with numbers. I will ask you to modify the output circuit to print letters instead of columns of digits.”

“I don't grasp well…”

“Since our monastery was founded, more than three centuries ago, we have dedicated ourselves to a certain work. It is a job that perhaps may seem strange to you, and I will ask you to listen to me with great openness."

"Agree."

“It's simple. We are compiling the list of all possible names of God.

"Please?"

The lama continued imperturbably: “We have excellent reason to believe that all those names require at most nine letters of our alphabet.”

“And you have done this for three centuries?”

“Yes, we had calculated that it would take fifteen thousand years to complete our work.”

The doctor let out a confused whistle, a little silly: “OK, I understand now why you want to rent one of our cars. But what is the purpose of the operation?”

For a fraction of a second the lama hesitated and Wagner feared he had offended that singular customer who had made the journey from Lhasa to New York, with a slide rule and the catalog of the Electronic Calculator Company in the pocket of his saffron robe.

“Call it a ritual practice if you like,” said the lama, “but it is a fundamental part of our faith. The names of the Supreme Being, God, Jupiter, Jehovah, Allah, etc. they are merely labels designed by men. Philosophical considerations too complex for me to expound here have led us to the certainty that among all the possible permutations and combinations of letters, lie the true names of God. Now, our aim is to find and write them all down.”

"I see. You started with AAA AAA AAA and you will get to ZZZ ZZZ ZZZ.”

“Except that we use our alphabet. It will certainly be easy for you to modify your electric typewriter to use our alphabet. But a problem that will interest you most will be the development of special circuits that eliminate useless combinations in advance. For example, no letter should appear more than three times successively.”

"Three? You mean two.”

"No. Three. But the complete explanation would take too long, even if you understood our language.”

Wagner hastened to say: “Of course, of course, continue.”

“It will be easy for you to adapt your automatic calculator for this purpose. With an appropriate program, a machine of this kind can permute the letters one after the other and print a result. Thus,” the lama concluded calmly, “what would have taken another fifteen thousand years will be completed in a hundred days.”

Dr. Wagner felt he was losing his sense of reality. Through the windows of the building the noises and lights of New York faded. He felt transported to a different world. Down there in their distant mountain refuge, generation after generation, Tibetan monks had been composing their list of meaningless names for three hundred years...

Was there no limit to human madness? But Dr. Wagner did not have to express his thoughts. The customer is always right…

He replied: “I have no doubt that we can modify the type 5 machine to print lists of that kind. I'm more concerned about installation and maintenance. Furthermore, it will not be easy to send it to Tibet.”

“We can overcome this difficulty. The detached pieces are small enough to be transported by plane. This is precisely why we chose your machine. Send the parts to India, we will take care of the rest.”

“Do you want to hire two of our engineers?”

“Yes, to assemble and check the machine during the hundred days.”

“I will make a note to personnel management,” Wagner said, writing in his notebook. “But two issues remain to be resolved…”

Before he finished the sentence, the lama took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is a document proving my account at the Asian Bank.”

"Thank you. Perfect ... but, if you allow, the second question is so elementary that he results in talking about it. It often happens that you forget something evident. Do you have an electricity source? "

“We have a 50 kW power electric generator of power, 110 volts. It was installed five years ago and works well. It facilitates life, to the monastery. We purchased it above all to make the wheels of the prayers turn. "

“Ah! Yes, of course, I should have thought about it ... "

From the parapet the view made the dizziness come, but it is known that you get used to everything.

Three months had passed and Georges Hanley was no longer impressed by the six hundred meters of overhang that separated the monastery from the fields that seemed to form a chessboard in the plain. Resting on one of the corrose stones from the wind, the engineer contemplated the distant mountains with a lazy eye, of which he ignored the name. "The name of God's name", as a company had defined it, was certainly the worst mad work in which he had ever participated.

One week after the other, the modified type 5 machine covered thousands of sheets of an incredible VOPük. Patient and inexorable, the calculator had aggregated the letters of the Tibetan alphabet in all possible combinations, exhausting one series after another. The monks cut certain words just out of the electric typewriter and glued them with devotion to huge registers. Within a week they would have finished.

Hanley ignored with what mysterious calculations they had come to the conclusion that there was no need to study groups of ten, twenty, one hundred, a thousand letters, and did not care at all. In his nightmares he sometimes dreamed that the Gran Lama had suddenly decided to complicate the operation a little more and to continue the work until the year 2060. That accommodation of good man seemed, moreover, perfectly capable. The heavy wooden door slammed. Chuk had reached him on the terrace. Chuk smoked, as usual, a cigar: he had become popular among the blade by distributing Havana cigars. "Those types could be completely stupid," Hanley thought "but they weren't Puritans." The frequent shipments to the village had not been without interest ...

"Listen, Georges," Chuk said. "We have some boredoms."

"Is the car spoiled?"

"No."

Chuk sat on the parapet. It was extraordinary because, usually, it feared dizziness.

"I discovered the purpose of the operation."

"But we knew!"

"We knew what the monks wanted to do, but we didn't know why."

"Bah! They are crazy ... "

“Listen, Georges, the old man explained to me. They think that when they have written all those names (and, according to them, there are about nine billion), the divine purpose will be achieved. The human race will have done what had been created for. "

"So what? Do they expect our suicide? "

"Useless. When the list is finished, God will intervene and will be over. "

"When will we finish will be the end of the world?"

Chuk had a nervous laugh: “This is what I told the old man. Then he looked at me in a strange way, as a professor looks at a particularly stupid pupil, and he said to me: “Oh! It will not be such an insignificant thing ... "."

Georges reflected an instant.

"It is a guy who obviously has wide ideas," he said "but, having said that, what changes? We already knew they were crazy. "

"Yes. But don't you understand what can happen? If the list is finished and the trumpets of the angel Gabriele, a Tibetan version, do not play, they can conclude that the fault is ours. After all, they employ our car. I don't like this matter ... "

"I follow you," Goges slowly said, "but I have seen others. When I was a boy, in Louisiana, a preacher announced the end of the world for the following Sunday. Hundreds of types believe it. Some, even selling their homes. But the following Sunday no one was irritated; People thought that they were a little wrong in his calculations, and a pile of them still have faith. "

“In case you don't ['noticed, I point out that we are not in Louisiana. We are alone, the two of us, between hundreds of monks. I love them, but I would prefer to be elsewhere when the old blade will realize that the operation has failed. "

"There is a solution. A small harmless sabotage. The plane arrives in a week and the car will end its work within four days, due to twenty -four hours a day. There is only one thing to repair something for two or three days. If you do the calculations well we can already be at the airport when the last name will come out of the car. "
Seven days later while the small mountain ponies went down the spiral road, Hanley said: “I have a little remorse. I don't run away because I'm afraid, but because I'm sorry. I wouldn't want to see the face of those good people when the car will stop. "

"In my opinion," Chuk said, "they understood very well that we saved us, but the thing is indifferent to them. Now they know how far the car is automatic and does not need surveillance. And they think it will not be followed. "

Georges turned on the saddle and looked. The buildings of the monastery loomed dark in the sunset sun. Small lights shone from time to time under the dark mass of the walls like the portholes of a broken ship. Electric lamps attached to the car circuit no. 5.

What would happen to the electric calculator? Georges wondered. Would the monks destroy it in their anger and disappointment? Or maybe they would have started again?

As if he were still up there, he saw what was happening at that moment on the mountain, behind the walls. The grand lama and his assistants examined the sheets, while some novices cut out baroque names and pasted them into the enormous register. And all this was done in religious silence. All you could hear was the machine's keys, which struck the paper like gentle rain. The calculator itself, which combined thousands of letters per second, was completely silent…

Chuk's voice interrupted his reverie.

"There he is! It gives me a damn pleasure!”

Like a tiny silver cross the old DC 3 transport plane had landed on the small makeshift airfield there. The sight made you want to take a good sip of ice-cold scotch. Chuk began to sing, but quickly stopped. The mountains did not encourage him.

Georges looked at his watch.

“We'll be there in an hour,” he said. And he added: “Do you think the calculation is finished?”.

Chuk didn't answer, and Georges raised his head. He saw Chuk's very pale face stretched towards the sky.

“Look,” Chuk murmured.

Georges looked up in turn. For the last time, above them, in the peace of the peaks, one by one the stars went out...