"Helm, Warp One
Engage!"
Emila Earhart*
Anyway, hung out
with CJ as I said I would, worked on me book and we just did some
general stuff(like surfing the Internet, man I love the Internet)
Anyway, onto the flash fiction!
Burn The
Equations
A humble new
scientist was settling into the office of a Professor who had just
passed away. It felt so awkward to go into the office of someone who
just died. Mostly because he had to clean it out. The old man of
eighty years had no close family or friends to speak of. He was an
isolated man and the task of removing things from his office fell
into a “not it” kind of thing until the new scientist came it.
People just left it full of the man's old things until he came along.
The office was
mostly filled with dull notes of upcoming appointments and lectures
plus an absurd amount of pictures of a dog that was really the only
family the man had which had been adopted by one of the dog loving
janitors. Books filled all the shelves. Though one thing did matter.
Something the new scientist almost missed. He only found it when he
bumped open a secret compartment on the underside of the desk with
his knee when he was sitting in the chair. It was scientific notes.
Really it was a mix-up between notes and papers. There were hundreds
of them methodically stapled and labeled. He couldn't resist reading
something hidden like this. He began reading the start of the
document labeled foreword:
I'm an idiot
for writing this down. But I have to. I write down all my ideas. It's
a compulsion. It's almost like a ghost would haunt me begging me to
write them down so it could read them if I didn't. The idea is how to
predict the future. It is very, very possible. I got the idea from a
science fiction novel I was reading, which many novels say this,
there are as many realities as there are possibilities. It hit me
that yes there are. There is one. And if you know every position
every atom then you could predict the exact future of the universe.
All you need is a big enough computer. We have children do word
problems of when hypothetical trains will collide. These pages
contain the equations to caluclate the future at various scales using
atoms, molecules, proteins, even cells. I made equations that could
figure out the thought processes of a person if you input the neuron
configuration of their cells. I cracked it all. You just need a
computer to input all the equations. The better the computer the
closer the results and certain scales are more accurate. Out of my
foolishness I documented it all. Out of my compulsion. Curse my
genius. And I can't throw these notes away. That is also a part of my
compulsion. I have to save them. It's the same ghost, begging to read
them. He won't let me get rid of them.
But you can get
rid them. The hypothetical reader who runs across these notes can.
Who I hope never does, though I guess inevitably will. God I hope
it's you Mr. Benson or one of the other janitors. Don't just throw it
away. Burn it. Don't tear it up. Tearing them up leaves a chance of
them putting it all back together. If only I could stop my
compulsion. If I asked for help to get rid of the compulsion people
would try to get the notes. And imagine what people would do with the
power to predict the future. You may think you couldn't possibly
calculate all the variables but we approach that ability every day
and even then my equations, even without an equation I already know
who will when the next two Super Bowls. This is a real Pandora's Box
and this power is worse than weapons of mass destruction. Especially
since everyone will be fighting to make sure other people don't have
the power. And the only way to do that is by pure destruction of
knowledge.
Burn these.
Burn these. Burn these documents I beg of you. And please don't read
on even though I had to write down all these equations and all these
solutions. Just burn them all.
The scientist
wanted to read them all. He wanted to find out the secret to
predicting the future. He wanted to be the ghost that would read all
the notes. If he could actually predict the Super Bowls he predict
them and make an absurd amount of money on bets. He could do
lotteries, though people would figure he was cheating somehow. He
could publish it all and claim it his own and go down in history.
That was the most tempting of all. Become immortal through history.
That would be amazing. He then laughed. Going down in history for
finding out how to predict the future. Of course there was one
terrible, terrible flaw in it all in his ability to use it for evil.
Though he was a scientist...
He was a
psychologist.
He would not
know how to use all those notes to abuse it. Though fortunately as a
psychologist he had spent years studying people. He knew what the man
who discovered how to see the future said was right. Giving this
power to the world was a bad idea. So he burned the notes. Though he
imagined a hypothetical reality where he had some sort of magical
genie would be there to give him a few wishes so he give the power to
the world so he could study it then wish it all away. That would be
an interesting thing to write his own hidden notes about. This
scientist understood the others dilemma. He had solved how to make
any other person fall in love with you and he could not throw away
his own notes either.
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