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Sunday, July 29, 2012

Today's #Scifi #fantasy short story #BurnTheEquations


"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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