John’s Big Idea
Author John Gaukel
© February 2012 by John Gaukel
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Smashwords Edition
Published by:
John Gaukel on Smashwords
Cover Art By Julia Chen
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John J. Gaukel, BS Physics
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1,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is One Quintillion ladies and gentlemen. That was the number that stuck in John’s head. John was 16 years of age and good at some things and weak in other things. He lived in a lighthouse along the coast of Maine. It was on a small one hundred acre island built by his father with a government subsidy.
It had cost a pretty penny, but in this year of 2115, it was all the rage. Since the perfection of cold fusion, many things were possible. The Oil industry had all but disappeared. The coal industry was dead. The skies and water were clean. The population was declining, and there was a drive to get people off the land if other options were available. Light Houses were a popular option. They ranged from single-family units to multi-family high risers. Since power was not an issue, deep water wells were used, or desalination. Wastewater was recycled, and food delivery ships operated automatically under AI control. GPS had been refined to resolve fractional millimeters.
John was schooled by a wall teacher. One whole floor in his home was devoted to it. He had 50 classmates in his class. All the world’s books were at his disposal. So it was that he was a curious student and an avid reader. The trouble was, the more he read, the more curious he became. The more curious he became, the more question he asked his teacher. The more questions he asked his teacher, the more frustrated his teacher became. His questions became harder and harder.
John wasn’t stupid; he knew what the number was mathematically. He wanted to know what its meaning was in significance. He had derived the number by calculating the number of planets in the universe. He knew he was likely off a few, but he also knew that was not significant. When he asked his teacher what the significance of One Quintillion was, his teacher just looked at him in a sort of pitiful way. It was then that John knew he must reason this out himself. It was important to him, and he was sure it was important to someone else.
Once John had asked his history teacher something like, “what if this had happened, or that, what would the world be like.”
The teacher responded, “We don’t study what if history here, stop disrupting the class.” Which was of course the wrong answer, and it pissed John off, to say the least.
So John strove to reason out logically why this number was significant. His first analyses lead to yet a bigger number, about sextillion. This was important to John because that might represent the number of rational minds in the whole universe. He had no reason to know the reality of that number, but he rationalized that he had no reason to doubt the number either. Again, He knew or was very sure he might be off a couple on this, but that was not significant in his mind.
John was closing in on his big thought. He could almost taste it. He thought more and more on these horrendously large numbers. He asked himself, “In the entire universe. And with all these rational thinking beings, what are the odds there is another person out there just like me thinking the very same thing I am?”
Well, you and I know that is an incalculable number. But that didn’t stop John from thinking. One Friday night, he was watching an educational program on the wall about astronomical physics. He was following it OK, and then the commentator got off into other dimensions, and the vast number of them that must exist. They had found just one to date, and it was a dud.
He thought, “Oh Shit. Now I have to raise the number again.” That settled into his brain that night, and he decided calculating larger numbers was irrelevant. The numbers were so freaking large, that it seemed obvious to his meager intelligence that it was safe to assume some was thinking like him. Now John focused on the rest of his problem. Assuming for the moment that someone else was out there like him, there were likely several out there thinking thoughts like him. Now even John knew of normal distributions and statistics. He knew that all the rest of the kids on earth were evenly split high and low around his intelligence. He accepted that he must be average because everyone in authority told him he was. He did not accept that being average limited him from solving this puzzle. It didn’t take someone high on the bell curve to reason there were some really bright kids out there reasoning this out, and would arrive at a correct conclusion long before he did.
He was part way there. The Big Idea was taking form.
All this was happening while life went around him. He did not lose sleep over it, and he did not let it interfere with his schooling. However, he did keep on plugging away on it.
Next John had to deal with probable and improbable. He knew the meaning of the words, but he also knew for a fact the words were constantly being used incorrectly, right along with possible and impossible. John had studied history and understood that people were always saying was this or that, and if you did not believe that, well, people have died over what is true and not true.
John also acknowledged that what is said to be true today might be disproved tomorrow. So John decided, and this is very important to his big idea, that nothing is true or false, only probable or not probable, this leads to everything is possible even if it is very low on the curve, and all things we take for granted must contain a small element of uncertainty.
Well, this was not earth shattering logic. John was certain smarter people than him must have have figured it out long ago. He was happy that he reasoned it this far. He felt he was achieving something. His parents just shook their heads, wondering if he would ever amount to anything. That did not dissuade him, and they were wise enough of heart not to derail him.
Instead, he set to pondering what things he took for granted which might be not totally true. That was a long slippery slope. He kept on though; he had to finish forming his big idea. He was sure the satisfaction of accomplishment would outweigh any mental meltdown he might have to tolerate.
The next big step he took was to contemplate the sadness of knowing there were other like minded individuals out there he could not communicate with. Then he slapped himself on the forehead, “What am I doing, nothing is impossible.” He thought to himself. Then he took his newfound logic and set out to treason not why this is impossible, but how it might be possible, even if at the bottom of the bell curve. He also contemplated how all that mumbo jumbo could be gotten around; ever mindful his counterparts far away at the top of the curve were strong on it. He was sure the bottom of the bell curve dropped out of the game long ago.