Page 273

"The precessional numbers highlighted by Sellers in the Osiris myth are 360, 72, 30 and 12."
"These he joined to the 360 days of which the year then consisted (emphasis added)."
"Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 360 -  day year  consists of  "12 months of 30 days each".
Note 6
And in general,as Sellers observes , "phrases are used which prompt simple mental calculations and an attention to numbers ". note 7
  "Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 360-day year consists of  '12 months of 30 days each'.  
Thus far we have been provided with three of Seller's precessional: 360, 12 and 30.  The fourth number,which occurs later in the text, is by far the most important.  As we saw in Chapter Nine, the evil deity known as Set led a group of conspirators in a plot to kill Osiris.  The number of these conspirators was 72."
 
The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night
Translated By Mardrus and Mathers
10001                                    1000 - 1 = 999
 
At this point the ZedAlizZed, laughing cried, "tha's gorra laugh scribe" the very far yonder scribe getting the point didn't.
And the Zed AlizZed died a death.

Page 28

In 1960, Hans Freudenthal, a mathematician at the Uni-versity of Utrecht, Holland, presented a mathematical lan- guage worked out to the last detail. (4) It is transmitted on radio impulses, but unlike many previous brainwaves coud not possibly be
misunderstood by any technically informed living being
    Freudenthal's starting point is quite simple. Whatever the aliens may look like as highly advanced intelligences they will be able to build radio-telescopes, because they, like ourselves, want interstellar communication. Anyone who has know-ledge necessary to build a radio-telescope, will be familiar with electronics and that is not conceivable without a mastery of the rules and formulae of mathematics. In other words mathematics is the multiplication table of an intercosmic language.    
    We use the decimal system. It is not unreasonable to assume that our ten fingers supplied a natural calculating machine  

/ Page 29   /

machine for it. We imported this system about 600 B.C. from India where it had developed from the Brahman method of writing numerals. Egyptian hieroglyphs stood for 1, 10, 100, 1000 etc."
"...So we can guarantee that the binary system is practicable. It works with the basic figure 2. The advantage of the binary system is that every number can be formed from the product of the numbers 0 and 1:  

1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 1111 10000 10001 and so on.

for one for two for three for four for five for six for seven for eight for nine for ten for eleven for twelve for thirteen for fourteen for fifteen for sixteen for seventeen

1111110111111 1111101011111 1111011101111 1111101011111 1111110111111 1111110111111 1111000011111 1110000000111 1101000001011 1011000001101 1111000001111 1111000001111 1110011100111 1110011100111 1110011100111 1110011100111 1110011100111

 
   The binary system became the language for all computers, which can claim to be faultless because there are never more than two possibilities: 1 or 0, good or not good, right or not right, yes or no."
 

Page 250
                                                        '1. 4 . 94  written between 3.50 pm and 4.40 pm'
 
                                             " A number of ONE HUNDRED and ONE and that symbolises
                                                the character that plays the CREED, the COLOUR,and all
                                                pointing to the WHITE ARROW,and if we decrease the
                                                First Word and the Last Word so that it comes to NINETY
                                                NINE, and this is a number that can easily be divided by
                                                THREE, and that is the Pyramid form, and the Triads of the
                                                 Ancient:
                                                 PTAH, SEKHEM and NEFERTUM
                                                              ISIS, OSIRIS, HORUS
                                                              AMUN, UTKHUNS
                                                 The FATHER and SON and HOLY GHOST
                                                 Translated into English by Abbel Hakim Awayan "
                                                          Figure 26.5 ' The  99  titles of God' "

Page 15

'This is a slightly unusual request,'said Dr Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraints.' As far as I know, it's the first time anyone's been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an Automatic Sequence Computer. I don't wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your - ah establishment had much use for such a ma-chine.Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?'
       'Gladly,' replied the lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. 'Your Mark V Computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits,the machine will be printing words not columns of figures.'
       'I dont quite understand...' This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries - since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it
       'Naturally.'
       'It is really quite simple.We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God'
       'I beg your pardon?'

/ Page16 /  

'We have reason to believe' continued the lama imper-turbably, ' that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised,'
       'And you have been doing this for three centuries?
       'Yes: we expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete the task.'
       'Oh, Dr Wagner looked a little dazed. 'Now I see why you wanted to hire one of our machines. But what exactly is the purpose of this project ?
       'The lama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had offended him. If so there was no trace of annoyance in the reply.
       'Call it ritual, if you like, but it's a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being - God , Jehova , Allah , and so on - they are only man made labels. There is a
philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the
possible combinations of letters that can occur are what
one may cal the real names of God. By systematic per-mutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all'
       'I see. You've been starting at  AAAAAAA... and work-ing up to  ZZZZZZZZ ...'
       'Exactly - though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the electromatic typewriters to deal with
this is of course trivial. A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate
ridiculous com-binations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in sucession.'
      'Three? Surely you mean two.'
      'Three is correct; I am afraid it would take too long to explain why , even if you understood our language.'

/ Page 17 /  

'I'm sure it would,' said Wagner hastily. 'Go on.'
       'Luckily, it will be a simple matter to adapt your Automatic Sequence Computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years it will be able to do in a hundred days.'
       'Dr Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhatten streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not man-made , mountains. High up in their remote aeries these monks had been patiently at work generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was there any
limits to the follies of mankind ? Still, he must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right...
      'There's no doubt,' replied the doctor, that we can modify the Mark  V Im much more worried about the problem of installation and maintainance. Getting out to Tibet, in these days, is not going to be easy.'
      'We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air - that is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India we will provide transport from there.'
      'And you want to hire two of our engineers ?
      'Yes, for the three months that the project should occupy.'
      'I've no doubt that personnel can manage that.' Dr Wagner scribbled a note on his desk pad. 'There are just two other points -'
      'Before he could finish the sentence the lama had produced a small slip of paper.
      'This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank.'

/ Page 18 /  

'Thank you. It appears to be - ah - adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention
it - but it's surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy have you?'
      'A diesel generator providing fifty kilowatts at a hundred and ten vaults .It was installed about five years
ago and is quite reliable. It's made life at the lamasery much more comfortable, but of course it was really
installed to provide power for the motors driving the prayer wheels.'
      'Of course,' echoed Dr Wagner. ' I should have thought of that.'    
       The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time one gets used to anything. After three months,
George Hanley was not impressed by the two-thousand-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote checkerboard
of fields in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smoothed stones and staring morosely at the
distant mountains whose names he had never bothered to discover
     'This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him. Project Shangri-La, some
wit back at the labs had christened it. For weeks now the Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish. Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all their possible combinations, exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into enormous books. In another week, heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what ob-scure calculations had convinced the monks that they needn't go on to words of ten, twenty or a hundred letters,

/ Page 19 /  

George didn't know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan,
and that the high lama (whom they'd naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didn't look a bit like him) would
suddenly announce that the project would be extended to approximately A.D. 2060. They were quite capable of it.
    'George heard the heavy door slam in the wind as Chuck came out on to the parapet beside him . As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him so popular with the monks - who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life: That was one thing in their favour they weren't bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village for instance...
    'Listen George' said Chuck urgently.'I've learned some-thing that means trouble.'
    'Whats's wrong? Isn't the machine behaving?' That was the worst contigency George could imagine. It might delay his return, and nothing could be more horrible. The way he felt now even the sight of a TV commercial would seem like manner from heaven. At least it would be some link with home.
   'No - it's nothing like that.' Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally
he was scared of the drop. 'I've just found out what all this is about.'
   'What d'ya mean I thought we knew .' 'Sure - we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn't
know why, It's the craziest thing -'
   'Tell me something new,' growled George.
   '- but old Sam's just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the
sheets roll out.

/ Page 20 /

Well, this time he seemed rather exited, or at least as near as he'll ever get to it. When I told him
that we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I'd ever wondered what
they were trying to do I said, "Sure" -  and he told me.'  
    'Go on : I'll buy it'.
    'Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names - and they reckon that there are about nine
billion of them - Gods purpose will be achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to
  do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.'
    'Then what do they expect us to do ? Commit suicide?'
'There's no need for that. When the list's completed, God steps in and simply winds things up...bingo!'  
    'Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world.'
    'Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.
    'That's just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way,
like I'd been stupid in class, and said, "It's nothing as trivial as that" '  
     George thought this over for a moment.
    'That's what I call taking the Wide View,' he said pres-ently . 'But what do you suppose we should do about it? I don't see that it makes the slightest difference to us. After all we already  knew they were crazy.'
    'Yes - but don't you see what may happen? When the list's complete and the Last Trump doesn't blow - or whatever it is they expect - we may get the blame. It's our machine they've been using. I dont like the situation one little bit.'
    'I see, said George slowly. You've a point there. But this

/ Page 21 /

sort of things happened before you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana we had a crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him - even sold their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty , as you'd expect. They just decided that he'd made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do.'  
   'Well, this isn't Loisiana, in case you hadn't noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I'll be sorry for old Sam when his life backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else.'
   'I've been wishing that for weeks . But there's nothing we can do until the contract's finished and the transport arrives to fly us out.'
   'Of course,' said Chuck thoughtfully, 'we could always try a bit of sabotage.'
   'Like hell we could! That would make things worse.'
   'Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport calls in a week. O.K. - then all we need to do is to find something that needs replacing during one of the overhaul periods - something that will hold up the works for a couple of days. We'll fix it of course, but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register.They won't be able to catch us then.'  
   'I dont like it,' said George.' 'It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No I'll sit tight and takes what comes.'

 

 

   'I still don't like it,'he said, seven days later, as the tough

/ Page 22 /

little mountain ponies carried them down the winding road.
'And don't you think I'm running away because Im afraid. I'm just sorry for those poor old guys up there, and I don't want to be around when they find what suckers they've been. Wonder how Sam will take it?' 'It's funny,' replied Chuck, 'but when I said good-bye I got the idea he knew we were walking out on him - and that he didn't care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished.After That...' George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset: here and there, lights gleamed like portholes in the side of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it? wondered  George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over again? 'He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The high lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. . No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm of the keys hitting the paper, for the MarkV itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its tho-usands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall.

/ Page / 23

'There she is!' Called Chuck, pointing down into the valley.
     'Aint she beautiful!'
     'She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savouring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll round his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope.
     'The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the road was very good, as roads went in that region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear, and ablaze with the familiar friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry
     'He began to sing ,but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.
'Should be there in an hour', he called back over his shoul-der to Chuck. Then he added in an afterthought: 'Wonder if the computer's finished its run. It was due about now.'
     'Chuck didn't reply, so George swung around in his saddle. He could just see Chuck's face, a white oval turned towards the sky.
  'Look,' whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
      Overhead without any fuss, the stars were going out.