Arthur Clarke - The Nine Billion Names of God

This is a slightly unusual request, said Dr Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. As far as I know, its the first time anyones been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an Automatic Sequence Computer. I dont wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that yourahestablishment had much use for such a machine. 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 centuriessince 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?

We have reason to believe, continued the lama imperturbably, 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 its a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme BeingGod, Jehova, Allah, and so onthey 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 call the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all.

I see. Youve been starting at AAAAAAA and working up to ZZZZZZZZ

Exactlythough 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 combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in succession.

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.

Im 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 Manhattan 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 limit to the follies of mankind? Still, he must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right

Theres no doubt, replied the doctor, that we can modify the Mark V to print lists of this nature. Im much more worried about the problem of installation and maintenance. 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 airthat 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.

Ive 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.

Thank you. It appears to beahadequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention itbut its 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 volts. It was installed about five years ago and is quite reliable. Its 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 obscure calculations had convinced the monks that they neednt bother to go on to words of ten, twenty, or a hundred letters.

George didnt know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan, and that the high lama (whom theyd naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didnt 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 wooden 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 monkswho, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life. That was one thing hi then: favour: they might be crazy, but they werent bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village, for instance

Listen, George, said Chuck urgently. Ive learned something that means trouble.

Whats wrong? Isnt the machine behaving? That was the worst contingency 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 manna from heaven. At least it would be some link with home.

Noits nothing like that. Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally he was scared of the drop. Ive just found what all this is about.

What dya mean? I thought we knew.

Surewe know what the monks are trying to do. But we didnt know why. Its the craziest thing

Tell me something new, growled George.

but old Sams just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed rather excited, or at least as near as hell 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 Id ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, Sureand he told me.