By: Ramprasath R

The Infinite Monkey Theorem states that if a monkey hits keys on a typewriter/keyboard at random an infinite number of times for an infinite amount of duration, it will almost surely produce a particular text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

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“Can’t we speed up this entire process? How long must we wait? Didn’t we choose the simulation route specifically to reduce the waiting time?” I asked, losing my patience.

“As you requested, I have input another ten million ‘monkey threads’ into the simulation. The simulation should run much faster now,” Tony said.

While I was eyeballing over the simulation parameters on the giant screen, Tony asked, “Must we really do this? What if we just let nature take its course? Wouldn’t that be simpler?”

Technically, I am just a student, a twelfth-grader. Had a teacher asked that, I might have hesitated. But since it was a robotic assistant, I felt free to answer without inhibition. Part of the reason is that if there was an error in my logic, he would correct it, wouldn’t he? I wouldn’t have to look foolish in front of a teacher.

“Think of it this way,” I said. “The first wheel was discovered in Mesopotamia in the 4th century BCE. However, the internal combustion engine for a mechanical vehicle was only invented in 1879 CE. If you look at the journey of human society over those intervening two thousand years from the perspective of the wheel, it’s clear it wasn’t a straight path. What a massive distraction that a wheel had to wait two thousand years to reach its next stage in transportation! If we had moved in the right direction from the start, all those years wouldn’t have been wasted, right?”

Tony’s silicon cheeks and plastic eyelids crinkled, expressing a human smile with about 87% accuracy.

“What would you say about the lives of those born in the interim? That they were ‘Hijacked lives’?” I continued.

“Hijacked lives?” Tony asked, as if trying to comprehend the concept.

“Yes. It’s like being prevented from living your own life while being forced to live another,” I explained.

Tony nodded in agreement. Though his bionic eyes were fixed on me, I could sense his microprocessor and peripherals autonomously monitoring the simulation’s movements; why else would his cooling fan be spinning so fast?

“Humanity is flexible in nature and can react in unexpected ways. As time passes, our actions will inevitably create new possibilities for the course of events. Some of these will prove unprofitable, but at present we can only perceive through hindsight. Is it possible to determine these bad choices in advance? How can we stop reality from being flared out by these historical and developmental dead ends?” I asked.

Tony stood silently, looking at me, as if to seek further clarity.

“I think science, as a framework of formulas, theorems, proofs, and laws, cuts down unnecessary possibilities. But the caveat is that arriving at them takes time. Now, how can we reduce the amount of time? My prophecy machine will do it.” I said confidently.

Tony’s plastic eyebrows rose. His bionic eyes widened.

On the massive screen, the simulation’s graph continued to rise without any fluctuation, but the graph for ‘meaningful sequences’ extracted from the simulation remained stubbornly flat—a straight line. This made me furrow my brows.

“For so much time passed in simulation, we should have gotten something by now. Shouldn’t we, professor?” Tony asked.

“How long has the experiment been running, Tony?”

“42,162,000,000 million monkey-years. The simulation is still processing,” Tony replied.

The numbers appearing on the large screen confirmed what he said, only increasing my confusion.

I began to wonder if I had missed something and started double-checking the entire simulation to see if everything was as planned. My reference was an experiment conducted by Jesse Anderson in August 2011. His experiment, which successfully recreated A Lover’s Complaint and 99% of the Bard’s works, was my primary benchmark. I had built everything using the same tools, or technologically equivalent ones.

Accordingly, I created millions of threads on Amazon Elastic Cloud, naming them sequentially from Monkey-1 to Monkey-20,000,000. Each monkey thread would generate and output numerous sequences. I had issued commands to record these sequences into a file. Later, in another thread, I installed the Extractor software to find meaningful sequences among the generated sequences. I commanded the software to keep reading the file and to store any meaningful sequences separately.

The part that identified meaningful sequences was somewhat sophisticated. It contained every formula, theorem, hypothesis, number, letter, and equation discovered by humanity to date. I had ordered the software to categorize any sequence that even slightly resembled human discoveries as a ‘meaningful sequence.’ Upon review, everything was correct. I hadn’t missed a thing. Weighing everything, only one thing made sense to me.

“Do you know R.A. Lafferty, who wrote ‘Been a Long, Lone Time’?” I asked.

Tony stood like a statue. I could tell his processor was engaged in extremely tight processing cycles from the faint sound of the fans spinning rapidly to prevent the inner circuitry from overheating.

Finally, Tony tilted his metallic head to one side, crinkling his silicon cheek muscles, and said, “Oh! That underrated science fiction writer! The one who wrote that the time spent on such experiments would take a duration immeasurable by humans? I know him. So, are you saying your experiment is proof that strengthens his view?”

I ignored his sarcasm. Just then, the printer connected to the computer running the simulation chirped.

“No. This isn’t over yet,” I said, my eyes fixed on the printer. Following my gaze, Tony’s bionic eyes also landed on the machine.

The printer spat out a sheet of paper that read: E = mc^2 * Unknown_Constant.

“Wow! Your Prophecy Machine finally works,” Tony said. His eyebrows lowered, and his eyes widened.

“But what is this ‘Unknown_Constant’? I don’t understand that,” I said, puzzled.

“Oh, that? It’s nothing. If Planck’s constant varies even slightly, Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence equation changes,” Tony explained.

“Ah… now I get it. In our universe, the Planck constant of Reality is fixed. If this Planck constant has changed, it means this equation must belong to a different Reality,” I said, realizing what was happening.

“Should I shred this paper? What use is it if it doesn’t fit our reality?” Tony asked.

His question made me think deeply. My eyes darted left and right. Finally, I spoke.

“Imagine how wild it would be if another version of me in another reality or an upper dimension were getting a printed paper with formulas pertaining to our reality? With the help of appropriate communication devices, we can exchange these formulas across realities.” I said hopefully.

“That is a good hypothesis,” Tony said, shaking his metallic head in a curiously human-like fashion.

“So, collect that paper, Tony. All we need now are tools to exchange information between realities.”