Quantum Loop: Entry 1b

Sham sank into his - or technically Professor Cal Q. Late’s - office chair. The only thing he’d been able to say when he’d seen the size of the class he had to teach was “Oh Boy”. Fortunately, Hal had been able to discover what his lecture had been about in time, so things weren’t off to that bad of a beginning.

“Okay Sham - I think we’ve got it!” Hal piped up, appearing behind Sham and walking forwards through the desk.

“At last,” Sham breathed.

“Perfect numbers are not just number whose divisors add up to the number itself, they’re even the sum of a series of consecutive integers … (Hal paused to tap his calculator, his link to the parallel hybrid computer running Quantum Loop) … and BigE says that the number 2^216,090 X(2^216,091 - 1) is a perfect number.”

Sham cast a look at Hal. “So is 6, but that still doesn’t explain why I’ve looped here.”

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood,” Hal defended himself. He punched a few buttons on the calculator and took a puff of his cigar. “Well, right now it looks like the object of this loop is to improve Professor Late’s record.”

“The record with his class?” Sham wondered.

“Yeah, well, it seems that the person you looped into really lives up to his name; he’s rarely on time. Also he’s missing assignments, losing files, memory errors, stack overflow…" Hal blinked at the readout. “Geez, I told Sushi not to do that programming upgrade!”

Sham cut off Hal’s grumbling with a wave of his hand. “I get the idea. So I teach a few classes, attend a few meetings and thus keep Professor Late from getting fired? Sounds almost too routine.”

“Well, this character appears to be some type of absentminded genius, too wrapped up in work to even recall his address. Knows his stuff though. Anyway, we’ll keep working on scenarios,” Hal assured. The white doorway appeared behind him again. “In the meantime, just consider this loop a break.” Hal stepped through the doorway and was gone.

“If I got a break during a loop, I’d exit,” Sham mumbled to no one in particular. He turned back to his desk, deciding it was time to familiarize himself with his new schedule.

Two weeks later, Sham had the schedule down pat. But he didn’t seem closer to looping, and Hal hadn’t been able to identify any critical section of the loop. They appeared to be deadlocked. “And it’s getting frustrating,” Sham murmured, tossing some darts at the dartboard he’d found in Professor Late’s office.

“What’s frustrating?” came an unexpected statement.

Sham turned to see another professor in his doorway. “Uhhh, can’t hit the bull’s eye,” he said, hoping the darts in the treble twenty would go unnoticed. His colleague had other things on his mind though.

“So, Cal - you haven’t come by for any Java the last couple of weeks.”

“Uhm, I’ve been busy,” Sham ventured. Drat, he didn’t know the other person’s identity, but apparently he should have been making routine calls.

“Been doing any work on our project?”

“When I’ve had time…"

“And what about that unusual prime number sequence?” the visitor pressed, now looking a bit concerned. “The one that goes 31, 331, 3331, 33331, 333331 …"

“Oh that!” Sham said hurriedly. “That's… that’s actually going to fail when you have a certain number of 3’s,” Sham realized. “A later number in the sequence isn’t prime.”

Which number breaks the sequence? Who is this person quizzing Sham? Check back in two weeks...

--Greg “hologrami” Taylor

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[This old mathNEWS issue - volume 77, issue 2 - also featured my first “Sine Field” entry... a column about nothing. And another “Cynic’s Corner”, back when it wasn’t supposed to be a regular column.]

G Taylor @EpsilonTime