“Ah, there we go!” Hal declared.
“4,294,967,297 worked, did it?” Sham verified.
“Yeah… pretty big for being only the fifth Fermat number,” Hal commented.
“Well you’d expect that for 2 raised to the power of powers of 2,” Sham argued. “I’m sure it wasn’t that easy for Euler to find that 641 divided into 2^32 + 1.”
“Whatever. Now that Sushi, the head programmer, has access… well, we should be able to get you some data,” Hal offered optimistically.
“So, what’s it like in the Year 2000 anyway?” Sham inquired.
“Pretty bad,” Hal observed, being the observer. “Almost all the computers have failed - even ones that were supposed to be Y2K compliant. Businesses are failing because no supervisors can do arithmetic without calculators. The stock market is crashing, the economy is plummeting and there’s looting and pillaging in the streets.”
“What?! How are people taking it?” Sham gasped.
“Some haven’t noticed the difference,” Hal said, shrugging. “But at least it’s not that bad yet in Stall-Eons Gate, New Mexico… Hey, maybe you looped in as Ray to convince everyone to use four digit dates?” he mused, amused. Suddenly the calculator in his hand let out a squeal, and he glanced down at it. Picking up the squeal, he then turned his attention to the display. “Oh here we are… Sham, it looks like you’re here to get supple.”
“Well, I thought I was in pretty good shape…"
Hal smacked the device he held. “Sorry, get supplementary space. There’s a Math & Computing building that’s going to be constructed shortly, but it won’t have enough room in it for computers by the end of the century.”
“Computers that won’t work anyway because of Y2K?”
“That’s not the point. You just need to talk to the people designing the building and tell them to add more floors,” Hal reasoned. “According to BigE, the MC building now has six floors. With relative ease you can make MC^2.”
“Actually, someone was asking me about floors just a little while ago,” Sham recalled.
“Could be Mr. Aba Cuss - apparently he’s supervising the design.”
“I’ll try to find him,” Sham decided.
“I’ll see if any of BigE’s drives need reFermating,” Hal resolved.
As Hal disappeared, Sham hurryied out of Ray’s office. Unfortunately, tracking down the MC design head from his current sector proved difficult. And after the seek time, Sham had to wait for a block of available discussion time. Then finally, when Sham presented his case to Mr. Cuss, he met with immediate opposition.
“I don’t understand,” Aba protested. “I thought you agreed earlier that we had an abundant number of floors.”
Sham paused. “Actually, if you go by the actual definition of an abundant number, a six floor building falls just short of the mark,” he countered.
What is Sham talking about? What is an abundant number? Does anyone really care? Find out next issue…
--Greg “hologrami” Taylor
[My solo edit of mathNEWS continues. I’d forgotten about my Polkamon cover here. It would be my 8th, and was the only one I drew for Volume 81.]
