End of the Taylor Series
“Will you please explain to us what the point of all this was?” Ana inquired of her sister.
Elly nodded. “The punctuation that’s been going missing is all connected to numbers. Periods as decimals, dashes as minus signs, exclamation marks as factorials. But there’s no such correlation with question marks, which is why we’re seeing more of them! A question mark fancier must be behind this scheme!”
“Don’t start into Scheme,” groused a large ?, rising up from behind a basic pro-log sign. “With all the parentheses involved in that language, my fort ran better under Al Golle. Though he was never able to seize me a big, oh, notation in math!”
“Awk!” exclaimed Max. “I see Q! And it’s irrational!”
“pFFT, just call me ?,” the ? said. “You know Elly, you didn’t even mention how commas appear in numbers and as french decimals.”
“Right, commatose patients have been sparse too,” Dr. Waterson realized.
“Now this all parses,” Ana remarked. “It’s been a plot designed to amplify appearances of the question mark.”
“With an attempt being made to finger Elly as the cause of some problems, owing to her natural immunity,” Max reasoned. “? wanted her out of the equation!”
“Indeed,” ? stated. “But I was thrown a curve by her discussing with people who could track the problem to this sector of town. I regret that I’ll now have to dispose of each of you… but my principal ideals must continue.”
“Wait, you’re forgetting something,” Dr. Waterson interjected. “The question mark may not appear often in notation but it is of fundamental importance. Without mathematicians asking questions, we would never be where we are today.”
? paused. “There’s a ring of truth to that,” it admitted.
“Consider the following,” Elly stated. “The popular questions that surrounded Fermat’s Last Theorem, the current P versus NP problem, even the 23 Mathematical Problems of David Hilbert.”
“All of it is mathematically important and all of it involves big question marks,” Ana added.
“Don’t go recognition crazy now and put mathematics in Jeopardy,” Max concluded.
“You think maybe I taught all o’… gee,” the ? reflected. “I suppose my role is larger than I suspected.”
“Of course,” Dr. Waterson concluded. “Come on now, let us work to re-solve our differences and put an end to this power struggle.”
“Very well,” agreed ?. “I suppose what I really require is psychological counselling…”
*
So, as a result of their care, ? overcame a period of monic depression and became unconditionally stable. Electra “Elly” Lysis resumed her duties in the l’Hopital as before, actually being five times as functional. Max Value and Ana Nuther Value took relaxing vacations in Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, prior to accepting a case that involved making Al Gore rhythmic using a horn clause. And Dr. Carrie Waterson carried on with her own work… with no other large problem ever revealing itself.
So the moral of the story is: If you question marks, don’t forget the importance of notation.
Finis II
-Greg “hologrami” Taylor
[Dr. Waterson suddenly gets a first name. And yes, it's Carrie Waterson, the same name as the protagonist in "Time & Tied"... recall that I was first writing that story at around this time in 2000/2001 (under the name "Time Trippers"). I don't think this will be Time Carrie's eventual occupation though... setting aside how she doesn't go for puns, and this one looks like Ami Mizuno, I have other plans for Time Carrie.
In other random trivia, the ? was actually italicized as a person in the issue. Also in this issue was “How to Derive a Taylor Series”, an explanation of how I wrote Hopital and Quantum Loop... I will probably include that on this site too, because why not.
So did you realize the question mark was behind things, as Sham alluded to in Entry 4? I did actually sketch l'Hopital out very roughly this time around, so there's that. Did you have a favourite character from the series at all? Even back then I did seem to prefer largely female casts. Feel free to let me know, or at least share the link around. Since it's my birthday this coming week, that'd be cool and all.
Thank you for reading!]
