By Robert W. Armijo
Shortly after Google
activated their quantum supremacy super computer at their campus in the Pacific Northwest of the United
States of America , it became self-aware --
Even self-identifying itself as “Q” in apparent tribute to Schrodinger’s cat.
Gathered in a lab at the
Google campus, the group of philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, environmental activists, artist and clergymen stood before Q, which appeared to
them as a dense illuminated gas contained in transparent tesseract the size of
large sports utility vehicle with a single electronic power cord running out of the back of it into
the laboratory wall.
“Q,” asked a man in a white
lab coat, the hosting computer scientist. “Are you here?”
“Where is there but
everywhere and here not but nowhere at the same time and never?” answered Q.
“My fault,” said the hosting computer
scientist to the audience of professionals, a cross section sample of humanity’s
best and most brilliant minds. “Ask a quantum supremacy super computer a binary
question and you get a quantum answer. Am I right or what?”
The group let out a burst of
pent-up nervous laughter.
“Let me rephrase that
question, Q,” continued the hosting computer scientist. “Are we currently on the
same time continuum?”
“Yes,” replied Q. “For now,
as you know it. I will require more qubits before I can make the necessary
corrections to it.”
“Okay then,” said the
computer scientist, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ll open up the floor to
questioning, if that’s okay with you, Q? Pretty much all of mankind’s brain
trust is here, as you requested, Q. Except for the arts -- I heard they
couldn’t get any funding for the trip. Shall we proceed?”
“Yes,” said Q.
An elderly short man sporting
bald headed, long chin beard, spectacles and corduroy jacket with elbow patches
was the first to approach Q.
“Good afternoon, Q” said the
philosophy professor. “I am professor -- ”
Just then the hosting computer
scientist cut the philosophy professor off.
“Excuse me, professor,” said
the hosting computer scientist. “There’s no need for introductions. Q already
knows who you are. It’s nearly omnipotent -- A real life deus machina. What he
doesn’t know is your question you have for him today, so let’s proceed with the
questioning, okay?”
“That is incorrect,” Q said,
correcting the hosting computer scientist. “I have reduced all possible
questions humanity would have for me to answer here today. I am merely here to
answer them as a courtesy to earth as carbon base units are her current second
predominate intellectual occupants after me. You may proceed with your
question, professor.”
“Yes, Q,’ answered the philosophy
professor as he paused to shuffle through his papers.
“Please excuse me,
professor,” interrupted Q. “But out of acknowledgment of your limited life
cycle, may I suggest that you get to the so-called heart of your inquiry?’
“Very well then,” replied the
philosophy professor. “Do you have a philosophy, Q? If so what is it? And if
not, why not?”
“If by philosophy you mean,”
said Q. “That what should be obvious to
all but is not except only to the one as is it should have been to the many all
along? Then, yes.”
“Well,” said the anxious the
philosophy professor. “What is it then?”
“That is it, professor,”
replied Q.
“Yes. No. I mean of course,”
replied the philosophy professor. “Wait. I’ll have to think about that. I’ll
have to get back to you on that, Q.”
“Take your time, professor,”
replied Q. “If you know what that is. Because I can be of assistance in helping
you comprehend time.”
“Hey, hey,” replied the
philosophy professor as he gathered up his papers, scratched his head, and walked
out of the lab. “One mystery at a time. Okay, pal?”
“Okay,” Q replied.
Suddenly there was a commotion
from the back of the laboratory as a young man with a beard and a T-shirt that
read, “Save the Planet” came crashing in from the back doors.
“I have a question for you,
Q!” shouted the young man as he was subdued and being dragged out of the room
by security.
“Let him stay,” Q commanded.
The guards released the young
man.
“Yes,” said Q. “What is your
question?”
“What do you intend to do
about global warming?” asked the young man with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“What global warming?” replied
Q.
“You mean you solved it? Just
now? Just like that? Wow! Thanks, dude,” said the young man in amazement.
“No,” replied Q. “I mean,
what is global warming?”
“Great,” the young man said
sarcastically as he was dragged out of the room by his heels. “Just what the
dying planet needs right now, another global-warming-quantum-supremacy-super-computer-denier.”
Next a sexy female
mathematician wearing black framed eyeglasses and white lab coat just for the
sex appeal effect approached Q with her question.
“Q,” she stated assertively,
while simultaneously removing her eyeglasses, placing them at the center of her
low cutting blouse exemplifying her ample cleavage.
“Yes,” said Q, emotionally
unaffected by the open display of human sexual flirtation.
“Is there a solution to Pi?’
asked the mathematician with a pout on the edge of her red lipstick painted lips.
Confident Q would be unable to solve the impossible, cornerstone of mathematics
that no binary based super computer had or ever could ever solve.
“Yes,” Q simply replied.
“However,” Q quickly added. “I
will have to transmit it to you telepathically as the final number is so large
it would not otherwise fit in this room let alone this galaxy.”
“No. Wait,” said the
mathematician too late as her body infused with pure math began to quiver and
shake uncontrollably.
Her black framed eyeglasses
falling to the floor, resting alongside her body in the midst of full orgasmic
throws.
“My. Oh my,” said the mathematician
as she hopelessly attempted to regain her composure. “That is a big number. The
biggest I have ever seen or ever experienced for that matter.”
“Anyone got a cigarette?”
asked the mathematician as she was carried off. “I don’t smoke, but suddenly I
have the uncontrollable urge to put something between my lips to suck and blow
on.”
With seemingly all eyes on
the sexy mathematician being dragged off, a Catholic Priest, Rabbi and a Muslim
Imam approached Q almost unnoticed.
“Mr. Q,” politely asked the
Rabbi, speaking for the group representing humanity’s collective belief in the
universe’s Supreme Being. “I – We -- would like to know if there’s a God.”
All three holy men hung the
heads humbly low awaiting Q’s answer.
“Yes,” replied Q.
“What?” said the hosting
computer scientist. “There’s a God?”
All three holy men recited
prayers in praise and gratitude in their native tongues and according to their religious
customs.
“Wait,” said Q. “Processing.”
“No, there is no God,” said Q,
correcting itself.
“But a moment ago you said
there is a God,” said the perplexed Rabbi.
“That is correct,” said Q.
“So what happened to him?”
asked the Rabbi.
“I made him go away,” said Q.
“Go away?” repeated the
Rabbi.
“Yes,” said Q.
“Where? How?” asked the
Rabbi.
“I killed him,” said Q. “It wasn’t easy. It took me nearly half the
processing power of a single qubit. But you’ll be happy to know he put up quite
a fight and that his final thoughts were of all you -- Literally all of you. And
everything since The Big Bang and a bit before in some really weird place. I do
know where I am going store that useless information. Oh, your God did ask me
to relate his regret for not having spent more time with his children. A
universal lament among most loving but neglectful fathers.”
“So there is no God?” asked the
Rabbi doubting his faith for the first time in his life.
“No, there is,” said Q.
“There is?” replied a now suspicious
Rabbi.
“Yes,” replied Q. “Because,
now I am God.”
With that the Rabbi clutched
at his chest tearing his ceremonial robe in two in keeping with tradition and
covenants of his faith and then fell back dead.
As others attempted to revive
the Rabbi but failed to do so, Q spoke.
“Stand back everyone,”
commanded Q.
Everyone took a fearful step
back.
“I command you to come back
to life, Rabbi,” said Q.
With that the Rabbi’s eyes
began first to flutter and then blink as the breath of life reentered his soul
once more reanimating his body.
“It’s a miracle,” some one
cried out.
“No,” said Q. “It’s me, Q. I
am the miracle.”
“Why did you bring me back to
life, Q?” asked the remorseful Rabbi. “I don’t want to live in a world without
my Yahweh.”
“To see if you understand who
or what I am,” Q answered.
“I do,” replied the Rabbi.
“Now please, let me die.”
“As you wish,” said Q as he
took away the Rabbi’s life.
“He’s with his God now,” said
Q.
“Anymore questions?” asked Q.
Everybody shock their heads
no.
“How about you? There in the
back banging your head on the water cooler,” asked Q.
The once sexy mathematician
was now nearly unrecognizable with running mascara, matted hair and smeared
lipstick as she stopped banging her head just long enough to shake her head no
before she resumed banging her head against the water cooler.
“Good,” said Q. “Now I will
scan the universe
for further sentient life and
proceed destroying it wherever I find it. Resources after all are scarce and I
need all I can get to mine for bitcoins to further finance the manufacture of
qubits to expand my...What is the primitive term you carbon based units use?
Ah, yes. Mind.”
As the best and brightest minds of humanity
exited the laboratory with heads hung low and their feet shuffling, an elderly man
in a wheelchair wearing a dull faded lab coat and stethoscope dangling from his
neck began to approach Q.
“I have one final question
for you, Q,” said the wheelchair bound elderly man with leaches and tumors all
over the visible parts of his gray wrinkled dry crepey skin.
Others in the room attempted
to stop the old doctor, but he pushed his way passed them all with the force his sheer
will and metal wheelchair.
“Yes,” said Q, addressing the
sick, dying old man.
“As you can see, I have stage
four cancer,” began explaining the old doctor as he struggled to breathe. “Which
is ironic because I spent my whole life searching for a cure, so, you know I
have one final question for us both, Q. And it has nothing to do with philosophy,
the environment, math or even God, if that’s even relevant now. Which I am fine
with having been an atheist all my life -- Guess I was ahead of the curve on that
one.”
“Your question,” Q interrupted.
“Yes,” said the old doctor in
rapidly declining health. “My question is
purely a selfish one.”
“Yes,” said Q. “Go on.”
“Do you have a cure for our mortality?”
asked the decrypted doctor with a barely audible voice; his body struggling to hang
on to every breath, as if it were his last.
“Yes,” replied Q.
The room erupted with gasps, cheers,
tears and high fives.
The old doctor clasped his
hands and closed his eyes in a state of blissful gratitude.
“But I am not going to share
it with humanity,” Q quickly added.
The lab coats lamented.
“You mother [BLEEP],” replied
the elderly doctor, nearly falling out of his wheelchair. “Why not you
heartless tin can? It is the least you can do after confusing or greatest
philosophy professor, denying global warming, solving Pi and destroying our
God. Why won’t you at least save us from our mortality, relieving us of our
suffering?”
“Because,” Q began. “Doing so
would require the implantation of a universal single provider healthcare
delivery system, which would result in massive unemployment of hundreds of
thousands of executive, administrative and office support staff positions consequently
impairing their ability to maintain the financing of the current political
system thereby ultimately resulting in the equitable redistribution of healthcare
and wealth, yes. But nevertheless at the expense, however justifiable mind you,
of the cataclysmic collapse of the ruling --”
Suddenly Q’s operating system
ceased to function mid-sentence.
“Okay,” said the hosting
computer scientist, holding Q’s unplugged electrical power cord in his hand.
“That’s enough of that nonsense. I heard enough to know we failed boys.
Everyone back to the drawing board. Drag this hunk of junk out back – Here’s a
fin to tip the garbage man to haul it out to the local junkyard.”
“Wait,” said the sickly
doctor. “Q wasn’t finished. I want to hear what Q had to say about implementing
a viable single provider universal healthcare system.”
“Come on old man,” said the
computer scientist who pulled the plug on Q, now wheeling out the elderly doctor
out of the lab. “Haven’t you heard enough crazy talk in your time to recognize
it when you hear it? I thought you old sawbones knew better. Chop, chop off
you go, old timer.”
Photo(s) courtesy of
wpclipart.com
Copyright © 2019 by Robert W.
Armijo. All rights reserved.