Ekkah's Search for Extra-Universal Intelligence ----------------------------------------------- To install this program, select File... Run from the Windows Program Manager menu. Then put Disk 1 in drive A: (or, if your 3.5" floppy is drive B:, substitute as appropriate below) and enter as your File Run Command Line: A:SETUP You will be prompted for where you wish to install the actual application, which defaults to C:\SEUI. Change this as necessary, and hit Enter. That's all there is to it. Concept ------- You are no doubt familiar with SETI, the Search for Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence. This requires millions of dollars worth of radio telescopes and supercomputers, scanning every conceivable radio frequency in every conceivable sector of the sky for every conceivable pattern of radiated energy. The question as to whether intelligence exists elsewhere in the Universe is a very profound one. To tap the wisdom of such intelligence, if it exists, would be a turning point in the history of our planet. Yet a much deeper question exists: how did our Universe itself come to be, with its matter, energy, laws of physics and so forth? Is it just happenstance that the physics of this Universe gave rise to life, and that this life has evolved to the point at which it has begun to inquire into its own origins? Is there a "Creator" which in any sense "loves" its creatures? Might the advent of intelligence be part of some unknowable Grand Plan, in which the Creator's "Capacity to Experience" experiences Itself through the "consciousness" of its creations? And, like the signature of a great Artist, might there be a pattern embedded in the fabric of reality -- a Puzzle -- which, when solved, allows us to see ourselves and our Oneness with one another in a new light? These are unanswerable questions. Or are they? Suppose that pi, or e, is such a Puzzle. Suppose that by applying cryptanalysis, we were to stumble across the fact that a Message of profound significance lies encoded in one of these numbers. Could this be? We know for a fact that messages of arbitrary profundity lie encoded in certain numbers. This is tautological: take any message you like, encode it into a sequence of digits, and there you have it, a message of arbitrary profundity encoded in that number. There are an infinite number of possible numbers, and there are an infinite number of possible messages. We also know for a fact that messages of arbitrary profundity lie encoded in pi, and e. This is because the infinite expansions of pi and e contain every possible sequence of digits of finite length -- not just once, but an infinite number of times. Therefore, if we decode the digits of pi and e into ASCII symbols, we know for a fact that here and there, using any given decoding scheme, every possible message will appear at some point. However, the first occurrence of each such message is likely to start very, very far out in the expansions of these numbers. We even know for a fact that messages of arbitrary profundity can be found in pi and e, starting with their very first digits -- if we are allowed complete freedom in our choice of decoding scheme. We just pick a decryption key of length equal to that of the message we want to see, and special-case each of its characters. The question is, does there exist, in pi or e, a Message of non-trivial length, starting within their first few billion digits or so, which can be decoded using keys of much shorter length than the Message itself? Perhaps, with the right decoding scheme, ALL of pi or e is a Message, of infinite length, such that it will take us the rest of Eternity to read and understand it all. If you were the Creator (and I would argue that you are, or at least that there is no way you can be sure that you are not), wouldn't YOU encode YOUR infinite wisdom into a number like this, for your creatures to stumble across and ponder the significance of one day? Well, maybe today is that day -- and maybe it's not. The only way to tell is to give it a shot. So, welcome to the wonderful world of Ekkah's Search for Extra- Universal Intelligence: a Search which, if successful, would be of infinitely greater Significance than the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization -- yet a Search which can be undertaken in the comfort of your own home using equipment costing a grand or two. Not only that, it's equipment that you already own, or you wouldn't be reading this! Best of luck in your Search! Credits ------- This software, including all text and graphics files, are by yours truly Tim Stryker. Scott Hemphill wrote the programs that generated pi and e to a million digits each, and Ken Maier located Scott's work for me over the Internet, for which I am eternally grateful. With the exception of Scott's PI.TXT and E.TXT files, the entire package is Copyright 1995 by Consensus Systems, Inc. -- but it is freely distributable by anyone, without restriction. Dr. Carl Sagan's first novel "Contact" gave me the idea for this program, although the works of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and many others have anticipated it. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this sort of thing has been attempted before by the CIA or NSA. Treating the digits of pi or e as a test datastream to be decrypted would be child's play for the computers at their disposal. If they've discovered anything, they've kept it to themselves so far. (Or does anybody exposed to the Message simply vanish into thin air? The spooks would tend to keep developments of that nature secret too. Sounds like a cool premise for a spy novel... hmmm...) Speaking of books ----------------- This software and all of the foregoing exists for the sole purpose of enticing you into buying a copy of my recently-completed book, "Hacking Reality". Since you have read this far, it's clear that you enjoy techno- philosophical mindgames. Rather than offer Ekkah's SEUI as shareware, and hit you up for a $20 "registration fee", I figured I would release it as freeware, and ship you something substantial in return for your 20 bucks. Hacking Reality is about 96,000 words long. It's a novel of one person's bizarre journey of personal discovery and awakening. Concepts of virtual reality and reality-as-virtual are just the beginning -- it morphs into conjurings of neutron torpedoes over the breakfast table, a vacuum-packed ambulance ride with levitating morphine syringes, discourses on memetic and cultural evolution, the Karma of inverse-money, a takeoff on the Christian mythos, and a sex scene guaranteed to enlarge your view of the world. Then it segues smoothly into a Kahlil-Gibran-esqe exposition of the end of the world as we know it, smashing skulls and daring damsels, an encounter with the Hypersphere of Totality, and the Church of Your Name Here, whose guardian angels include Kurt Goedel, E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Robert Axelrod. I won't give away the ending, but Ekkah and the House of Addled Hackers of Digits for Fun do figure into the story in a cameo role. My favorite authors are people like Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Barbara Tuchman, Keith Laumer, William Manchester, Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut, and of course Douglas Adams. Although the Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is not 42, it may differ from this by less than a ten-trillionth of a percent (see the sample USER.TXT file in your SEUI directory for an example). Anyhow, Hacking Reality is not yet published, so Consensus Systems is making the following offer, valid until 31 December 1995. For a copy of Hacking Reality in manuscript form, signed by the author, send $20 plus $3 postage ($10 if outside the U.S.) to: Consensus Systems, Inc. 12351 N.W. 2nd St. Plantation, FL 33325 Florida residents please add 6% sales tax.