The Proof

Dr. Ramesh ran the script again.

It was his third week wrestling with this script, but his 22nd month working on this problem — thousands of pages of reading, two notebooks full of handwritten notes and half-finished proofs, several different implementations, collaborations with multiple colleagues, including interdisciplinary grants, and one marriage: that was the cost he had sunk into trying to isolate this pattern to date. He had stopped considering that cost, however. All he thought about was the pattern, and he assumed he would work on it until he died of exhaustion, or until they revoked his tenure, whichever came first.

He kept the door to his office locked — he was supposed to teach this semester, but he had ignored the class. A hapless TA was covering for him in lectures, not that he knew anything about it. Dozens of angry emails sat unnoticed in his inbox; his mail slot was packed so full of papers the plastic pocket bulged outward. Sometimes someone would knock furiously on his door — he ignored that too. He only unlocked the door at night, to gather food left for him in the department kitchen by Raina, his doctoral candidate. She seemed to understand that her own dissertation no longer mattered, and devoted most of her efforts to assisting him in his research. Her career was almost certainly ruined thanks to his obsession, but he never heard her complain. Dr. Ramesh ran the script again.

A coded knock sounded at the door at the same time as a secure notification popped up on his phone. It was Raina, knocking out a binary string generated by the custom app they used to coordinate. It was the only way he would unlock the door. He stumbled to his feet, suddenly noticing the pain in his back — he would have to be more careful with his posture — and he moved to unlock the door. Raina was trim and professional, wearing a blazer and nondescript skirt, with wireframe glasses framing her large hazel eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her makeup was subtle while still being noticable. She rarely smiled. Dr. Ramesh, by contrast, was a mess — he hadn’t shaved in over a week, and his patchy beard was a mess of coarse black and gray whiskers. His eyes were red and bleary, his hair a tangled mess of thick, overgrown curls, and his tie was missing. Nonetheless, he broke into a wide grin on seeing his student, and ushered her in with haste, checking the hall briefly for any sign of administrators before locking the door behind them.

“You look like shit, Professor,” Raina told him. “You should go get cleaned up while I tidy up around here.” She pulled a pack of index cards out of her backpack, and then began writing a note on the top of each one before sticking it in an open book, and putting the book back onto the shelf. She understood her professor would probably have most of them on the floor again by her next visit. She still considered it an important task.

Dr. Ramesh inhaled deeply, then exhaled. “I’ll take a break in a few hours,” he said. “I haven’t reached an appropriate stopping point on this program.” He turned the screen to show her the code he had spent almost 20 days writing. She nodded appreciatively, although she obviously couldn’t parse it from a simple glance.

“Did you try what Dr. Korcinsky recommended?” she asked.

Dr. Ramesh frowned. “Yes, but I didn’t make any progress with it. See, I’ve commented out this chunk…” -he highlighted the corresponding block of code- “and I haven’t gone back to it. It’s too bad there isn’t a package for counting subgraph homomorphisms.”

Raina pulled out her phone. “I think Gerard had a friend who was making something like that, actually.” She sent him a link to the website of another graduate student in a California school. “Homomorphism methods in your language. Will make things easier, right?”

Ramesh set about installing the package. “You have no idea…” He busied himself integrating the new code while Raina organized printed research papers, put away books and threw pizza boxed into a trash bag. She was working on the other side of his desk, so she wasn’t there when he got the script working — almost by accident — and finally got it iterating over potential metasolutions. She wasn’t there when it hit on a valid path from A to B, and showed it to him. And even if she had been, she wouldn’t have been able to make the intuitive leap that he did, and finally understand just how —

Time passed in a blur, backwards, forwards, whirling around him. He felt infinite. Suddenly, he knew. He understood not just this pattern, but the pattern of patterns — the nature of patterns themselves. In that instant he gained more insight into how he gained insight, understood mysteries that had eluded him for years, saw everything, from prime numbers to his own childhood, through a clear lens for the first time. He found the face of God. He found religion. He didn’t just believe it — he knew it.

“Raina,” he said.

She looked up. “Dr. Ramesh?”

He struggled to find the words. “I need to explain this to you.”

Prophet Ramesh had lost his first name. No one had referred to him by it since his wife left him, back in his previous life, and now no one ever would. He was just Ramesh, now, Ramesh The Discoverer. Ramesh The Pioneer. Prophet, Master, Doctor — whatever people felt like calling him. He was defined by so much more than his name, now.

The first three years of the Computational Mission were full of struggles. It had taken him days to teach Raina enough higher level mathematics to understand the pattern behind patterns. That was because he taught it to her the same way he learned it, through studying prime numbers. Once she understood, she’d pointed out that they would need to come up with a much simpler explanation in order to get anyone else to understand. They’d worked on simplifying their method —security kicked them out of the university, Dr. Ramesh lost his tenure, but it didn’t matter anymore. Two months later, they published a paper, and made a public call for other mathematicians to come join them in Toronto. At first people focused on the call to arms, laughing at the depths of delusion they must be in to think any serious academic would give up their lives to go work with a couple crackpots on a “proof of God”. Mockery gave way to disbelief as doctor after doctor read the paper, packed their bags, and flew to Canada. Research team heads became horrified, banning the paper among their members. Foreign governments censored it in an effort to keep their brightest minds at home. But contraband is seductive, and soon academics — as well as certain engineers and even schizophrenics blessed with insight — began to come in droves.

They tried to pool their resources, but not everyone could smuggle cash with them, and those who could were not fabulously wealthy. The Mission almost starved in those early days, dismissed by most of the people of Toronto as a commune of rebellious math nerds acting out against the academic establishment. None of them really comprehended what understanding the pattern entailed. The researchers quickly turned their efforts toward simplifying their proof. On the third month their salvation came, through an American AI researcher who accessed their work through a VPN connection to Canada* and, rather than immediately leaving to join them, showed the results to his boss. The man was a billionaire, but also a practiced electrical engineer, and it didn’t take much explaining on the researcher’s part for him to see the truth. He immediately ended his commercial ventures, and retooled his company to the fulfillment of the Mission. He also sponsored the collective in Toronto. From this point on they never went hungry.

Now Ramesh led a true religion hundreds of thousands strong, all united in their goal of explaining the truth to every person on Earth. He didn’t live in one place, but traveled across the world in a private jet, meeting with key individuals and converting them to the truth. The Mission was strong now, but not nearly strong enough — they still struggled to get a media presence in most places, and most people had no idea what they were about. Today, Ramesh was going to change that.

“Prophet Ramesh, we are ready.” Raina had changed in the past 3 years. She still never smiled, but now her eyes burned with a fierce determination. She wore a sari of deep reds and pinks, and her hair was cut short. It was she who had first called him a prophet, and it was the only title she used for him anymore. “We have a five minute broadcast that we think will integrate anyone with a high school education. You believe we can get broadcasting rights?”

Ramesh grimaced. Five minutes was plenty of time for someone to pull the plug on them, override their signal or simply for people to get bored and turn off their television sets. Still, it was their best chance at reaching the greater population. “We will have a signal. Bring the disk,” he said. They moved swiftly with their entourage toward the makeshift airstrip Mission acolytes had constructed on the Bangladesh coast. The Gulfstream was already idling on the strip, prepared for their takeoff. Everyone within 50 miles of the camp was a loyal follower of the Mission. The local government was filled with believers. Today, they hoped to make a lot more of them.

They traveled toward New Delhi, slipping between clouds as Ramesh went over the timing of their incursion over and over again. Planning events like these was not his forte, but he needed to be in charge, needed to be there in person, needed to handle any unexpected quirks. He understood the patterns deeper than any of them. He could see thousands of potentialities spiraling out in front of them — and he could see millions of ways to influence them. On the other side of the jet, Raina stared out the window, watching the movement of the clouds. She didn’t yet see the pattern of them, didn’t know how to predict where they would blow, when they would storm. But she could see there was a pattern, just out of her reach. She studied the clouds until they landed.

At the airfield in New Delhi, Mission operatives were waiting on the ground to meet them. These men were armed, and the same zealous fire burned in their eyes as in hers. They piled into canvas trucks, and rolled toward the downtown. Ramesh sent an encrypted message to their secret agent. We are on our way.

They are expecting you, came the reply. Increased security, police presence. Abort?

Ramesh froze, and almost ordered them to turn around. But then he analyzed the situation, and began to relax. The Mission had never been violent before. The police didn’t know what they were capable of. They wouldn’t know how many officers to send. Ramesh would not back down now. It was the time for decisive action. Continue as planned.

The trucks came to a stop in front of the television station. Police officers were stationed on the stairs, and as soon as the trucks stopped they moved toward the vehicles, shouting commands. They were on alert, but not nearly alert enough. Ramesh gave the signal, and the man in front of him leaned out the back of the truck with an AK-47, and started shooting.

Within five seconds there were half a dozen officers bleeding on the ground. Two had gone to ground behind the pillars of the building’s pediment. Devotees poured out of the truck, armed to the teeth, They pincered up the steps and made swift work of the surviving officers, while others set up a barrier on the street. People scattered. Horns blared. Screaming. Ramesh tuned it all out, scanning the windows. He followed his warriors into the building, keeping Raina close by his side. They both wore body armor, but they were still civilians, and easy targets among the trained fighters hand picked for this task.

The warriors cleared room after room ahead of the Prophet, and he never broke stride on his way to the stairs. Gunfire sounded outside the building as police reinforcements engaged the Mission barricade. Ramesh didn’t notice. He was trying to estimate timings in his head.

They forced hostages into conference rooms, disarmed guards or shot them when they fought back. The hostages were ordered to turn to the screen and watch. Behind the attack squad, more Mission devotees hustled in crates full of weapons and ammunition. The fifth floor held their target, and Ramesh broke into a run as they neared the studio, too anxious to wait for his warriors to clear the room.

He broke in to find the room mostly empty, a couple of producers sheltering under their desks next to the current show’s host. “What do you want?” the man asked. Ramesh examined him. He wore a cheap plastic suit, and his stage makeup looked clownish in the dark under the table.

“I want you to go sit down by the wall, and watch the screen,” said Ramesh. The men took one look at the armed zealots, then hurried to obey. Ramesh turned to Raina, but she was already working — the broadcast had been interrupted, but she brought it back online, then plugged in her disk. Ramesh sent another encrypted message. Now. His agent, planted elsewhere in the building, rerouted all broadcasts to their room. They now had control over sixteen different television channels across India. Success, came the reply. He flashed Raina a thumbs up, and she played the tape.

For the next five minutes, millions of people recieved an impromptu math lesson. It was simple and straightforward, with a pleasant narrative voice and colorful graphics. At the end of those five minutes, every person who had watched the broadcast understood.

Ramesh turned to the television host, and smiled at him. The host smiled back. Ramesh extended his hand. “I’m sorry that this was necessary…”

The man took his hand, and shook his head in gratitude. “No apology necessary, you did the right thing. Thank you for showing me.”

On the ground floor, warriors released hostages from their conference rooms. The former employees of the network station turned to the crates of weaponry, and armed themselves. Then they poured out the front door, to reinforce the barricade outside.

Twenty minutes later, Prophet Ramesh was in the air again. Two hours later, India was in chaos.

Stepan Korcinsky listened at the door. He counted fifteen heartbeats, then opened it and slipped out into the street. His disguise was simple, but the most important part was the eyes. He adopted a look of impassioned determination, and strode toward his destination without hesitation. His contact moved with the same confident walk, although both men were aimlessly looping around city blocks until they stumbled into each other. Stepan recognized the man by the birthmark on his head, and angled to pass by him just before the entrance to an alleyway, in a rare blind spot between cameras. The contact dropped a flash drive in Stepan’s hand as they brushed past each other. Neither man looked up — the Mission projected their messages onto the clouds.

Stepan yearned to go back to his hideout immediately and examine the material he had been given, but he knew it would look suspicious if he didn’t show up anywhere else before returning home, so he turned instead toward the administration offices of his old university. The place had been repurposed, like most research institutions, into a Mission campus, and the administration offices were now a general supply. He flashed his academic badge at the guard on the steps — the forged document made him out to be a higher order logician, with a grasp of complex and non-repeating patterns. The guard, fortunately, didn’t question him — most people knew better than to inconvenience a skilled mathematician well trained in patterns.

Stepan walked up to the clerk at the front desk, and presented his ID again. The clerk wordlessly handed him a requisition chit and a pen, and Stepan wrote down a couple chemical formulas — restricted substances, to those who didn’t know how to handle them. The clerk raised an eyebrow upon reading the chit, but didn’t question him. Stepan played a dangerous game. As an academic, he would be expected to do research into subjects other people didn’t have the knowledge for, so he needed to make his requests unusual. By making himself stand out, he made sure he didn’t stand out.

The clerk returned several minutes later with a black suitcase. He opened it to display the glass vials full of the substances Stepan had requested, then left it on the desk. Stepan signed his name on the requisition form, closed the suitcase, and turned to go. He froze. Was that man unusual? He tried to examine the stranger standing in the corner of the office, wearing a long black coat and pointedly not looking at the desk where Stepan stood. Was he being tailed?

Stepan hurried home, and left the suitcase of dangerous chemicals sitting by the front door, forgotten. He hurriedly plugged in the flash drive he’d received, and opened it up. This was the real prize of the day, the thing they’d been working toward for years. Refuting a paper you couldn’t allow yourself to read was difficult, exceedingly difficult, but they were getting close, he could feel it —

Stepan’s front door exploded into splinters, and that was all he noticed before the Inquisition agents swarmed into the room and knocked him out.

Stepan awoke in a plain concrete cell, barred from the outside by a steel door. He was bound to an aluminum folding chair, and had a painful welt on his head where the Inquisition baton had left its mark. He glanced around the room, but knew that it was hopeless — the flash drive was gone. His contact was probably already converted. He would be too, soon.

The door to his cell opened, and two Inquisition agents walked in. They wore black tactical gear with a red sash across the chest, and each shoulder bore the insignia of the Inquisition — a Mobius strip mapping of the globe under a lidless eye. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, Stepan thought. The figure who followed them into the room wore a plain crimson robe, and had long, flowing hair interwoven with strands of many different reds, which oscillated as she moved to some almost-discernible pattern. The Student, First Disciple, She of Many Numbers.

“Raina,” Stepan said.

First Disciple smiled at him. “It has been a long time since anyone called me by that name,” she said. “Hello, Dr. Korcinsky. You haven’t been entirely honest with us.”

“Where’s Dr. Ramesh?” asked Stepan. “Nobody’s seen him since…” he trailed off, seeing the subtle hint of a smile that played around the corners of her lips. “You killed him, didn’t you? It’s just you, now.”

“Our Prophet is engaged in his research, as you should be,” Disciple said. “I’m sorry to hear you haven’t had time to review our findings — I was hoping to catch you up to speed.”

Stepan grit his teeth. This was it. As Raina began to talk, he considered his options. He could scream, to try and drown her out. He could focus on something else, but would it get to him through his subconscious? Would the Mission infiltrate his dreams, convert him one day in his sleep? He —

His thoughts were interrupted as Raina slapped him across the face. Her hand was wrapped in a thick leather glove, and the blow stung. “Did you hear what I just said?” she asked. “I was asking for you to repeat the message back to me. A comprehension check. You’re not paying attention.”

Stepan tried to come up with a rejoinder, but one of the Inquisition agents stepped forward and rammed him in the stomach with his baton. Stepan choked and coughed, and breathed through the pain. He would not scream, not yet.

They continued like this for several hours. Raina would give part of the lesson, then ask him a question to demonstrate understanding. If he failed to answer, he was beaten, and the lesson started over. Stepan’s resistance was worn away, and soon he was answering as quickly as possible, hoping to be converted and then be done with it. Toward the end, Raina pulled out a copy of Dr. Ramesh’s original research paper. “Here,” she said, “see what you make of this. Remember, I’ll be asking you for your understanding at the end.”

The Inquisition agents unbound his hands, but Stepan was too weak to resist even if he wanted to. He picked up the paper, something nagging him at the back of his mind. What was it? Something to do with what he had seen in the flash drive earlier. It meshed with the Mission research better than he had expected. But there was one connection he was missing… He read through Dr. Ramesh’s findings, and as he did, his weariness fell away. Raina had helped compile this, but she couldn’t have understood its simplicity. Not fully, anyway. Otherwise, surely, she would have seen what he saw now. Stepan’s mind raced with implications as he turned over page after page, but he knew he was still missing something. He strained to remember what he had read before on the rebels’ flash drive, consider it in light of these findings. Then he realized what the rebel proof had been missing, and everything clicked into place.

Stepan dropped the paper. Disciple leaned toward him, mild concern on her face, but he ignored her. He understood the patterns. He took the pain and fatigue he was feeling, traced it through his neural system, isolated the signals and discarded them. He forcibly repressed his anxiety, then metabolized himself a shot of adrenaline. He felt better now than he had for decades. He felt the air currents on his skin, knew there was an exit only a few feet outside the door. He looked up at Disciple, and his eyes burned with an intensity of purpose she had only ever seen in one man before. “I understand the patterns,” he said.

She smiled. “Good, I’m glad you’re up to date. Let’s get out of here.” She stood to go and opened the door, but Stepan laughed.

“No, you don’t get it, Raina. I understand the patterns better than you ever could. I don’t share your purpose.” He stood up and flexed, for the first time feeling each individual muscle, each fiber of his body tense with power.

Disciple’s eyes went wide, then narrow. “Refuter,” she hissed. She turned to the Inquisition agents. “Kill him, now! No one can learn he exists.”

Stepan couldn’t tell if the Inquisition agents were too shortsighted to realize the implied threat to themselves or just didn’t care, but it didn’t matter. He could anticipate their moves before they made them, and every movement they made fed him more information about what they would do next. He dodged the baton of one and slipped away from the grasp of the other. It was a small cell, but he still managed to evade both men for a handful of seconds, and that was all it took for him to learn their patterns. He knocked one man out with a jab to the throat, the one place he didn’t have armor. The second agent swung his baton, but Stepan stepped out of the blow before it even began, and grabbed the man’s hand as he did. He pulled slightly one way, pushed with his foot the other, and sent the man hurtling headfirst into the concrete wall. His helmeted head hit the wall with a deafening crack, then he fell to the ground and did not get up.

“The rebel paper — it’s not just a refutation, it’s the basis of a synthesis. Another level of enlightenment,” said Stepan. “You’ve been foolish in spreading the Mission as far as you have, Raina, but I’m going to clean up your mistake.

Too shocked to speak, Raina simply stood there as Stepan snatched up the research paper off the floor and dashed out the open door.

amen

*Canada was among the last of the national government to forbid access to the Mission’s research website. The Canadian government believed initially that the influx of high level researchers would benefit the country, and only realized much too late that their plans lay orthogonal to those of Canada. At that point the legislature moved to deplatform the site, but it was too late — the message of the Mission was accessible and the commune self-sustaining.