God’s number
Aditya Rishi

LENNY MEYER: "The Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it’s a long code sent to us from God. Yeah, like take the Hebrew word for, say, the Garden of Eden, Kadem. Kuf, Dalei Mem...Kuf is a hundred. Daled, four Mem, forty. They equal one hundred and forty-four. Then take the tree of knowledge...in the garden, Aat Ha Haim, it equals two hundred and thirty-three. Now you can take that number and..."

MAX COHEN: "These’re Fibonacci numbers. The Fibonacci sequence. Italian mathematician, 13th century. If you divide a hundred and forty-four into two hundred and thirty-three, it approaches theta, the Greek symbol for the golden ratio. The golden spiral."

LENNY MEYER: "You’re right, I never saw that before. That’s the series you find in nature. Like the face of a sunflower." MAX: "Wherever there’s a spiral." LENNY MEYER: "You see, there’s maths everywhere." MAX: "Simple shapes! Shapes in the market. Why not? These are spirals!" LENNY MEYER: "Our calculations have shown us that there is a number encoded in the text." MAX: "What sort of number?" LENNY MEYER: "All we know is that it’s 216 digits long. We just know that it’s the most common number encoded in the text. It might be some type of linguistic pattern."

MAX: "What’s the 216 number, Sol?" SOL: "Oh, you mean the bug. I found it working on Pi." MAX: "There’s something else. You remember those strange picks I got on computer. Well, those were correct. I hit two picks on the nose. Something’s going on, and it has to do with that number. A pattern is in that number. Euclid crashed after spitting out some numbers and the message."

SOL: "What was the number it spit out?" MAX: "Probably around 200 digits." SOL: "Certain loops create meltdown. Right before the computers crash, they become aware of their own structure and print out their ingredients. MAX: "The computer becomes conscious? That consciousness is the number."

RAV COHEN: "The Talmud tells us it began 2,000 years ago, when the Romans destroyed the second temple and murdered all of our priesthood - the Cohanim - the Cohens; this destroyed our greatest secret. In the centre of the great temple was the heart of Jewish life, the earthly residence of our God, the one God. It contained the ark of the Tabernacle which stored the original Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses. Only one man could enter this space once a year on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur. All of Israel would descend upon Jerusalem to witness the High Cohen’s trip into the centre. If the holy man was pure, he would reemerge a few moments later and Israel would have a prosperous year, else, he would die instantly. In the centre, the High Cohen had to intone a single word, the true name of God; it was 216 letters long. As the High Cohen walked into the flames, he took his secret to the top of the burning building. The heavens opened up and took the key from the priest’s outstretched hand. We’ve been searching for the key ever since… and you may have found it."

MAX: "That’s what happened. I saw God, more than God. It’s everything, math and science and nature. I saw the universe’s DNA."

For our answer, Fibonacci sequence would do; none got it right. Write at The Tribune or adityarishi99@yahoo.co.in.