Mathenauts : tales of mathematical wonder by Rucker Rudy v. B. (Rudy von Bitter) 1946-

Author:Rucker, Rudy v. B. (Rudy von Bitter), 1946-
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Mathematicians, Mathematics, Science fiction, American
Publisher: New York : Arbor House
Published: 1987-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER

The Tale of Happiton

H

appiton was a happy little town. It had 20,000 inhabitants, give or take seven, and they were productive citizens who mowed their lawns quite regularly. Folks in Happiton were pretty healthy. They had a life expectancy of seventy-five years or so, and lots of them lived to ripe old ages. Down at the town square, there was a nice big courthouse with all sorts of relics from WW II and monuments to various heroes and whatnot. People were proud, and had the right to be proud, of Happiton.

On the top of the courthouse, there was a big bell that boomed every hour on the hour, and you could hear it far and wide—even as far out as Shady Oaks Drive, way out nearly in the countryside.

One day at noon, a few people standing near the courthouse noticed that right after the noon bell rang, there was a funny litde sound coming from up in the belfry. And for the next few days, folks noticed that this scratching sound was occurring after every hour. So on Wednesday, Curt Dempster climbed up into the belfry and took a look. To his surprise, he found a crazy kind of contraption rigged up to the bell. There was this mechanical hand, sort of a robot arm, and next to it were five weird-looking dice that it could throw into a litde pan. They all had twenty sides on them, but instead of being numbered one through twenty, they were just numbered zero through nine, but with each digit appearing on two opposite sides. There was also a TV camera that pointed at the pan and it seemed to be attached to a microcomputer or something. That's all Curt could figure out. But then he noticed that on top of the computer, there was a neat litde envelope marked "To the

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