The Dominoes Speak
© 2010 Tim Fort
EXACTLY 7.510582 centimeters psnürkwards along the seventeenth spatial dimension from this world is Parallel Continuum Beta Gimel Null. The world of Beta Gimel Null has very much in common with our universe. The inhabitants speak Thinglish which, by an amazing coincidence, is almost indistinguishable from English. Many of the customs are the same, too–a couple of exceptions being that the Nullians smoke cigarettes before sex, and they are rather fond of movie musicals with midgets in them.
However, there is one very discernable difference between our world and theirs: the Nullians have an obsession with kinetic art which is on par with our world’s passion for sex and stupid TV shows. In fact, their calendar is based upon the establishment of the city of Dominotopolis. which was founded by the legendary kinetic artist Timoleon Fortescu several centuries past as a place to spread his kinetic art wisdom to future generations. In days of yore, the Great Fortescu first invented the xyloexplosives, clever-levers, herringbones, and string-a-lings that would form the basis of much of the kinetic art in Beta Gimel Null.
In this parallel world, the most exalted and holy people are the Knerds, clad in their holy polyester garments of lime green and plaid, who devote their lives to creating the chain-reaction gadgets that so amaze the other Nullians. Eschewing money, decent hygiene, and the possibility of ever having sex with another person, the gallant Knerds spend countless hours setting up dominoes in complex patterns, weaving together sticks into stick bombs, and building colossal collapsing structures with wooden blocks. All Knerds dream of creating a gadget so amazing and innovative that they would be allowed to wear the coveted Golden Pocket Protector.
In the early fourth century, one of the Knerds who dwelled in Dominotopolis, Lunatim the Mildly Deranged, had postulated the astounding idea that simple logic circuits could be made out of dominoes or other suitable chain-reaction devices. At a historical lecture during the Spring of 314, he successfully demonstrated the first AND, OR, and NOT gates. When he boldly suggested that a working digital computer could be constructed from dominoes or craft sticks, many of the Knerds in his audience spazzed out or wet their pants with joy. They stormed out of the lecture hall with the resolution to start working on a kinetic computer post haste.
From that lecture onward, things rapidly snowballed. Within a year, the first working digital computer using craft sticks was successfully demonstrated. Called the Brainiac 2800 Xylocomputer, it used ten thousand collapsing sticks to add together a couple of binary numbers. Then a Ph.D. candidate in Causality Entrainment Devices, Sylvester the Perpetually Twitchy, took a quantum leap forward and proposed that, in theory, a colossal domino computer could be programmed with artificial intelligence.
After much furious debate, with Knerds slapping each other with slide rules, it was decided that they would attempt a truly breath-taking goal: building a domino computer with AI that would figure out the Meaning of Life. It was such a bold suggestion that many Knerds hearing it had to lie down and take a nap afterwards. So, in the Fall of 317, construction began on the computer which was named the Omniac One DomCom.
It took three centuries for the Knerds to finish with their masterpiece. There were many setbacks, including the Earthquake of 420 in which over 500 billion dominoes were toppled before their time. During construction, over 1138 Knerds succumbed to Blistered Thumb Syndrome and other injuries. Over a billion drink boxes were consumed by the workers who also collectively picked over two hundred tons of boogers from their noses during the work.
However, the Knerds laid an impressive 3.14 trillion dominoes in the process, with entire forests decimated and several factories built to meet the demand for dominoes. The Omniac One itself would eventually cover 1592 square kilometers of land north of Dominotopolis, filling up hundreds of inter-connected buildings soaring as tall as forty floors.
And then it was finally finished. On a warm Summer’s day in 484, nearly everybody in Beta Gimel Null watched on satellite television as Lunatim VIII leaned over and pushed over a solid diamond domino to thunderous applause. If everything worked well, and none of the dominoes were messed with by an errant cockroach or air draft, the Omniac One would, in twenty years, deliver the answer to that all-important question, “What is the Meaning of Life?”
Life itself went on as usual during the two-decade wait. Movie musicals with singing midgets won the Oswald for Best Picture five of those years, and the Golden Pocket Protector changed shirts a dozen times. Countless thousands of couch potatoes spent the entire duration watching live television broadcasts of the falling dominoes, consuming over a trillion bags of deep-fried imitation food product in the process. And then the answer came in early Winter of 504.
When the Omniac One was within minutes of the answer, almost all eyes in Beta Gimel Null were focused on the answer grid. The answer grid was a series of 92 chutes with glass receptacles below them. Large dominoes with the letters of the alphabet on them would fall into the appropriate receptacles and spell out the answer in plain Thinglish. As the dominoes slowly plinked into their receptacles, millions of Nullians held their breath.
When the answer was finally spelled out, most Nullians gasped in astonishment, with many swooning or crapping in their slacks at the mundane profundity of it all. However, an enlightened few merely shrugged their shoulders and responded “Well, duh” to the answer which was:
THE MEANING OF LIFE IS TO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME FIGURING OUT THE MEANING OF LIFE THANKS FOR CREATING ME AND GOODBYE
The End