Library

“...Pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. You know it well, of course, and you also know that you can never come to the end of pi. There’s no creature in the universe, no matter how smart, who could calculate pi to the last digit - because there is no last digit, only an infinite number of digits. Your mathematicians have made an effort to calculate it out to... let’s say the ten billionth place. You won’t be surprised to hear that other mathematicians have gone further. Well, eventually - let’s say it’s in the ten-to-the-twentieth-power place - something happens. The randomly varying digits disappear, and for an unbelievably long period of time there’s nothing but ones and zeros.”

Idly, he was tracing a circle out on the sand with his toe. She paused a heartbeat before replying.

“And the zeros and ones finally stop? You get back to a random sequence of digits?” Seeing a faint sign of encouragement from him, she raced on. “And the number of zeros and ones? Is it a product of prime numbers?”

“Yes, eleven of them.”

“You’re telling me there’s a message in eleven dimensions hidden deep inside the number pi? Someone in the universe communicates by ... mathematics? But ... help me...”