President Emilio now stood alone at his desk, back in his majestic office. He alone knew visions were not ephemeral dreams, the images came with emotions and burnt into his head like a traumatic war memory. He would not be allowed to forget any part of it until, he felt, the prophecy was over. His unique mind had been sending him deeper gut feelings for months. As most civilized people, he rejected anything too fanciful. For example, he was to release a plague on Earth. But now, he felt empowered to translate his feelings. Doing nothing doomed the Multiverse, he knew that.
His office towered the Berlin skyline. Marilyn and Liam insisted his efforts were relevant when compared to the actions of the girl on Mars. The stupid game was somehow critical to the Attraction, he knew it was the fuel with Marilyn which ripped a wound in the world, he wasn’t sure how. Sophie could snap a finger and do anything she wanted it seemed. If he read her ‘powers’ correctly, she could fix this entire situation in a heartbeat but would not. Any other person, really, watching a ball of magma pour out of the Sun and play bowling with planets would use the waves and save everyone. But Sophie was unique in this key way, her respect for others was boundless and that included the Multiverse. Liam was right, she was no hero, no Champion, instead she played a gatekeeper protecting access to this power.
He opened a drawer and in a little plastic vial, on it was penciled ‘The God Virus.’ A dark murky liquid spiraled in it, a nasty compound. It came with an envelope and a key drive with a video to watch. He waited to get to this vial feeling like this wasn’t the right time. He looked at the fluid and the screens in the room powered.
“Emiliou,” sounded Marilyn face plastered on every available screen in the room.
“Yes?”
“I am back!” She announced cheerfully.
“Back from where?”
“Oh, you weren’t watching. From very far away, working on the postcards now. The ratings will be giant.”
“Ratings?”
“The show must go on. Changing topic, I see you finally are ready for the virus I sent. I took the liberty to invite Copland, he alone in your species will be able to help you understand what’s in your hand.”
“He does mathematics.”
“Precisely, you don’t need anyone else, trust me. For Homo sapiens, this will get complicated. Not sure your species can handle it.”
He knew better than to argue with her. “The creatures stranded on Mercury, why can’t you help them?”
“Long story. In case you ask, the army of these stupid granular rats hate me. But more seriously the human body is unique in that it can survive extreme electromagnetic and electrical situations. A human is needed, just one able to sustain insane strain to rescue them. My solutions provide for a magnetic shield and the rats are fragile.”
The door to his office slid open. Normally, a pair of security agents would bully anyone, but walked in the tall lean mathematician, his friend and confident. Francois Copland was the proud recipient of the Fields Medal, the Nobel equivalent for bean counters. He also was Emilio’s surest bet to visit the local adult bar as both were proud bachelors.
“You need me?”
“She,” he pointed at the images of Marilyn on the screen on the wall. She waved at the man marked in. She owned to the deception.
Marilyn explained, “I must teach Emilio about the God Bias when applied to biology. I sent him something called The God Virus. Physicists get complicated, you get statistics, you will be able to advise him as to what it really is and how to make it work.” Both men looked at each other. “Enjoy,” she sent a kiss before tuning out. “Time is short.” On a screen a notice read,
— Insert drive and press here to begin play. —
The President did not like to be pushed around, but his friend was excited. “Take a seat, this looks interactive.” He clicked and a text message scrolled on the wall. A page from an online encyclopedia. It came with nice images.
-- The Hopkins Variance - The Fourth Law of Thermodynamics - The God Bias --
A human proved god exists using science. In his book entitled the Art of Persuasion, the French 16th century Philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, "People most invariably arrive at their belief not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive." Not surprisingly, different people acquire diverse beliefs from identical life situations regarding the world's origin. To some, theology is an attractive explanation of the world, to others science is the most appealing solution of our origin. In both cases, these views are polarized and exclusive. Both are false.
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For centuries, scientists and theologians battled each other while they labored to understand who we are. These two groups stood, entrenched at opposite ends of the spectrum, but were often in agreement as to the need for humility in our race. To science and theology alike, our world is defined by complex written rules or a road set by a godlike figure in control of our per-determined destiny. Pascal, a firm believer in greater power, wrote that there were two absolute paths to error. The first was to take things too literally and the second was to take everything spiritually. To Pascal, one erred by walking exclusively on one of these two paths, but for nearly a thousand years, there was no bridge between these worlds until a young statistician proved the existence of the hand of God in our lives. His proof was born of science.
In 2046, a young doctorate student from Chicago, a man named J. Seth Hopkins, began the work that ultimately would change the modern world. Hopkins loved poker and statistics. When his uncle told him he was about to erase four decades of security footage from his Casino, Seth acquired and digitized the data for his research.
Seth began with the analysis of over 7,000,000 rolls of dice at a single craps table. In the game, each player rolls two six-sided dice. The player throws both cubes against the opposite side of the table, ultimately settling them randomly on the green carpet. On average, of the thirty-six possible outcomes, the number seven happens 1/6th of the time. This combination is critical, as it stands in this game as the nemesis of the players.
Seth's initial review was simple: to see how many rolls were needed before the throw converged to the theoretical probability of 1/6. On each of the twenty tables he analyzed, the simple probability never converged. Instead of the expected 1,166,667 draws of the number seven, the number of draws was at best 1,162,104. This variation of 4,000 rolls or 0.4%, resulted on each table.
Seth feared the players were somehow cheating his father's casino since the outcome variation always favored the players over the house. Immediately, every casino around the world ran a full analysis of its tables and uncovered the same inexplicable bias. Life always favored players in the range of 0.1 to 0.4%; a value increasing over time now referred to as the Hopkins Variance. There is still a debate as to why the variance never materialized before this experiment.
Seth tried to recreate the experiment in a laboratory, but the bias was quickly gone. Within 10,000 rolls made by humans or machines alike in his lab, the numbers converged perfectly to the naturally expected value of 1/6. Something about being in the genuine casino environment was giving players an advantage.
Seth's father, who also happened to be a minister, suggested that the bias was gone in the lab because his test subjects were not gambling their own money. This man of belief suggested that life somehow rigged the game in favor of the player. In an incredible leap of faith, Seth renewed the experiment, this time with gambling players betting their actual wages. The Hopkins Variance instantly returned. The experiment proved that man's desire to win influenced the outcome of draws.
The world was understandably in shock.
Seth went back to the Casino footage and observed that tables with more gambling players had a more favorable bias than the tables with only a handful of players. Studies immediately launched on all casino games and quickly confirmed the Hopkins Variance. On most everything where a random outcome favors man, the sheer will of the players seemed to bend the very concept of probability. The greater the desire for an outcome and the larger the number of players, the greater the bias.
Priests were quick to extrapolate the Hopkins variance to what they named the God Bias. To theologians, God's hand aided mankind even in gambling. Seth wrote a paper designating the variance the fourth thermodynamic law, but that name never became commonly used by the scientific community.
Since 2056, hundreds of experiments have validated the God Bias. The most conclusive research came in 2063 when a manufacturer of a hair regeneration drug wanted to know if his drug was beneficial, neutral, or hazardous to future users. Instead of physically testing the substance, the maker asked half a million volunteers to select between a placebo and the real drug. Based on the God Bias, if the drug was indeed beneficial to the patients, more than half would choose the drug over the placebo. If the drug had adverse effects and somehow injured humans, a majority would instead select the placebo. The Hopkins factor in this experiment was 0.43%, and as it was confirmed and validated, the world finally understood that science needed to adapt to tolerate faith. The God Bias had helped mankind verify the positive effect of a drug.
In 2067, the Darwinian theory of evolution was amended to merge into it the findings of the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics. Species no longer only evolved based on features that allowed an increase in the likelihood of survival in the wild. Species like humans, who appeared immune from predatory pressures and less subject to Darwinian evolution, were now believed to adapt slowly, based on the Hopkins variance. This effect pushes humanity to evolve to its benefit, irrespective of what the exact benefit is.
President Sanchez saw the last portion of the text, it was blinking in red and read: “In the fall of 2072, an Artificial Intelligence suggested the Bias was the result of universal warping effects linked with a rare phenomenon called The Sixth Attraction.”
He looked once again at the vial, it read ‘The God Virus.’ This was ridiculous.
“You getting any of this?” Emilio asked the friend.
“I am. If this is what I think it is.” The man was lost in his thoughts. Emilio was ready to launch the video clip. Francois stopped him, “you get this, right?” He said pointing at the wall.
“Sort of,” then he smiled and added, “not really.”
Francois understood precisely why he was asked to be there.