Ray's Configuration

"All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer to death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are targets of the plot." -Don Delillo(White Noise) "Begin: to have commenced is half the deed. Half yet remains: begin again on this and you will finish all." -Ausonius(Epigrams no. xv) Imagine: Frank Cotton escapes the grasp of the cenobites in 1987 and spends the rest of his life running- 2027 finds him dying in bed of old age. Julia is gone 20 years, died of lung cancer.

The MONKEY AND TYPEWRITER Configuration

100,000 monkeys set to work for 100,000 years with 100,000 copies of the configuration, arranged to do so by order of a great king. The monkeys were fed and cared for by 100,000 attendants, who replaced monkeys dead of old age with new ones- at the end of the allotted time, the great king's distant descendant observed that no monkeys completed it successfully- he set about to study the phenomenon further, and so hired 100 historians to research his ancestor's experiment and determine what had gone wrong. 99 of them disappeared two days into the project. The great king's descendant then hired 10 detectives to interpret the historians' disappearance, all of whom disappeared immediately as well. The descendant then hired one monkey and an attendant to follow it- in fifteen minutes it led the attendant to a secret room in the palace, where the walls were coated with dried blood. Lying on the floor of the chamber was the following document:

The Towers of Hanoi Configuration

According to Edouard Lucas:

"In the great Temple of Brahma in Benares, on a brass plate beneath the dome that marks the Center of the World, there are 64 disks of pure gold which priests carry one at a time between three diamond needles according to Brahma's immutable law: No disk may be placed on a smaller disk. In the Beginning of the World, all 64 disks formed the Tower of Brahma on one needle. Now, however, the process of transfer of the tower from one needle to another is in midcourse. When the last disk is finally in place, once again forming the Tower of Brahma bout on a different needle, then will come the End of the World, and All will turn to dust."

The problem here is the length of time it will take to bring about the end of the world- It seems very unlikely that any of the monks now engaged in the task described will ever see the fruits of their labor. The real question here is not how long it will take (for the length is a finite thing, and finite things are no concern of ours), but why is it engaged in. Conversely, observe the following "anti-configuration":

There once was a man who was more than happy to let well enough alone, and so he did.

The attendant looked up, confused and frightened, and realized something had gone terribly wrong.

With the return of the monkey minus the attendant, the descendant of the great king resolved to drop the nonsense altogether, and further to hire monkeys from now on to manage his affairs of state, as they were more reliable than the people currently so employed.

Ray wakes up this morning and gets out of bed- not slipping on the hardwood floor and dashing his brains out on the corner of the night table. He goes downstairs without falling and breaking his neck to the kitchen and makes himself a bowl of cereal (which was not laced with arsenic by some madman). He puts some clothes on and heads out the door. He waits for a while at the bus stop, during which time no cars spin out of control, leap over the curb and crush him. The bus driver goes insane and plunges his bus and all of its occupants off of the side of the highway to certain death in a mass of twisted steel at the bottom of a cliff at no point during the ride. After disembarking, he is not shot nineteen times in the head, throat, and abdomen by a lunatic with an automatic rifle while getting coffee (which is not poisoned or tainted in any way) at the convenient mart.

"Monkeys and typewriters? Where does that come in?" The great king's descendant shakes his head and goes back to writing his letter of condolence to Frank Cotton's loved ones. He is tired, and wishes you would leave him to his work.