“0"

A block of green light exactly eight by ten pixels in size lit on
a field of darkness. It hovered there in silence for a moment, then
vanished. When it returned it brought with it a new rhythm,
a blink.

“Is it on?” a young voice asked. The voice was quickly met by a
muttering of hushes and the silence returned once again to be
marked only by the passing blinks of the cursor. This continued for
an excruciatingly long time, made all the more thick with
anticipation. The blinks seemed slower and slower, though they were
in fact perfectly synchronized down to the least measurable
increment of time known. Their beat was set not by the inner
workings of the human heart but by the cold and immutable power of
the atom itself. The light illuminated as this sublime interval
struck and fell into oblivion with the next. Here, before the eyes
of eight scientists, was an example of perfection. There was no
mistake, no outlier, no minutia to account for. This was an ideal
thing, a perfectly realized concept. And for all of its majesty,
all of its beauty, not a single person in the room felt anything
but frustration. In all of human existence nothing had ever been as
precise as this one blink they all watched, but no one cared.

The wait lasted fifty-one seconds. It was exactly fifty-one
seconds. Not some measure smaller or larger, not some decimal value
separated by a wealth of fractions that could fill the Grand
Canyon. This small feat of improbability would stun mathematicians
for generations to come. That this make-believe interval we based
our entire existence around, indiscriminately chosen by a
sexagesimal society thousands of years prior, would precisely and
evenly divide the wait of that first response was seen by many as a
sign of God. It was a statement about human beings themselves that
the first response would cary such debate, such division. What are
people if not searchers for truth.

The scientists, all men--another point which would be argued for
years to come--, stared at the response for an uneven period of
time afterward, measuring from 0.877 seconds to 1.259 seconds,
before erupting in cheers. The outburst had no effect on the
blinking green cursor, though. It continued at its perfect pace, as
if carefully walking away from the scientists. It did not hurry. It
did not saunter. It just stepped one blink at a time toward the
next response. The humans all clapped each others backs and yelled
nonsense at one another as the cursor moved onward in place. And
left behind it in a block sized exactly eight by ten pixels was the
output that would change everything:

0