THE TALE OF HAPPITON By Douglas R. Hofstader Illustrations by Katherine Kramer H APPITON WAS A HAPPY LITTLE TOWN. IT HAD 20,000 INHABITANTS, GIVE OR TAKE 7, AND THEY WERE PRODUCTIVE CITIZENS WHO MOWED THEIR LAWNS QUITE REGULARLY. FOLKS IN HAPPITON WERE PRETTY HEALTHY. THEY HAD A LIFE EXPECTANCY OF 75 YEARS OR SO, AND LOTS OF THEM LIVED TO RIPE OLD AGES. DOWN AT THE TOWN SQUARE, THERE WAS A NICE BIG COURT HOUSE WITH ALL SORTS OF RELICS FROM WW II AND MONUMENTS TO VARIOUS'HEROES AND WHATNOT. PEOPLE WERE PROUD, AND HAD THE RIGHT TO BE PROUD, OF HAPPITON. ON THE TOP OF THE COURTHOUSE, THERE WAS A BIG BELL THAT BOOMED EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR, AND YOU COULD HEAR IT FAR AND WIDE-EVEN AS FAR OUT AS SHADY OAKS DRIVE, WAY OUT NEARLY IN THE COUNTRYSIDE. One day at noon, a few people standing near the courthouse noticed that right after the noon bell rang, there was a funny little sound coming from up in the belfry. And for the next few days, folks noticed that this scratching sound was occu rring a fte r every hour. So on Wednesday, Curt Dempster climbed up into the belfry and took a look. To his surprise, he found a crazy kind of contraption rigged up to the bell. There was this mechanical hand, sort of a robot arm, and next to it were five weird-looking dice that it could throw into a little pan. They all had twenty sides on them, but instead of being numbered 1 through 20, they were just numbered 0 through 9, but with each digit appearing on two opposite sides. There was also a TV camera pointed at the pan and it seemed to be attached to a microcomputer or something. That’s all Curt could figure out. But then he noticed that on top of the computer, there was a neat little envelope marked “ To the friendly folks of Happiton.” Curt decided that he’d take it downstairs and open it in the presence of his friend the mayor, Janice Fleener. He found Janice easily enough, told her about what he’d found, and then they opened the envelope. How neatly it was written! It said this: Grotto 19, Hades June 20, 1983 Dear folks of Happiton, I've got some bad news and some good news for you. The bad first. You know your bell that rings every hour on the hour? Well, I’ve set it up so that each time it rings, there is exactly one chance in a hundred thousand—that is, 1/100,000— that a Very Bad Thing will occur. The way I determine if that Bad Thing will occur is, I have this robot arm fling its five dice and see if they all land with ‘7’ on t Most of the time, they won’t. But if the\ do—and the odds are exactly 1 in 100,000—then great clouds of an unimaginably revoltingsmelling yellow-green gas called “ Re- tchgoo” will come oozing up from a dense network of underground pipes that I've recently installed underneath Happiton, and everyone will die an awful, writhing, agonizing death. Well, tha t ’s the bad news. Now the good news! You all can prevent the Bad Thing from happening, if you send me a bunch of postcards. You see, I happen to like postcards a whole lot (especially postcards of Happiton), but to tell the truth, it doesn’t really much matter what they’ re of. I just love postcards! Thing is, they have to be written personally—not typed, and especially not computer-printed or anything phony like that. The more cards, the better. So how about sending me some postcards—batches, bunches, boxes of them? Here's the deal. I reckon a typical postcard takes you about 4 minutes to write. Now suppose just one person in all of Happiton spends 4 minutes one day writing me, so the next day, I get one postcard. Well, then, I’ ll do you all a favor: I’ ll slow the courthouse clock down a bit, for a day. (I realize this is an inconvenience, since a lot of you tell time by the clock, but believe me, it’s a lot more inconvenient to die an agonizing, writhing death from the evil-smelling, yellow-green Retchgoo.) As I was saying. I’ ll slow the clock down for one day, and by how much? By a factor of 1.00001. Okay, I know that doesn’t sound too exciting, but just think if all 20,000 of you send me a card! For each card I get that day, I’ ll toss in a slow-up factor of 1.00001, the next day. That means that by sending me 20,000 postcards a day, you all, working together, can get the clock to slow down by a factor of 1.00001 to the 20,000th power, which is just a shade over 1.2, meaning it will ring every 72 minutes. All right, I hear you saying. "72 minutes is just barely over an hour!” So I offer you more! Say that one day I get 160,000 postcards (heavenly!). Well then, the very next day I’ ll show my gratitude by slowing your clock down, all day long, midnight to midnight, by 1.00001 to the 160,000th power, and that ain’t chickenfeed. In fact it ’s about 5, and that means the clock will ring only every 5 hours, meaning those sinister dice will only get rolled about 5 times (instead of the usual 24). Obviously, it’s better for both of us that way. You have to bear in mind that I don’t have any personal interest in seeing that awful Retchgoo come rushing and gushing up out of those pipes and causing every last one of you to perish in grotesque, mouthfoaming, twitching convulsions. All I care about is getting postcards! And to send me 160,000 a day wouldn’t cost you folks that much effort, being that it ’s just 8 postcards a day—just about a half hour a day for each of you, the way I reckon it. So my deal is pretty simple. On any given day. I’ ll make the clock go off once every X hours, where X is given by this simple formula: X = 1.00001". Here, N is the number of postcards I received the previous day. If N is 20,000, then X will be 1.2, so the bell would ring 20 times per day, instead of 24. If N is 600,000, then X jumps way up to about 5, so the clock would slow way down—just under 5 rings per day. If I get no postcards, then the “I don’t have any personal interest in seeing that awful Retchgoo come rushing and gushing up and causing every last one of you to perish in grotesque, mouth-foaming, twitching convulsions.” Demon #3127. clock will ring once an hour, just as it does now. The formula reflects that, since if N is 0, X will be 1. You can work out other figures yourself. Just think how much safer and securer you’d all feel knowing that your courthouse clock was ticking away so slowly! I’m looking forward with great enthusiasm to hearing from you all. Sincerely yours, Demon #3127 The letter was signed with beautiful medieval-looking flourishes, in an unusual shade of deep red. . . ink? “ Bunch of hogwash!” spluttered Curt. “ Let’s go up there and chuck the whole mess down onto the street and see how far it bounces.” While he was saying this, Janice noticed that there was a smaller note clipped onto the back of the last sheet, and turned it over to read it. It said this: PS.—It’s really not advisable to try to dismantle my little set-up there in the belfry: I’ve got a hair trigger linked to the gas pipes, and if anyone tries to dismantle it, pssssst! Sorry. Janice Fleener and Curt Dempster could hardly believe their eyes. What gall! They got straight on the phone to the Police Department, and talked to Officer Curran. He sounded poppin’ mad when they told him what they’d found, and said he’d do something about it right quick. So he hightailed it over to the courthouse and ran up those stairs two at a time, and when he reached the top, a-huffin’ and a- puffin’ , he swung open the belfry door and took a look. To tell the truth, he was a bit ginger in his inspection, because one thing Officer Curran had learned in his many years of police experience is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So he cautiously looked over the strange contraption, and then he turned around and quite carefully shut the door behind him and went down. He called up the town sewer department and asked them if they could check out whether there was anything funny going on with the pipes underground. Well, the long and the short of it is that they verified everything in the Demon’s letter, and by the time they had done, so, the clock had struck five more times and those five dice had rolled five more times. Janice Fleener had in fact had her thir- teen-year-old daughter Samantha go up and sit in a wicker chair right next to the microcomputer and watch the robot arm throw those dice. According to Samantha, an occasional 7 had turned up now and then, but never had two 7’s shown up together, let alone 7’s on all five of the weird-looking dice! T JL he next day, the Happiton Eagle- Telephone came out with a front-page story telling all about the peculiar goings- on. This caused quite a commotion. People everywherewere talking about it, from Lidden’s Burger Stop to Bixbee’s Drugg- ery. It was truly the talk of the town. When Doc Hazelthorn, the best pediatrician this side of the Cornyawl River, walked into Ernie’s Barbershop, corner of Cherry and Second, the atmosphere was more somber than usual. “Whatcha gonna do, Doc?” said big Ernie, the jovial barber, as he was clipping the few remaining hairs on old Doc’s pate. Doc (who was also head of the Happiton City Council) said the news had come as quite a shock to him and his family. Red Du- Ikins, sitting in the next chair over from Doc, said he felt the same way. And then the two gentlemen waiting to get their hair cut both added their words of agreement. Ernie, summing it up, said the whole town seemed quite upset. As Ernie removed the white smock from Doc’s lap and shook the hairs off it, Doc said that he had just decided to bring the matter up first thing at the next City Council meeting, Tuesday evening. “ Sounds like a good idea, Doc!” said Ernie. Then Doc told Ernie he couldn’t make the usual golf date th is weekend, because some friends of his had invited him to go fishing out at Lazy Lake, and Doc just couldn’t resist. Two days after the Demon’s note, the Eagle-Telephone ran a feature article in which many residents of Happiton, some prominent, some not so prominent, voiced the ir opinions. For instance, eleven-year-old Wally Thurston said he’d 30 Clinton St. Quarterly
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