Factoring Humanity

Kyle shuffled over to the coffeemaker, poured himself a cup. “That’s a very good question,” he said at last.

Cheetah was quiet for a time, then: “There’s more to this story.”

Kyle took a sip of coffee. “Yes?”

“There was the matter of the incidental zygotic commencement.”

“Ah, the coveted IZC. Oh, wait — you mean the baby. Christ, yes. What happened?”

“Prior to her accident, Kathy had been a devout Roman Catholic. She was, therefore, opposed to abortion. Taking that into account, Kathy’s parents decided that Kathy should have the baby and that they would raise the child.”

Kyle was incredulous. “Have the baby while still in a coma?”

“Yes. It is possible. Comatose women had given birth before, but this was the first known case of a woman becoming pregnant after going into a coma.”

“They should have aborted the pregnancy,” said Kyle.

“You humans make judgments so quickly,” said Cheetah, with what sounded like envy. “I have tried and tried to resolve this issue and I find I cannot.”

“What way are you leaning?”

“I tend to think that if they let the baby live, it should have been placed in a foster home.”

Kyle blinked. “Why?”

“Because Kathy’s mother and father, by forcing her to give birth in such extreme conditions, demonstrated that they were ill-suited to be parents.”

“Interesting take. Were there any polls conducted at the time about what should be done?”

“Yes — The Rochester Democrat Chronicle ran one. But the option I proposed wasn’t even put forward — meaning, I guess, that it’s not something a normal human would come up with.”

“No, it’s not. Your position has a certain logic to it, but it doesn’t seem right emotionally.”

“You said you would abort the child,” said Cheetah. “Why?”

“Well, I’m pro-choice, but even most of those who are pro-life make exceptions for cases of incest or rape. And what about the kid, for Pete’s sake? What effect would that kind of origin have on it?”

“That had not occurred to me,” said Cheetah. “The child — a boy — was born on March eighteen, nineteen ninety-six, and if he’s still alive, would be twenty-one now. Of course, his identity has been protected.”

Kyle said nothing.

“Kathy,” continued Cheetah, “died at the age of thirty, one day before the child’s first birthday; she never came out of the coma.” The computer paused. “It does make me wonder. The ethical dilemma — whether or not to countenance an abortion — could not have been drawn in sharper terms, even though I don’t seem to be able to resolve it properly.”

Kyle nodded. “We’re all tested in various ways,” he said.

“I know that better than most,” said Cheetah, in a tone that was a credible imitation of being rueful. “But when I am tested, it is by you. When human beings are tested, though — and a case such as this clearly seems to be a test — who is it that is administering the test?”

Kyle opened his mouth to reply, closed it, then opened it again. “That’s another very good question, Cheetah.”

Heather sat in her office, thinking.

She’d stared at the messages from space day in and day out for years, trying to fathom their meaning.

They had to be rectangular images. She’d tried to identify any cultural bias related to prime numbers, any reason why she’d interpret them one way while someone from China or Chad or Chile would interpret them some other way. But there wasn’t anything — the only cultural issue she could come up with was an argument about whether the number 1 qualified as a prime number.

No, if the length of the signals were the products of two prime numbers, then the only logical conclusion was that they were meant to be arranged into rectangular grids.

Her computer had all 2,843 messages stored on it.

But there were some messages that had been decoded, right at the beginning. Eleven of them, to be exact — a prime number. Meaning there were 2,832 undecoded messages.

Now that number was not a prime — it was an even number, and except for 2 there were, by definition, no even prime numbers.

A quantum computer could tell her in a twinkling what the factors of 2,832 were. Obviously, half that value would be a factor — 1,416would go into it twice. And half of that, 708. And half of that, 354. And half of that, 177. But 177 was an odd number, meaning that its half wouldn’t be a whole number.

She’d sometimes thought that maybe each day’s message made up only a portion of a larger whole, but she’d never found a meaningful way to order the pages. Of course, until a few days ago, they’d never known how many pages there were in total.

But now they did know. Maybe they did fit together into bigger groups, the way the backsides of trading cards often tile together to form a picture.

She brought up her spreadsheet program on her desktop computer and made a little sheet that simply divided 2,832 by consecutive integers, starting with 1.

There were only twenty numbers that divided into 2,832 evenly. She deleted the ones that didn’t divide evenly, leaving her with this table: