The Critical
Email
Hanna was saddened to
discover her coffee mug broken on the draining
board of the sink in the staffroom.
Returning to her computer,
she expressed her displeasure in an email,
outpouring her feelings about the event and its
unknown perpetrator.
The note was sent using the
Whole Office Distribution List. It was never
clear who then forwarded the message using the
Whole Company Distribution List.
The multi-national for
which Hanna worked had recently acquired several
subsidiary companies. The linking of their IT
systems made Hanna’s email the first in
history to achieve Criticality.
It was known from nuclear
physics that once a quantity of fissile material
had reached a critical mass then an unstoppable
nuclear chain reaction would result. It had not
been understood that once an email had been
forwarded to a sufficiently large number of
recipients then a combination of chance,
maliciousness and well meaning stupidity would
result in subsequent forwarding to all inboxes on
earth.
Tragically, the efficiency
of junk email filters robbed Hanna of historical
recognition as her email was automatically
deleted before much of the global population
realised they had received it.
**************************************************
For Zogganda from the
planet Koldo it was just another day of
monitoring communications from galaxies of the
Epsilon Quadrant. Then Hanna’s email was
detected from earth.
There were no coffee mugs
on Koldo. Indeed, there was no coffee. Koldons
gained their sustenance from photosynthesis,
utilising the planet’s three suns.
Nevertheless, Zogganda empathised with the sense
of loss, anger and injustice in Hanna’s
words. The Koldon also assumed that any message
which had achieved planet-wide interest must have
special significance.
Zogganda forwarded the note
using the Whole Koldo Distribution List. It was
never clear who then forwarded the message using
the Whole Epsilon Quadrant Distribution List.
Expansion of the Universe
since the Whole Epsilon Quadrant Distribution
List had last been used instantly resulted in
Universal Criticality: Hanna’s message was
relayed to all life forms that had evolved
intelligence but had subsequently been stupid
enough to develop electronic communication. The
effect was particularly marked among
civilisations such as the Duraden of Beta
Collaris who had given insufficient attention to
the development of junk email filters.
Unknown to all, the
immeasurable number of simultaneous intergalactic
transmissions of Hanna’s email produced a
resonance which caused the content to traverse
the higher dimensions connecting branes of the
multiverse.
**************************************************
Back on earth, Sally had
apologised to Hanna for dropping her mug, bought
her a new one, and all was once again cordial in
the company staffroom.
Hanna gave no further
thought to her former coffee mug, nor to her
feelings at its loss. Nevertheless, this
information would now, for eternity, be
integrated with the fabric of all space-time
continuums.
It was simply a matter of
time before emerging technological civilisations
would begin to study the residual background
radiation from the Big Bangs of their own
universes.
It was inevitable that they
would detect patterns and analyse these with
supercomputers.
The emergence of
Hanna’s email would then cause something of
a rethink of their cosmologies.
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