As for the rod diameter vs. length idea, matter is discreet rather than continuous, so there is a limit on the increments you can divide length or width. You might get through the alphabet once, but certainly not an encyclopedia. Which is not to say that it’s not a clever idea that could be made into something.

Well and at the subatomic level indeterminacies preclude measurement. Since we are way off topic (an incessant problem of mine) DNA is still one of the more space efficient encoding methodologies. Encryption and compression are strange bedfellows…strange in a subatomic sense. Is this getting recursive?

Hey, don’t steal my ideas. Just because I don’t get mine published doesn’t mean I don’t write my own…

I remember seeing a similar plan, whereby you render the data you need to store as a fraction, and then cut the rod so that it’s new length is precisely that fraction of its old length.

I worked out that, assuming a 1m rod, you could store less than 100 bits in this fashion before the width of the atoms becomes a limiting factor.

BTW, the problem with that guy’s storage system is that, to avoid a repeating decimal, you need to be able to measure the two lengths from the cut to the ends to an infinite degree of precision, and they can’t form a ratio between numbers of finite significant figures (or else the decimal equivalent of the ratio wouldn’t be non-repeating), requiring that you be able to write out at least one non-repeating number in the first place. If you could do that, you wouldn’t need the rod…

You just have to pick the right rod and the right ginsu knive…

For example, if the rightmost digit were in base 16, and the next digit were base 8, and the next were base 4, the base 10 number 35 could be rendered as 123. But it could also be rendered as 43. I can’t see any practical advantage to such a system, but I also can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work at all. Who knows? On some distant planet, maybe they do it this way as a political compromise between nations whose citizens have different numbers of fingers and toes (and who knows what else)?

Anyway, welcome, and I’m glad you like the story!

Sch: Damn, but you answered a geeks-only story with a geeks-only comment! Touche’…

I’ll be humble and admit that the draft I first sent to EscapePod did have a base-conversion error in it. I noticed it and sent them a corrected version. Thanks to Rachel for accepting my changed version late in the game, and thanks to you for the kind review!

Oh by the way, great story!

ummm…. did you try to answer your own question? What is 19 in base eight? The answer is “Does not compute”. There is no number nine in base eight.

To go with the story, it would only make sense that the aliens actually used fingers and toes and based everything on base sixteen. With that logic 19 in base sixteen would be 25 in base ten.

Some writers are known for being sensitive about departures from their personal visions of their work. I tend to look at anyone else’s contribution as a form of collaboration.

Steve read Murphy and the boyfriend differently than I heard them in my own head. That was cool! He made the audio version of the piece into something I couldn’t do alone. And it worked.

My first published story was illustrated. The artist rendered some supporting characters as non-humans. I had imagined them as humans, but the story certainly doesn’t require that they be humans. Again, it worked.

We’re all in this together. Writers, readers (those who record the podcasts), illustrators, readers (those who read or listen to the story), and everyone else. It’s a grand ball, with all of us dancing.

Thanks for coming to the ball.