DR. PRBZT’S DESIGN for the Olympics of the Mind was an ingenious three-week blend of a double elimination (Week 1), a standard ladder progression (Week 2) and a complex necking of twenty winning contestants down to three finalists for the gold, silver and bronze medallions (Week 3).
All registered and continuing participants were represented in published lists at the beginnings of each of the successive weeks. At the ending of each week, certificate prize winners and cash prize winners were to be published. A full newspaper spread on each of the three medallists was reserved for the Sunday tabloid at the end of the third week.
Sheriff Millstone and his clones would serve as security forces for the games as competition was expected to be fierce yet must be regarded as fair. Even so, signs of unusual activities among the contestants were evident from the time when the formal registrations closed. These suspicious signs included would-be participants whose identities and addresses could not be verified in a routine background check.
In fact, the three most egregious examples turned out to be alien infiltrators, whose arrival on Earth strangely coincided with the arrival of the three-alien assassination team whose members were even now on their long space voyage back to the Council in the company of Sogguth. Implemented interrogation of the three team members revealed a second plan to assassinate the Prime Minister using his appearance at the medals awards ceremony as their point of attack.
While Prbzt and Millstone ‘cracked the code’ of the new alien threat, they evolved a method of parsing the registrants in three categories: imposters, spies and savants. Imposters were those who pretended to have maths talents but had none. They were considered harmless. Spies were literally infiltrators looking to use the games as the launch point for evil deeds. Savants were legitimate contestants in the games though the problems to be solved during the contests were not only those that had been solved already but those still requiring solutions.
The three new aliens were puzzling to them because they did not fit neatly into one or another category but fit uneasily into all three categories at once. The sheriff told the PM the new methods that detected them might be useful to comb through the populace routinely for future threats of the same character, and the great man established a secret Parliamentary subcommittee to study the matter.
Meanwhile, the three assassins were tentatively scheduled for their return to the Council once it was clear they knew nothing about other groups who also may have been sent as sleeper agents to dwell amongst Earth’s population for later activation. The Magistrate agreed to suspend judgment until the games’ end while the aliens remained confined to gaol.
The first week of the Olympics otherwise went swimmingly. Of one thousand three registrants (including the three now in gaol), one hundred remained at the end of the week, and the other nine hundred were slated to receive certificates of participation by the PM on awards day. Naturally, the three alien infiltrators were not to be granted certificates or other awards.
The second week of the tournament reduced the field from one hundred to the thirty most brilliant contestants. Once again, those who were eliminated had the consolation of being listed for a certificate of participation by the PM as well as a modest cash prize. During this second week, the security team confiscated a host of do-it-yourself devices meant to undermine the games’ integrity—listening devices, signalling apparatuses, miniature calculators and such-like. The fifteen contestants associated with these cheats were disavowed and stricken from the awards lists.
The final thirty Olympians were run through quantitative exercises of three kinds. On the first day of the final week came the speed-of-computation games. Time was of the essence, and only the top twenty contestants were permitted to advance to the second day, which was devoted to the advanced complexity games.
The speciality complexity games focused on practical problems like calculating the time required for a pile of sand particles to cascade to one side or another as a continuous stream of additional sand was added from above the pile.
Now the field for the last three days was limited to the ten survivors of the previous ordeals. Dr. Pickford insisted on examining each of these ten to be sure none would be likely to succumb to heart attacks or brain strokes during the competition. The PM himself had insisted on this precaution as he had succumbed to such a complication when he wrangled as an undergraduate champion in maths.
The problems encountered for the third and fourth days of the final week were among the most difficult unsolved problems known to contemporary maths professors. They were not the kind of exercises that were meant to be completed during the games. Rather, they were to elicit from the contestants the approaches they considered most likely to be fruitful for later solutions.
In fact, the three leading contestants actually solved the ‘impossible’ problems to which they had been assigned. This necked the field from ten neatly to three as the fifth and final day was structured to rank the three remaining finalists for the gold, silver and bronze medals.
The last three contestants were separated in three tents erected on the village greensward, and each was given all seven remaining unsolved problems. One hour for each solution was specified, but, in the unlikely event of a tie, the earliest to arrive at a solution was to be deemed the winner.
The final day of games began at nine o’clock AM, and the final hour of the games was specified as seven hours later. Solutions, if any, were to be submitted by a runner as soon as possible to the judges’ table where the exact time of its receipt would be recorded.
The assembled crowd was hushed to give the three finalists the greatest opportunity for their cogitation. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop under the circumstances.
The three tents where the contestants did their thinking were swept by a gentle, summer breeze. Beyond the confines of the park could be heard birds singing, Dolly the cow lowing and a distant jet aeroplane descending to its runway. No vendors hawked his or her wares in deference to the competitions. The judges’ palms were moist from apprehension as they faced the culmination of their three weeks’ continuous hard work.
At noon on that day, the first results were brought to the judges. Each of the candidates had cracked one of the problems—and none of the problems whose solutions were entered was the same as any of the others. As the other solutions were presented, it was clear Tent 2 was pulling ahead of the pack. Tent 1 was behind by two solutions. Tent 3 fell behind by three solutions.
The contestant in Tent 2 submitted all seven solutions well before the closing bell. The other two contestants, by the rules of the game, continued without being informed of the progress of their competitors.
When the horn blew indicating the time for the games was over, the contestants from Tent 1 and Tent 3 put their pens down and provided their final and partial solutions.
The ranking results, subject to review, were Tent 2, then Tent 1 and finally Tent 3. Now the judges met with all the assembled data from the competitions, and the contestants were allowed to rest.
The amanuensis for the PM entered Tent 2 and hugged the candidate, his son, who had solved every problem. A tabloid photographer was present to commemorate the moment, and Lance Crenshaw began interviewing the proud father about the exploits of his tentacle-laden offspring.
Two hours after the ending horn had sounded, the judges arrived at their consensus, confirming the initial ranking and specifying the order of medal awards. The head judge, who was Regius professor at one of the major Ox-bridge colleges, read out the medals list. The exhausted crowd applauded more out of their delight than of their congratulations to the winners.
Sheriff Millstone shook Dr. Prbzt’s hand, as the philologist’s ambitious program had been a complete success.
Dr. Pickford hugged Dr. Prbzt and shook his wife’s hand. Then she embraced her husband since the Olympics of the Mind games were the beginning of the ceremonies celebrating their marriage.
Now that the games, per se, were over, all that remained for public consumption was the awards ceremonies, which would fill the weekend hours and make all the thousand registered participants and their supporters stand proud.
As evening fell, Sheriff Millstone, Dr. Prbzt and the Magistrate met in the gaol to handle the Black Chamber matter of the three aliens, who had been held out of sight during the games. As for the previous case of alien assassins, judgment was quick and condign.
The Magistrate ordered the three malefactors to be held until the next available redistribution event. Then they would be sent in chains back through space to the Council that had sent them with a clear message never to return to Earth on penalty of death.
When asked if he had a statement to make, the leader of the alien assassination team said, ‘I only wish we had been allowed to participate in the Olympics of the Mind. We would have beaten all the other contenders and taken home the three medals!’ Dr. Prbzt was startled by this brazen and boastful statement.
The Magistrate frowned in disapproval and said, ‘Hanbrst, you are lucky to be returning to the Council alive. You will inform them that every attempt to undermine the situation on Earth will be discovered, and the perpetrators will be exiled forever, as you and your associates shall be.’
‘Magistrate, with all due respect, I remind you that aliens have been visiting Earth for millennia, and time for the Council is a process far beyond your merely human conception. The entities who sent my team will continue infiltrating groups into your midst, and some will succeed. How many successes do you think it will take for your people to become demoralized enough to surrender unconditionally? I, for one, hope I live long enough to witness you being led through your own Picklock Lane in shame.’
The Magistrate did not deign to answer this blatant impertinence. He left the three aliens in the sheriff’s capable hands. Millstone knew what was required next. It was true that his wedding was drawing nigh, but nothing would stand between him and his sworn duty.
Once the gaol had been secured for the night, Dr. Prbzt and Sheriff Millstone walked through Picklock Lane to the tenement where they would meet their women in the hot tub. Fatty wanted to hear Ibngort’s personal recapitulation of the Olympics of the Mind, and he also wanted to know what his fiancé Sarah Pickford thought about the PM’s amanuensis’s child’s winning the gold medal.
When they arrived at the tenement, the sheriff’s clones met them with acclamation at the entrance. They were celebrating the triumph of the games as the beginning of the wedding festivities. So instead of four discussing the games in an intimate meeting, there was a general hot bath for all comers in which opinions flew in all directions. Particularly interesting to Fatty was the universal approval of the winner of the gold medal. He had been the clones’ favourite candidate from the time he became a contestant.
Sarah said, ‘Not for nothing has he been known as “young Cthulhu” from the time of his birth! He certainly looks the part with all those facial tentacles. Strangely, when I examined him before the final round of problems, he seemed unperturbed. The other contestants were plagued with elevated blood pressure. Their anxiety was palpable. I’m afraid I was sympathetic to the maths hero. Fatty, I do hope we have many children together—and that all of them look and act just like he does.’
Fatty smiled as his thirty clones cavorted in the hot tub. His success with his own offspring clones was a source of deep pride to him. Now he looked forward to Sarah bearing his children in a second wave of births, perhaps more powerful than the first wave.
