[ WP ] The final digit of pi has been discovered leading to profound events .

Edit: Sorry, I changed the ending ever so slightly! 
 
 A smile slowly grew on my advisor's face as I stumbled through my explanation on paper, itchy beads of sweat budding on my forehead. 
 
 `` David... you remember that pi is irrational, right?'' 
 
 `` I know, professor. But I do n't think it's inconsistent, right? I mean... as a model theory it might still be useful, right?'' 
 
 Professor Sternberg clicked his pen a few times, trying to find a way to let my idea down easy. It was a cheap Bic ballpoint, the kind you could buy a dozen of for a few bucks at any stationary store. Sternberg got tenure at Harvard with Bic pens just like this -- he did n't go in for, as he called it, `` all that fuss''. 
 
 But the good professor was always careful with his words. The next ones out of his mouth were as crisp as always, but had that carefully modulated quality -- -the kind you use to patiently explain a basic fact of the universe to a particularly dense child. 
 
 `` David, if pi has an ending digit, it can be expressed as a fraction. That would make it a rational number. Seeing as your model is n't using a rational multiple of pi as a base, that means something is going wrong. Maybe you want to check whether your axioms are actually well-defined.'' 
 
 `` But... no, everything up to now has made sense. I mean, we're pretty sure, right? You saw how nice the results were for those graph topology conjectures we were working on. Those graphs were made for this model, professor, the results just popped out! And I have n't changed the axioms. Maybe the interpretation...'' 
 
 There was a pit in my stomach. Part of it was the practical fear, common to every grad student, that this shit I'd been working on every day for endless months would turn out to contain a hole. That I'd have to start all over. That I was n't really all that smart, and I was just playacting. *That your friends would leave you behind. * 
 
 But there was another, deeper fear: that I was actually right. Ok, so some of these rules seemed to be breaking conventional arithmetic -- *you're breaking numbers*, a treacherous inner voice whispered -- but then, so does the concept of infinity, right? And every student passing through Calc 101 comes into contact with the all-encompassing sideways-eight. 
 
 I remember the first time I read about the concept, and felt the slide and heft of it. It was like the sun. You could n't look into infinity directly, because you would be blinded. Cantor went insane trying to hold onto the concept. But you could use infinity to observe the chaos of the world that spread out before you. 
 
 Hilbert called Cantor's infinity a kind of paradise. But this pit in my stomach told me that my theory was a fey, many-horned devil, giving in one hand knowledge millennia too early for any human to comprehend, and taking in the other *the price*. *The price*. 
 
 *An entrance*. 
 
 I've been working on this for months. 
 
 *I've* been working on this for *timeless months*. 
 
 
 The clicking. The hmms and ahhs. `` Maybe there's something there,'' I hear Sternberg say, beyond the chittering and buzzing. `` But, I'm a little tired. You've done a good job so far, David. You know, I've been meaning to tell you, you'll have no trouble getting a good postdoc in a year or two. Everyone's been enjoying our paper in the Annals. Anyway, the calculations here are very long, so maybe you just dropped a 0 somewhere. But there's a lot of good work going! Your model theory will really take the mathematical world by storm.'' 
 
 *Will really take the world by storm. * 
 
 `` I hear some of my colleagues over in physics -- you've met Eric, right? -- - anyway, they find it compelling for their string theory research. We'll open up some new frontiers.'' 
 
 I smiled. *I smiled. * 
 

