"It's just not fair," Irving Westmore, Mathematician Third Class, mournfully observed to no one in particular. He was sitting in his rather small office on the thirty-eighth floor of the Smith Building, on the busiest block of the busiest city on LY 76034-23, the designated planet for government-employed mathematicians and statisticians. LY 76034-23 was located in the Prime Administrative sector of the Galactic Virtudemocracy, which was the human race's pinnacle of achievement over its first six million years of development; namely, making the trains run on time, or punishing the bastards who failed to do so.

But enough of the setting; back to Irving. He was contemplating that, considering the importance of the problem that he had been appointed to solve, he ought to at least have earned a window. Of course, he was dead wrong in this regard. The only reason he had been given this impossible problem was because everybody else was smart enough to avoid getting it. Everyone in the hierarchy above him had delegated it down a level, and everyone below him had kept out of the way. But he was to dense to comprehend this, just as he was too dense to avoid getting the problem in the first place, so he was wallowing in self-pity for the moment, which was a rather common practice for him.

The problem he had been given was clearly impossible. The galaxy would reach its limit of sustainable human population within fifty years, and he had to fix this. First, he had to develop a mathematical model that the quantum physicists could use to allow matter to travel through metahyperspace the way FTL information beams could. (Metahyperspace is the space one passes through to take short cuts through hyperspace, much like we regularly pass through hyperspace to take short cuts through normal space.) This would allow humans to traverse extragalactic distances in a few relative hours, rather than the thousands of years it currently takes through hyperspace.

Secondly, he had to work out a mathematical model to find the most economical and quickest way to expand to these new galaxies. This process would involve moving trillions of people and quintillions of belongings in the space of a few months, which, when reduced to equations, amounted to vigintillions of variables. No method dreamed up by mathematicians over the past five million years could handle this mess, nor could any megacomp ever designed crunch out a solution through algorithmic brute force.

Irving was not a genius. He was not about to have some sudden burst of inspiration that would allow him to solve this particular problem; he was, after all, only a Mathematician Third Class. But boy, was he a perfect scapegoat for when the galaxy entered a million years of war and anarchy! Quadrillions of people would go to their graves, knowing that Irving Westmore was the irresponsible SOB whose fault it was.

Needless to say, Irving was not very happy with his prospects, and so maybe you will forgive me for letting him have some time to wallow while I explained all this to you. But I suppose we really do need to get on with the story.

"Well, I know one thing," Irving said suddenly, as he sat up out of his feedback loop of fretting. "I'll never get this solved before lunchtime. I think I'll go see George." And with that, he got up from his desk, grabbed his hat and coat from the hatrack, and walked to the elevator.

* * *

Irving was headed to the Jones Memorial Cafeteria on the seventeenth floor of the Smith Building. He was heading there to eat lunch, and to see his friend, George O'Donovan, whom he knew would already be there.

George O'Donovan could always be found in the cafeteria. That was where he worked. Well, he didn't work for the cafeteria; he worked in the cafeteria. He was a Mathematician Fifth Class, but he worked in the cafeteria. He knew everybody in the building personally, from the top BS-delivering bosses to the eccentrics that came in off the cross-stellar bus mumbling to themselves the whole time. His job was basically to act as a mirror. You'd come to him with an idea, and he would reflect your idea back to you so you could see what was right with it or wrong with it. His job was very important, since sometimes the key step in solving a problem is figuring out what you've overlooked. So George was a handy person to have around. Because of this, they kept him as a Mathematician Fifth Class, so they could make use of his talents whenever they needed to. George didn't mind; whatever it was that drove him through life, ambition wasn't it. Also because of this, they let him work in the cafeteria. It was a place everybody was bound to come to once in a while, and it worked for George as well, since deep thinking always made him hungry.

Anyway, Irving bought himself a dodoburger and found George sitting by the windows. George was staring at a plate of soup.

"Hi, George," said Irving.

George didn't respond. Irving could see that he was thinking, but he decided that this problem was more important than any other piece of crap somebody else had unloaded on him, so he bumped the table. The soup sloshed a bit, which broke George's concentration. He looked up at Irving.

"Oh, hey Irving," he said. "I was thinking about Calabi-Yau spaces--"

Irving cut him off. "Well, I need your help more than anybody else in the building right now. You know the problem I was assigned, right?"

"Of course I do. You've only told me about it every day for the past three weeks," George said.

"I haven't gotten anywhere. I tried Herlinski's Method, systems of systems, and so help me, I even tried Severinson's Theorem. Everything's a dead end."

"Well, of course they are," George replied. "The solution to your problem requires mathematical methods that nobody's invented yet."

"I know!" Irving spat out. "And I'm the poor slob that has to come up with them in two weeks, or else!"

"I know, too," George said reassuringly. "I want you to know that I've been thinking about your problem, all week now. And I think I've come upon a viable method--"

"You do? What is it? How long will it take me to learn?" Irving asked quickly.

"No longer than it should. The reason you're stuck is that you've been looking for a specific solution to a specific problem," George responded.

"What in the hell do you mean by that?" Irving said crossly.

"Listen to me, Irving. Lots of times, people have found the solution to general problems by first finding the answer to a specific part of that problem. That's pretty much been accepted as the proper method for solving such problems. Obviously, though, in your case, it's not going to work. So now is the time to turn conventional wisdom on its ear, and look for a solution to the general case first."

"That's nuts!" Irving protested. "As impossible as this problem is, if I ripped out all the constraints, it would become ten thousand times more difficult to solve."

"Mmm, not really," George said. "The way I see it, you just need to start by assuming that there are an infinite number of variables, rather than a staggeringly large number of finite ones."

"But that's crazy! How does that make things any easier?"

"By freeing you from finite constraints."

"But there are no systems equipped to deal with that assumption!"

"Which is why you have to invent it."

"But I can't do it!" Irving was almost sobbing, and a few people started staring at him. "There's just no time invent that sort of thing in two lousy weeks!"

"You've already done it, Irving," George said firmly. "You've been thinking about this problem so long that the solution is in your mind. You just need to create the language you need to express it."

"George, you're just not listening to me. My brain is fried," Irving said.

"Irving, you're just not listening to me. Your brain has the answer. ...Look, do you have any other option to try, other than my suggestion?"

"Nothing. Of course, not even your suggestion looks viable."

"Maybe not, but I'm telling you that it's right. Have I ever been wrong?"

Irving stared at him for a minute. Of course George was never wrong.

"You know the answer, don't you?"

"Maybe a little, on the same subconscious level as you," George conceded. "But I'm only fifth-class. I don't have the broad background to formulate the general theory. And nobody else here has spent the same amount of time as you on the project. Ultimately, you are the only one who can solve this thing. And you can do it. But you have to try."

Irving sat there for a minute. His dodoburger was almost as cold as George's soup. "Well, if you say I can do it, I guess I've got nothing to lose by trying," he decided. "What was your main suggestion again?"

"Free yourself from finite constraints."

"Uh-huh. Well, I don't know..."

All of a sudden, Irving got a queer feeling in the back of his head. He made the necessary assumption, that he move to an infinite-dimensional vector space, and suddenly he was certain, absolutely certain, that he could solve it, not just this problem, but the general case. He could dimly see the possibility of a solution, elegant, perfect, and most definitely there...

"By George, you're right, George!" Irving yelled out. "I think, yes, I think there is a way to solve it, based on that assumption! You're a genius!" And Irving dashed back to his office to work on the problem, leaving behind his dodoburger, coat, and hat.

George just smiled to himself and went to get a fresh plate of soup.

* * *

Irving had been working nonstop in his office for ten days. Ever since George had convinced him that there was in fact a way to solve his problem, and a million others besides, Irving had focused on finding it to the exclusion of all else. And he was close. So very close. His notes were making more and more sense.

"This has to be the answer...let Q be this...set D(v) equal to this..." Irving was mumbling furiously. He was unshaven, bleary-eyed, and badly in need of a shower and some strong coffee.

Then, thousands of little facets of information all coalesced at once in his head, and he suddenly learned THE solution. He sat up, his eyes wide.

"Swljhsdaa gitmrd qpazined dsweorebs..." he said. Then he vanished in a burst of light.

* * *

George came in about five minutes after this happened. He didn't expect to see Irving, and the facts confirmed his expectations. Obviously, if Irving had done as he had suggested, he of course wouldn't be there. Irving had found the solution, and in so doing, had transcended known reality for a higher plane of existence.

But this reality still needed an answer. George leafed through Irving's notes. Irving had just gotten to the final key point on paper before his mind filled in the rest. George sat down and, after an hour, had a nice, long, excruciatingly complex but workable solution to the galactic population problem. He signed Irving's name to it, and placed it in his outbox. He then quickly vaporized Irving's notes with his portable waste disposal unit.

"This will keep them satisfied for now," George said to no one in particular. He put Irving's coat and hat back on the hatrack, turned out the lights, and headed back to the cafeteria to await the next problem and return to the task of running the universe.

Moral: Always make sure your friend is not the Supreme Being before you ask him for help with math.