Shut Up, to the Third Power, Almost Cubed

Shut Up, to the Third Power....Almost Cubed by J.B. Pravda

None of the therapeutic drugs worked.

Not even unlimited 1 on 1 sessions with 'P.I.E.T.A.'--------Program for
Individualized Thereapeutic Attitudinal Adjustment--------------the
computer specifically designed to listen, empathetically, endlessly,
uttering just the the right words of comfort at just the right moment;
like some mechanistic Mom Teresa, its designers had rightly described
it: 'nugatory' was the single word diagnosis read out, before the
program crashed. (The same frustrated engineers had called it
'cybercide', an unprecedented happening which threatened all extant
research----------and its funding-------------into A.I.

Things were, in short, getting desperate.

And, at this very time, when fear was morphing into outright panic, Dr.
Adrois casually mentioned an obscure, all but forgotten abstract he had
read some years ago in the Journal of Remonstrative Reflexology,
entitled 'Radical Curative Protocols Apropos Mega-Activity in Gulag
Incarcerants In Extremis', by the famed Russian researcher Vladimir
Impalevsky, sadly, now deceased, after a long, very active
career.

A team of crack assistants at NIH's supercomputer lab, after a few days
frustrations, had found and translated it. The best Russian language
people, notwithstanding, could only extract a solitary mathematical
formula from the 20+ pages of the study:

S/u( ~4

Consultation with leading combinatorics experts proved largely
fruitless.

At their wits end, the treatment team for 'Joey'----an incurable's
double-blind pseudonym-----resorted to a savant/idiot patient also
being studied for numerical powers beyond that of any computer.

"What is this, can you tell us...." And, before, the sentence was
completed by lead investigator, Dr. Kirby, the savant subject blurted
out, screaming "Shut up, shut up, shut up!!"

Later that month at the Nobel Prize ceremonies, with one 'Joey'
prominently seated quietyly front and center row, becalming the
honoree, Dr. Kubrick, with a sign reading 'S.U.x3', the Doctor thanked
his team, and his son, the savant, for their breakthrough in the now
permanent drug-free cure of hyperactivity.