Random Walk : Ten Million Years : Then 8 Minutes

Random Walk

Random walk, Random walk…Ragnarok…Ragnarok…
Stochastic process (Many steps, a long random walk, yet predictable to some)…tic…tic…tic…based on the problem of determining the probable location of a point subject to random motions, given the probabilities (the same at each step) of moving some distance in some direction. A typical example is the drunkard's walk, in which a point beginning at the origin of the Euclidean plane moves a distance of one unit for each unit of time, the direction of motion, however, being random at each step. The problem is to find, after some fixed time, the probability distribution of the distance of the point from the origin.

(Am I Golem, Jack, Wicket, Charls...? In the end, what will come?)

Farther out the nuclei have electrons attached, so they can absorb and re-emit the photons, but the effect is the same: (You are still not one.) the photons take a so-called random walk outward until they escape from the Sun. The distance covered in a random walk is the average distance traveled between collisions (known as the mean free path) multiplied by the square root of the number of steps, in which a step is an interval between successive collisions. As the average mean free path in the Sun is about 10 centimetres (4 inches), the photon must take 5 × 1019 steps to travel 7 × 1010 centimetres. Even at the speed of light this process takes 10 million years, and so the light seen today was generated long ago.

The final step from the Sun's surface to Earth, however, takes only eight minutes.—when things get near the end they speed up, markets crash, banks fail, people go berserk. When food disappears from the supermarket shelves, there are some—well, they hunt for food. In the cities there is one kind of meat that most of us don’t want to eat.


Ragnarok

(Old Norse: “Doom of the Gods”), in Scandinavian mythology, the end of the world of gods and men. The Ragnarök is fully described only in the Icelandic poem Völuspá (“Sibyl's Prophecy”), probably of the late 10th century, and in the 13th-century Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), which largely follows the Völuspá. According to those two sources, the Ragnarök will be preceded by cruel winters and moral chaos. Giants and demons approaching from all points of the compass will attack the gods, who will meet them and face death like heroes. The sun will be darkened, the stars will vanish, and the earth will sink into the sea. Afterward, the earth will rise again, the innocent Balder will return from the dead, and the hosts of the just will live in a hall roofed with gold.

Disjointed (Multiple Personality Disorder…Genius…He wanted to do the right thing…) allusions to the Ragnarök, found in many other sources, show that conceptions of it varied. According to one poem two human beings, Lif and Lifthrasir (“Life” and “Vitality”), will emerge from the world tree (which was not destroyed) and re-people the earth. The title of Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung is a German equivalent of Ragnarök meaning “twilight of the gods.”
Twilight of the Gods… (I saw these words. I had been sitting in twilight at dusk and dawn working on a plan or was I trying to stop one? So much has occurred since then…so many…Venus at night and in the morning…I thought I saw Inana or a scribe of hers. Could I be wrong? Golem, Jack, Charls communicate—can I reconcile them? Before it is too late.)

Balder

Old Norse Baldr in Norse mythology, the son of the chief god Odin and his wife Frigg. Beautiful and just, he was the favourite of the gods (That’s what I feel like when I am Wicket; can Wicket be wrong). Most legends about him concern his death. Icelandic stories tell how the gods amused themselves by throwing objects at him, knowing that he was immune from harm.

The blind god Höd, deceived by the evil Loki, killed Balder by hurling mistletoe, the only thing that could hurt him.

(I remember now…I paid a Thai cop to kill Wicket…he was smashed against Mabrun Kong in Bangkok. They found pieces of him scattered in the upper floors. A three-wheeled vehicle can hit you hard.)

After Balder's funeral, the giantess Thökk, probably Loki in disguise, refused to weep the tears that would release Balder from death (CHarLie…what’s done is done…). Some scholars believe that the passive, suffering figure of Balder was influenced by that of Christ. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200), however, depicts him as a warrior engaged in a feud over the hand of a woman. (Could be Jack, in some complicated love story, can’t be sure.)




Loki

In Norse mythology, a cunning trickster (Must be Jack, I feel cunning when I’m him.) who had the ability to change his shape and sex. Although his father was the giant Fárbauti, he was included among the Aesir (a tribe of gods). Loki was represented as the companion of the great gods Odin and Thor, helping them with his clever plans but sometimes causing embarrassment and difficulty for them and himself. He also appeared as the enemy of the gods, entering their banquet uninvited and demanding their drink; he was the principal cause of the death of the god Balder. Loki was punished by being bound to a rock, thus in many ways resembling the Greek figures Prometheus and Tantalus. Loki created a female, Angerboda (Angrboda: “Distress Bringer”), and produced three evil progeny: Hel, the goddess of death; Jörmungand, the evil serpent surrounding the world; and Fenrir (Fenrisúlfr), the wolf.

The figure of Loki remains obscure; there is no trace of a cult, and the name does not appear in place-names.

There are no loose ends, and no one leaves the Window Corporation alive; the plan isn’t written down; I keep it in my head, where It’s safe and waiting to be carried out. Plan A—I called it. I wouldn’t have executed the plan—but Plan B had more serious ramifications and those can’t be good since Plan A involved the killing of four and a half billion souls in body suits called men. Of course, in a politically correct world they would be half men and half women, maybe if I say men things will end differently… my government—in a land where assault weapons kill so many…well, haven’t they been teaching…preaching...that reality depends on words, that when we call something good when it is evil, that it magically becomes good… I think their wrong…

(Factual information on Balder, Ragnarok, Loki and Stochastic Process are taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica—The fiction is mine)

(Encyclopedia Britannica)












The Song of the Sybil
Heidi men call me when their homes I visit,
A far seeing Volva, wise in talismans.
Caster of spells, cunning in magic.
To wicked women welcome always.

(W H Auden & P B Taylor Translation)
Continued throughout tale in pieces.