Prelude • • •
Achilles and the Tortoise have come to the residence of their friend the
Crab, to make the acquaintance of one of his friends, the Anteater. The
introductions having been made, the four of them settle down to tea.Tortoise: We have brought along a little something for you, Mr. Crab.
Crab: That's most kind of you. But you shouldn't have.
Tortoise: Just a token of our esteem. Achilles, would you like to give it to
Mr. C?
Achilles: Surely. Best wishes, Mr. Crab. I hope you enjoy it.
(Achilles hands the Crab an elegantly wrapped present, square and very
thin. The Crab begins unwrapping it.)Anteater: I wonder what it could be.
Crab: We'll soon find out. (Completes the unwrapping, and pulls out the gift.)
Two records! How exciting! But there's no label. Uh-oh-is this
another of your "specials", Mr. T?
Tortoise: If you mean a phonograph-breaker, not this time. But it is in fact
a custom-recorded item, the only one of its kind in the entire world. In
fact, it's never even been heard before--except, of course, when Bach
played it.
Crab: When Bach played it? What do you mean, exactly?
Achilles: Oh, you are going to be fabulously excited, Mr. Crab, when
Mr. T tells you what these records in fact are.
Tortoise: Oh, you go ahead and tell him, Achilles.
Achilles: May I? Oh, boy! I'd better consult my notes, then. (Pulls out a
small filing card, and clears his voice.) Ahem. Would you be interested in
hearing about the remarkable new result in mathematics, to which
your records owe their existence?
Crab: My records derive from some piece of mathematics? How curious!
Well, now that you've provoked my interest, I must hear about it.
Achilles: Very well, then. (Pauses for a moment to sip his tea, then resumes.)
Have you heard of Fermat's infamous "Last Theorem"?
Anteater: I'm not sure ... It sounds strangely familiar, and yet I can't quite
place it.
Achilles: It's a very simple idea. Pierre de Fermat, a lawyer by vocation but
mathematician by avocation, had been reading in his copy of the classic
text Arithmetica by Diophantus, and came across a page containing the
equation
Prelude ... 275