Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods Read Online Free PDF Page A

Then she swooshed past me.
    It’s not what you think. We didn’t do it. We just . . . talked and hugged. And maybe we kissed once. Yeah, weird.
    *
    Kyle didn’t even mention the extra century. If he noticed anything, he probably blamed his own calibration skills. When we punched a new hole the next day, we found a vibrant village. Better yet, we found evidence of the maize being harvested. It wouldn’t be long before the tribe found uses for it, we hoped.
    We moved forward in jumps of one year three times, and each time, the maize crop was larger. The tribe was sowing the seeds wider and wider.
    “We’ve done it!” cried Dr. Elk. “We’ve successfully introduced modern maize to ancient Mesoamerica. Now we need to do the same in North and South America!”
    By the end of the week, or rather by the end of the century, we had three successful tribes across the two continents sowing and harvesting maize. We watched them for a few decades, modeling the dispersal of the maize between other tribes. It caught on quickly, it was so much better than the native teosinte, with more yield and with bigger grain size. Then we moved ahead a century.
    The first thing we saw was that our Mesoamerican site, dubbed Columbus, had grown to the size of a small town.
    “They’ve set aside hunting and gathering in favor of maize farming,” Dr. Elk explained in class. “With the higher yields of modern maize, they can afford to stay in one spot. They can start to accumulate the immovable technologies that only a city-based culture can.”
    Cleveland, the tribe in North America, was also growing. Cincinnati, however, had disappeared, the tribe moving on, uninterested in domestication. The maize was gone.
    “Our next step is to watch as the population density increases. Watch as the maize spreads through the continents. Watch as it supplants the native and less domesticated plants. We can expect larger cities, larger populations. All of these starting at the same time as they are in the Indus Valley. Success, ladies and gentlemen. Success!”
    *
    Beth and I never said we were dating. She just spent a lot of time at my place. Mostly we talked about the project.
    “This would make a great PhD dissertation,” she said one day.
    “Thinking of doing grad work, are you?”
    “For you, I was thinking.”
    “I’m in engineering, remember. I don’t do the history stuff anymore.”
    “Except when it’s a cool project.”
    She was right. I was spending more of my time on the senior project than I was on my grad studies.
    “It’s a cool project.”
    We’d been moving ahead centuries at a time, watching the progression of civilization through the New World. Columbus was spreading out into a megalopolis, an Aztec empire eight millennia early. Cleveland had fragmented into a dozen city-states up and down the Mississippi River. But Vicksburg had shown signs of bronze-working. And Cairo had the wheel.
    “If only we could give them a decent domesticated animal,” Beth said.
    “We barely got the spyeyes through with the maize. It would take a terawatt-hour to push through a breeding pair of horses,” I said. We were eating up Dr. Elk’s funding at a horrendous rate as it was.
    “There will be more money if this works,” she said. She looked fetching in Amerind faux cow-skin slacks and vest. A lot of the sorority girls were wearing them, since the article came out in the school paper.
    “Why? Once we prove the theory on the impact of domesticated grain, what more do we need money for?”
    “There are a thousand thesis topics in the area of historical causality! They’re talking about opening a whole new department for it.”
    “I must have missed that,” I said. “With Dr. Elk as the chair, I suppose.”
    “Who else? He’ll need good grad students. And don’t tell me you haven’t enjoyed the project.” She snuggled up to me on my couch, her faux leather silky smooth on my arm.
    “I’m changing the subject,” I said. “Are we