Six Apes for Eternity.

 This morning he had woken up in a good mood. So much the better, because with all the hard work that awaited him today, finally being in good shape was not a luxury. He walked over to the broken, always open, window of the building and, with his usual agility, in two bounds, he was inside. There he wandered, but without getting lost, in the circular corridors of the imposing library. On his way, all the dusty shelves wept, shrivelled and damp, their loneliness. But that didn't bother him, what he noticed, satisfied, was the sun was splashing pleasantly "his work table" and the old typewriter. As usual, with the same routine, he took a few seconds before choosing a chair, always the same; the one a little wobbly but nevertheless very comfortable that he liked. Before beginning he let his mind dawdle for a moment among the soul of the rays, no doubt in search of inspiration, then finally decided and without the slightest hesitation he began to write:

If six Eternal Apes eternally typed on six Eternal Typewriters, one day they would reproduce by chance alone a psalm, a sonnet or the entire work of Shakespeare, ‘Thomas Henry Huxley told us for the first time in 1860. A more popular formulation of the theorem asserts that an infinity of typing monkeys over an infinite amount of time will produce a given text. To insist on the two infinities is however excessive. A single immortal monkey that types indefinitely will type any given text, and even get that text infinitely many times. The idea of these mythical apes typing on their machines was taken up by Émile Borel in 1909 in his book: Journal de Physique, 5th series, volume 3, pages 189-196, Statistical mechanics and irreversibility:

“Let’s imagine that we have trained a million monkeys to knock at random on the keys of a typewriter and that […] these typing monkeys work ten hours a day with ardor with a million typewriters of various types. […] At the end of a year, [their] volumes would be found to contain exact copies of books of all kinds and in all languages kept in the richest libraries in the world."

Suddenly, distracted by the noisy quarrel of two sparrows outside, he paused. The strongest having won and calm returned, he was able to continue:

A question may remain in the mind at this point: can we really produce literary works with this system? Clearly, you're just replacing one problem with a bigger one: instead of composing a work, you have to read and test billions of billions of documents and figure out which one contains the work. The quantity of information consumed in the process will be at least as great, and in this sense this paradox is not devoid of similarity with that of Maxwell's demon, whose physics believed for a few months to be able to hope for miracles. Also, with a little sadness perhaps, it should be pointed out that it is strictly speaking a false paradox: an unexpected truth rather than the highlighting of a fault in a logical system. Because the recent calculations of a certain David Foster ruin the hopes of the Huxley apes. By typing and typing incessantly throughout the life of the universe, the monkeys would get only half a line of text from any book as their mindless labor. So regardless of punctuation or spaces, a monkey has a one in 26 chance of typing the first letter of the word Hamlet correctly. He has a one in 676 (26 times 26) chance of typing the first two letters. Since the probability decreases exponentially, for 20 letters it will only be one chance in 26²⁰ = 19 928 148 895 209 409 152 340 197 376, roughly equal to the probability of buying 4 lottery tickets consecutively and to win the jackpot every time!

Duane T. Gish, creationist, wrote in 1976: "If a billion earth-sized planets were covered in shoulder-to-shoulder monkeys, and if for five billion years each of these apes had typed 100 characters every second, there would still be no chance that a previously chosen sentence of 100 characters can be correctly reproduced.

At one point, outside in the park, he saw Charlotte wandering around in his line of sight, she was walking a little too lazily towards the swing, glancing sharply in his direction; slut, she was trying to excite him again but this time it would not work! Ignoring her, he focused on his text:

Brett Watson, mathematician, states in 1995 in: The monkeys rewriting Hamlet, feasibility study:

“Let's take 17 billion galaxies. Each galaxy contains 17 billion habitable planets and each planet is inhabited by 17 billion apes. Each monkey on each planet in each galaxy types a line every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every day. year, without ever stopping, for 17 billion years. At the end of all this time, there would still be a 99.99999999999% chance that this single line of 41 characters still would not be retyped: To be or not to be, that is the question.

Other calculations. If a single monkey claimed to be able to randomly re-type a single 40,000-word book, his enterprise would succeed in 20 billion years, a time equivalent to the age of the universe, if he typed at the speed of a trillion. three million two hundred and ninety-five thousand eight hundred and twenty-one keystrokes per second. A trillion is a billion billion. Poor monkey. A billion billion three million two hundred and ninety-five thousand eight hundred and twenty-one keystrokes per second, it's very fast. Nothing in the physical world approaches this speed from near or far. "

Charlotte was gone, but he could already feel another disturbance. Indeed, he was hungry and hadn't had lunch yet. Despite everything, stoic, he continued:

Fred Hoyle of Cardiff University, who believes that life comes to us from space by comet seeding, adds:

"The monkey troupes who work thunder on typewriters could not produce the complete works of Shakespeare, for the simple reason that the entire observable universe is not large enough to contain the hordes of apes and the number of typewriters that would be needed, not to mention the wastebaskets to throw the failed scribbles into. "

In the distance he heard the footsteps of an approaching woman, he strained his ears ... yes it was indeed her, Jenny, Jenny, she was coming, she was there. He was finally going to eat. Leaving the table, the chair and the machine without regret, Charlie rushed into the young woman's arms, screaming with joy. Softened, she stroked his back, digging, as he liked, her fingernails into his abundant fur before saying:

- Oh, Charlie, I knew I would find you in your Tower of Babel, you'll never change. Oh my God, I think you have fleas! It should be time for you to be treated.