The Birth of Pi

God was delighted. It was during these times of intense creativity that he found himself happiest. The pleasure of creating something from completely nothing was incomparable. It was way more interesting than maintaining and managing a running system.

He had a lot of plans for this cycle of the universe; things he had been planning for eons during the last cycle. In fact, it was with a lot of glee that he had embarked on the last Big Crunch- take it all back to nothing and start building again.

The previous day, he had given shape to the basic structure. He had decided on what percentage of the universe should be matter and what percentage energy. Then with a wicked grin, he had made 78% of it invisible – let them try and figure that out! They might call it dark energy and dark matter for all he knew!

Later on, he put in his latest inventions – protons. He liked their positive nature. But then he also had to add equal number of electrons. He did that reluctantly, frowning at their negativity. Once the basic building blocks were ready, he had wound up for the first day.

It was on the second day that he added shapes- all the potential shapes that could exist in this cycle of the universe. The easiest was the triangle. He liked the three-sides-three-angles shape. Quite simple and basic. Besides, he liked the number three.  The rectangle was a tad more complex but logical after the creation of the triangle. Step by step, he created the pentagon, the hexagon etc. As he created each shape, he fed that into the production server.

It was right at the end that he had the brainwave. He had visualized a completely new shape. It was more symmetrical than any shape before that. It was simple, elegant and curvaceous. It was a masterpiece of creation. Its sheer symmetry and beauty took his breath away. As he created the prototype, he looked at the properties on his computer – it was perfect. The perimeter was always proportional to a straight line drawn between any two points of the shape, passing through the center. He decided to call such a line the diameter. In fact, what delighted him most was that the perimeter to diameter ratio was a perfect number – three - irrespective of the size of the shape. God permitted himself the luxury of rubbing his hands in glee (thereby inadvertently also creating electricity).

He would now upload this perfect shape into the production server. He looked at the console – the magic ratio, 3, was visible on the screen. He hesitated a moment before pressing the button, drinking in the number.

It was at that precise moment that his pesky little brother, Devil barged into the workshop.

‘Dude, what is this amazing shape?’ he asked lunging at the perfect shape. As God’s finger pressed the button, devil touched the shape, which immediately lost its perfection.

God stared at the screen aghast. It said...

Uploaded

Shape – Circle

Perimeter to Diameter ratio – 3.1415926535… Oh damn, it doesn't stop!!