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A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.
Sol Robeson: Hold on. You have to slow down. You're losing it. You have to take a breath. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug I had with a computer bug you might have had and some religious hogwash. You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.
[repeated line] Maximillian Cohen: When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so when I was six I did...
Maximillian Cohen: 11:15, restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.
Sol Robeson: This is insanity, Max. Maximillian Cohen: Or maybe it's genius.
Sol Robeson: As soon as you discard scientific rigor, you're no longer a mathematician, you're a numerologist.
Sol Robeson: There will be no order, only chaos.
Sol Robeson: Have you met Archimedes? The one with the black spots, you see? You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks - insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife - she's forced to share a bed with this genius - convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density - weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka" and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery.
Sol Robeson: [finishes story of Archimedes' breakthrough] Now, what is the moral of the story? Maximillian Cohen: That a breakthrough will come. Sol Robeson: Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. You listen to your wife, she will give you perspective, meaning. You need a break, you have to take a bath or you will get nowhere.
Maximillian Cohen: Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well... Right in front of me... hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.
Marcy Dawson: It's survival of the fittest, Max, and we've got the fucking gun.
Lenny Meyer: Each letter's a number. Like the Hebrew A, Alef is 1. B, Bet is 2. You understand? But look at this. The numbers are inter-related. Like take the Hebrew word for father, 'Ab' - Alef Bet... 1, 2 equals 3. Alright? Hebrew word for mother, 'em' - Alef Mem... 1, 40 equals 41. Sum of 3 and 41... 44. Alright? Now, Hebrew word for child, alright, mother... father... child, 'Yeled' - that's 10, 30, and 4... 44.
Maximillian Cohen: 10:15, personal note: It's fair to say I'm stepping out on a limb, but I am on the edge and that's where it happens.
Maximillian Cohen: I'm trying to understand our world. I don't deal with petty materialists like you.
[first lines] Maximillian Cohen: 9:13, Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six I did. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly, daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see. But something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.
Marcy Dawson: [to Max] You don't understand it, do you? I don't give a shit about you! I only care about what's in your fucking head! If you won't help us, help yourself. We are forced to comply to the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest Max, and we've got the fucking gun!
Maximillian Cohen: It was given to me. It's inside of me. It's changing me. Ephraim: It's killing you, because you are not ready to receive it.
Rabbi Cohen: Who do you think you are? You are only a vessel from our god. You are carrying a delivery that was meant for us. Maximillian Cohen: It was given to me.
Maximillian Cohen: My new hypothesis: If we're built from Spirals while living in a giant Spiral, then is it possible that everything we put our hands to is infused with the Spiral?
[last lines] Jenna: How about 748 divided by 238. I got it! What's the answer?
Maximillian Cohen: Something's going on. It has to do with that number. There's an answer in that number.
Maximillian Cohen: If the number's there I'll find it!
Sol Robeson: The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe.
Maximillian Cohen: Studying the pattern made Euclid conscious of itself. I had to... Before it died it spit out the number. That consciousness is the number? Sol Robeson: No, Max. It's only a nasty bug. Maximillian Cohen: It's more than that, Sol. Sol Robeson: No, it's not. It's a dead end. There's nothing there. Maximillian Cohen: It's a door, Sol. It's a door. Sol Robeson: A door at the front of a cliff. You're driving yourself over the edge.
Maximillian Cohen: [In front of the bathroom mirror. Pushes a live power-drill into the side of his head]
Maximillian Cohen: 10:28. Results: bullshit.
Maximillian Cohen: 9:22, Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood.
Lenny Meyer: The Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it's a code sent to us from God.
Lenny Meyer: You gave it to those Wall Street bastards?
Sol Robeson: That is the truth of our world, Max. It can't be easily summed up with math.
Maximillian Cohen: Happy birthday, Euclid.
Maximillian Cohen: Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results...