THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE Read Free Page B

Joshua had told Lakshman, then I can state confidently that Madras has made no progress at all. It was Rajnikanth whose manifold Technicolor avatars were painted over the city walls when Joshua had visited back in the Eighties, and it was Rajnikanth who ruled the roost even now, pixellated and Photoshopped. So Joshua had no trouble tapping into popular sentiment to drive home the idea of his new shortest path algorithm.
    ‘Suppose point A is this auditorium right here and point B is a movie theatre in the city where a Rajnikanth movie is playing, how do you get from here to there as quickly as possible? That’s the Shortest Path Problem in a nutshell,’ he said, his eyes sparkling with mischief as he surveyed the audience for their reaction.
    The audience hadn’t expected an American like Joshua to be so tuned in to the zeitgeist in this part of the world, and they roared in approval, much to his delight. Lakshman too broke into a handsome smile in his seat, suddenly realizing why Joshua had earlier made that comment out of the blue. But then that was vintage Joshua. He knew when to kiss, when to bow and when to shake hands; he knew what it took to elevate an academic presentation into a performance in any corner of the world.
    ‘The Shortest Path Problem has been researchers’ favourite for several decades now, ever since Dijkstra published his algorithm in 1959. But I must point out that it was not Dijkstra who first invented the shortest path algorithm. While it is true that he came up with it independently, it was the guys at RAND Corporation who had it first. But they kept their stuff tightly under wraps, whereas Dijkstra published his work in Europe a few years later and set the ball rolling for all of us.Dozens of shortest path algorithms have been developed by researchers since then. These algorithms are all fantastic in their own way, but – there is always a but – none of them runs as fast as this new algorithm here. This baby uses what we call an asymmetric radix bucket data structure which speeds up the computations to unprecedented levels. Let me show you how it works and you can see for yourself where it gets its mojo from,’ Joshua said and moved towards his laptop.
    Ably supported by thirty slides, most of them densely packed with Greek symbols and other mathematical exotica, he illustrated the intricacies of his new algorithm. Most of the students assembled in front of him looked as if they were at the screening of a movie in an alien language without the benefit of subtitles. Joshua tried hard to make the technicalities as accessible as possible, but he began losing his audience at a drastic rate, starting at slide three. Lakshman dropped off at slide fifteen and by slide twenty, there was only one person in the entire auditorium who was still with Joshua, furiously scribbling down notes on the scrap papers spread on the desk. Joshua was on a tight schedule – he had just enough time to have dinner with Lakshman, check out of the Oceanic and make his way to the airport, and he’d planned his presentation for under an hour. But he slowed down a little when he saw the clueless faces in front of him and took an extra ten minutes to run through the slides.
    A palpable wave of relief swept through the audience when Joshua was done. Lakshman prompted the crowd for a round of applause and threw the floor open for questions. Seeing Joshua sneaking a peek at his double-dial Rolex and getting a little restless, he added, ‘Professor Ezekiel’s running out of time, so we have to keep it brief.’
    ‘Sir,’ a slender hand decorated with a red wristband shot up in the air from the second row.
    ‘Yes, young man,’ Joshua said.
    A stubbly chap in his mid-twenties clad in an electric yellow T-shirt rose from his seat twirling his wristband almost as if readying for a fight. A wireless mike passed from hand to hand and made its way to him. He grabbed it and said: ‘Sir, your algorithm looks very good, in