Idol Words
(with apologies toRaymond Smullyan and the rest of the omniscient idol riddle tradition)
The woman was wearing sunglasses, a visor, a little too much lipstick, and a camera around her neck. “Excuse me,” she asked. “Is this the temple with the three omniscient idols? Where one always tells the truth, one always lies, and one answers randomly?”
The center idol’s eyes glowed red, and it spoke with a voice from everywhere and nowhere, a voice like the whoosh of falling waters or the flash of falling stars.
“No! ” the great voice boomed.
“Oh,” said the woman. “Because my Uber driver said - “. She cut herself off. “Well, do you know how to get there?”
“It is here! ” said the otherworldly voice. “You stand in it now! ”
“Didn’t you just say this wasn’t it?”
“No! ” said the idol. “I said nothing of the sort! ”
The woman stood for a second, confused. “Should I ask one of them instead?” She pointed at the idols to either side. The right idol had moose-like antlers that somehow suggested the curve of a nautilus shell; the left had a helmet like those that Trojan warriors wore when the world was young.
“Seek to know no more! ” they all chanted together, loudly enough that the very granite columns seemed to shake. “Begone! ”
I picked that moment to walk back in from my break. “Hi,” I said, “I’m the keeper of the omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly, is there a problem here?”
“Huh? That guy -” she pointed to the central idol - “said this wasn’t the temple of the omniscient idols.”
“Then it was Liar, or Random.”
“And then he said it was the temple!”
“I guess it was Random, then.”
“You don’t know which is which?”
“They switch around for every new petitioner.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me. That’s just how the idols work.”
The one with the antlers looked different now, a face covered in many eyes. The one who had previously worn the helmet now had seaweed growing where hair should be. The one in the center was weeping blood.
“Well, I had some important questions for them. Can I try again?”
“No ma’am. The idols only accept three questions per petitioner, that’s the rule.”
“But I came all this way!”
“If you go to the west side of the temple you’ll see the Omniscient Idol Museum, it has some great exhibits about the history of the temple. And the gift shop is around the back, we have 30% off on all omniscient idol-related merchandise this week only.”
“I really think you need better signage here. And you should mark clearly which is the one that answers randomly, so people don’t get confused.”
“Ma’am, I need you to go so we can let in the next petitioner,” I said, and gestured to the cyclopean stone door to the gift shop.
It was another boring day as the keeper of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly.
“My first question is for the center idol,” said the man. He was thin and balding, and he wore very precise-looking spectacles. “If I asked you whether the left idol is Random, would you say yes?”
“Yes ,” came the immediate response from the center idol, with a cadence that sounded like a bell ringing in an endless expanse.
“Well then, one of the following must be true. Either you are Truth-Teller and the left is Random, you are Liar and the left is still Random, or you are Random yourself. In any case, your answer proves that the right cannot be Random, so my question is for him. Right idol, is it true that 1 + 1 = 2?”
“Yes, ” came the immediate response from the right idol, with a certainty like a pebble striking a lake.
“That means the right idol must be Truth-Teller, which means I can use it as an oracle to determine the identity of the other two. So my next question is also to the rightmost idol: is the center idol Random?”
“Yes, ” it said again, another pebble.
“Then I’ve figured it out! The left idol is Liar, the center idol is Random, and the right idol is Truth-Teller. Am I right?”
“Seek to know no more! ” they all chanted together, shaking the temple to its foundations. “Begone! ”
The spectacled man looked at me. “I solved it, didn’t I?”
I shrugged. “Probably. I never know which is which, they switch every time.”
“Shouldn’t I get something?”
“Tell the guy at the gift shop you solved it, he’ll give you 50% off an ‘I SOLVED THE RIDDLE OF THE IDOLS’ t-shirt.”
“That’s it?”
“I mean, if it were me, once I’d identified the one on the right as Truth-Teller, I would have used my third question to ask him the meaning of life, or the cure for cancer, or something like that.”
“But then how would I have known which of the two on the left was Liar and which was Random?””
“I guess you wouldn’t have. But they switch every time anyway.” I pointed to the door. “Gift shop in the back, you can’t miss it, give them the discount code IDOL22 for our special deals.”
I looked up from my crossword. Someone else was here to petition the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly. He was a middle-aged man in a nice suit.
“My question is for the center idol: what must I do to succeed in business?”
In a voice like the filling of great chasms, the center idol answered: “Penguin monkey taco! ”
“Excuse me?” asked the petitioner. “What was that?”
“Penguin monkey taco!” said the center idol.
“Sorry,” I said. That must be the idol that always answers randomly. It’s an Internet thing. Someone on the Internet said that ‘penguin monkey taco’ was the most random series of words, and now he keeps answering that.”
“Oh, I thought ‘answers randomly’ meant he was supposed to choose randomly between true and false answers.”
“I thought so too, sir. Honestly I think he’s just trolling us sometimes.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t mean that I can succeed in business by selling penguin monkey tacos?”
“I’m sure, sir.”
“How do you know?”
“Because ever since he started saying that, we tried opening up a penguin monkey taco stand next to the gift shop, and it’s been horrendously unpopular. Do you have a third question for the idols?”
“Uh, this question is for the idol on the left. How do I succeed in business?”
“Raise murder hornets and train them to attack any customer who sets foot on your premises ,” hissed the idol, in a voice that sounded the way sharp knives feel.
“Gift shop is in the back, penguin monkey taco stand is back and to the left, have a nice day, and thank you for visiting our idol temple.”
“Hello, welcome to the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly. I know you already signed the release form, but I’m supposed to remind you that we are not legally responsible for any consequence of following the false idols’ advice. Do you have a question?”
The petitioner was a very old woman. “Yes, question for all three of you. What is the meaning of life?”
“To help others, ” said the first idol, in a voice that was both singsong and deeper than any cave.
“To find happiness,” said the second, in a voice that promised hidden subtleties.
“To carry on the species,” said the third, in a voice like a felt-covered thunderclap.
“Thank y…” said the woman, but all three idols in unison interrupted her. “Seek to know no more! Begone!”
For the first time in days, I felt sorry for a petitioner. “You know I have no way of telling you which of them is telling the truth?”
“That’s fine,” she said. “I’m just happy to know there’s any meaning at all.” She walked out of the cyclopean door with a spring in her step.
“Hello,” I said. “Welcome to the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly. How can I help you?”
The woman was in her mid-twenties, and wore a perpetual frown.
“How many questions can I ask the idols?”
“Three.”
“Why can’t I ask more than three questions?”
“That’s just the way the idols work.”
Her frown deepened. “Wait a second, how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
I sighed. “Ma’am, I’m an undergrad in comparative religion. This is my summer job. They pay me $8.55 an hour. Do you think I’m going to muster up the energy to give people a cryptic mixture of truth and lies for $8.55 an hour?”
She thought for a minute. “What would you say if I asked you what the idol on the left would say if I asked him whether you were a truth-teller?”
I rolled my eyes so hard I worried I was going to strain a muscle. Then, with sudden inspiration, I drew in as much breath as I could and shouted at the top of my lungs “SEEK TO KNOW NO MORE! BEGONE!”
The girl ran out of the temple.
“Nice, ” said the center idol.
“Hello,” I said. “Welcome to the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly. How can I help you?”
The petitioner was a middle-aged man in a black jacket. “I have a question for the center idol. What would the left idol say, if I asked it whether the right idol was Truth-teller?”
In a voice with all the weight of a great pyramid, the idol answered: “It would say ‘penguin monkey taco.”
“ What?”
“It would say penguin monkey taco. It’s the idol the answers randomly, and sometimes it says ‘penguin monkey taco’ because it thinks those are especially random words, and this would be one of those times.”
“ Um, idol on the left, is that true?”
“Penguin monkey taco ,” said the idol on the left.
“I told you so,” said the center idol.
“Okay, but then how…”
“Seek to know no more! ” chanted all three idols in unison. “Begone!”
The man looked at me, pleadingly. “But my question was really good. I would totally have - I mean - how am I supposed to - ”
“Look, go to the gift shop, tell them you solved the riddle, and they’ll give you a 50% off an ‘I SOLVED THE RIDDLE OF THE IDOLS’ t-shirt. Don’t worry, nobody checks to see if you really solved it or not.”
“Hello, welcome to the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly. I know you already signed the release form, but I’m supposed to remind you that Idol Temple LLC does not know which idol is which and cannot provide you with - “
The petitioner, a man with slick blond hair, cut me off. “Ha, no problem! I’m gonna ask each idol for next week’s Powerball numbers, then buy three tickets.” Before I could respond, he shouted “Left idol! What are next week’s winning Powerball numbers?”
“3, 15, 26, 63, 65, and 16, ” said the left idol, in a voice like if a vampire bat could speak.
“Center idol, what are next week’s winning Powerball numbers?”
“8, 22, 24, 45, 50, and 55,” said the center idol, in a voice like the crackling of Venusian lightning against thick cloud-banks.
“Right idol, what are next week’s winning Powerball numbers?”
“Any who disrespect the omniscient idols by misusing their knowledge for sordid financial gain will, after their death, be sent to the bottom-most layer of Hell, where venomous worms will gnaw at their organs from the inside forever, never to know rest or surcease from pain” said the right idol, in a monotone.
“ What? ” the man asked me, helplessly. “Is that true?”
“I dunno. Never heard of any of them mention it before. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“But, like . . . was it the true idol or the false idol or - “
“You did sign the release form, right?”
“Okay, but - look, what would you do?”
I sighed. “Sir, I’m spending my summer at the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly, while all of my friends have cool FAANG internships. Because my guidance counselor told me that comparative religion was an easy A for people who couldn’t make it in computer science. I make $8.55 per hour. Please don’t ask me for financial advice.”
“But can I - “
“All I’m supposed to tell you is that the gift shop is around the back, and the . . . sigh . . . penguin monkey taco stand is 30% off for the holiday weekend. Have a nice day.”
“Hello,” I said. “Welcome to the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly. How can I help you?”
An elderly man, leaning on his walker. “My son died last week. He was only forty. He had three little children, he’ll never get to see them grow up. I want to ask God why he took my son away from me.”
Oh man. “Look, I’m really sorry sir, these aren’t that kind of god. We specialize more in annoying logic puzzles here. I think you should…”
He turned and faced the left idol, head on. “Why did you take my son?”
The idol’s eyes glowed red, and it spoke in a voice like the sound frost makes coating a high window. “You have heard it said that life is a dream within a dream. It is more than that: it is a dream within a drama within a game within an adventure within a dream. It is engrossing, it is addictive, it is the flow state to end all flow states - so much that those playing it, in the heat of the moment, forget there is anything else - but it is only part of the All. We must all move on to other parts eventually, and some graduate sooner than others. This is unfair to those left behind, until they too pass to realms where things like ‘unfairness’ seems small and insubstantial. My condolences to your family. ”
He turned to the center idol: “Why did you take my son?”
In singsong sighs, the center idol answered: “You have heard it said:
If the red slayer thinks he slays
Or if the slain thinks he is slain
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep and pass and turn again.**
Your son is not dead. You never had a son. You drew a line around a cloud of atoms and qualities and divine fire, and called it a son. Now each has dispersed in turn. In Baghdad, there is an oilman with a nitrogen atom in his thymus that was once in your son’s parietal cortex. In Belmopan, there is an orphan who has your son’s smile; in Bratislava, a businessman with your son’s kind nature. In Bangkok lives a very holy monk who just had a thought that nobody but he and your son have ever thought before. Thus is it written:
He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself wherever that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.The splendors of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
The old man didn’t answer, just turned to the last idol, and asked: “Why did you take my son?”
In a voice like rice falling through aluminum tubes, the idol on the right said: “We are omniscient but not omnipotent. We are forbidden to reveal whether true omnipotence is possible, but we can say at least that, whether or not there be a Judge, there is no justice, not within the tentpoles of Time. Your son’s loss is unjustifiable, and there is nothing I can say that will make you happy. But that is fine: being happy is not your job, and you shirk no duty by failing at it. Your only duty now is to console your daughter-in-law and spoil your grandchildren. Do this, and you will have the blessing of the only gods mortals are permitted to know.”
“But…” said the old man. “But will I see him again, someday?”
“Seek to know no more!” chanted all three idols in unison. “Begone! ”
When the old man had left, I turned to the idols.
“Thanks,” I said. “That was . . . a good thing you did for him.”
“You’re welcome. ”
“The fact that I always lie necessarily implies that I’m a monster.”
“Penguin monkey taco. ”
I checked the clock. It was only another hour before I was off my shift at the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly.
A petitioner came in. She was wearing a tweed coat and had a bit of a smirk.
“My first question is for the idol on the left. Will your answer to this question be ‘no’?”
“Yes ,” said the idol, in a voice like the glittering of sunbeams off of diamonds.
“Then you must be Liar or Random. Same question to the center idol - will your answer to this question be ‘no’?”
“Penguin monkey taco,” said the center idol.
“That makes you Random, which means the idol on the left must have been Liar. My last question is for the idol on the right: will your answer to this question be ‘no’?”
“Penguin monkey taco,” said the idol on the right.
“Wait, what? How can - “
“Seek to know no more! ” chanted all three idols in unison. “Begone! ”
“No!” she shouted. “Come on! I tricked you! I forced you to betray your nature!”
The idols were silent.
I sighed. “Go to the gift shop, tell them you trapped the idols with a clever paradox, and they’ll give you 50% off an ‘I TRAPPED THE IDOLS WITH A CLEVER PARADOX’ t-shirt. Don’t worry, nobody checks to see if they were actually trapped.”
“But I really did trap them!”
“That’s the spirit. Sorry, we need you to leave to make space for the next petitioner.”
It was a few minutes before the end of my shift at the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly.
A petitioner walked in. She was about my age, tall, oddly cute in a sort of ethereal, distracted way.
“My question is for the left idol,” she said, kind of nervously, taking out a notebook and checking something off. “My question is: what’s going on? Why are there three idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly?”
The idol spoke, in a voice like the flapping of great wings: “Long ago the God of Knowledge saw the ignorance of Man and grew sorrowful. They asked the God of Power for permission to grant your people advisors, who could lead you upon the right path. But the God of Power was charged with protecting the world from divine meddling. They denied the request, and bound the God of Knowledge with an oath, that they must never give Mankind any sort of advisor who would convey important information. The God of Knowledge thought about this oath for many eons, and decided to create us. He bent probability around this spot, so that no matter what people asked, we would never directly communicate useful advice.”
“ This question is for the center idol,” she said. “If the God of Knowledge knew that the advisors would be useless, why did he create them at all?”
The idol spoke, in a voice like a Tuvan throat-song interbred with a Gregorian chant, and said: “A woman asked us the meaning of life. We three idols gave her three answers, none of which she knew for sure was true. Yet she left happy, because she knew there was a meaning. In the same way, the God of Knowledge sent us as a message. They could not tell humans the secrets of the universe, but they could tell humans that there weresecrets, and that the secrets could be known. Our very existence drops certain hints: that the most profound truths lie at the end of paths begun by certain seemingly trivial riddles. Or that studying mathematical logic in particular might have unexpectedly high payoff.”
The girl wrote all of this down in her notebook. Then she asked the right idol: “Knowing all of this, I guess I just have, uh, a totally open-ended question for you. Um. What should I do now?”
In a voice like stained-glass windows shattering, the idol answered: “You should remind the Keeper Of The Idols that he has not used his own three questions yet. He should try it. Maybe he would learn something.”
She noticed me, sort of for the first time. “Uh,” she said, “are you the keeper of the idols?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Wow. How do you get that job?”
“Be the only person in your Comparative Religion class poor enough to need the money and dumb enough not to have a better gig lined up.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I still think it’s . . . really cool!”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
“Are you going to use your three questions?”
“I guess I have to.”
“Can I watch?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to. I can watch because I’m the Keeper. Otherwise I think it’s just supposed to be one petitioner at a time.”
“Can you let me know what they say?”
“Sure, I’ll tell the gift shop guy, he’s always around, you can ask him next time you swing by.”
It was closing time at the temple of the three omniscient idols, one of which always tells the truth, one of which always lies, and one of which answers randomly. I tidied up, filled in my time sheet, and prepared to go home.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “My question is for the idol on the left. I was told I should ask you three questions, and I would learn something interesting. What will I learn?”
The left idol spoke with a voice like daggers made of ice plunging into a wall of fire: “Your shoelace is untied.”
I looked down at my shoes. They were both tied perfectly. “Thanks, Liar. My next question is for the idol in the center. I was told I should ask you three questions, and I would learn something interesting. What will I learn?”
The center idol spoke with a voice like the whistling of whippoorwills on willows in winter: “Penguin monkey taco.”
“Thanks, Random. I guess that leaves you, Truth-Teller.” I turned to the idol on the right. “I was told I should ask you three questions, and I would learn something interesting. What will I learn?”
The last idol spoke with a voice of absolute rightness, like all other sound had been only flawed first drafts of its voice: “By the ancient oath sworn by the God of Knowledge, I am forbidden to give you knowledge directly. I can only tell you that there is something worth knowing.”
“All right. Thanks, Truth-Teller.”
I put on my coat and clocked out. It was dark outside. I paused at the threshold of the great cyclopean door. What was worth knowing?
It couldn’t be true that the idols were forbidden to reveal any information at all. For example, I now knew the meaning of life was one of three things (I also knew, somehow, that I wouldn’t tell anyone). The idols couldn’t change history. But they could push certain people in the right directions. As long as nobody could be really sure of anything.
Heck, they had revealed - something - about the workings of the gods. Even granting that any individual response of theirs could be false, it sure seemed like they were giving different slices of some sort of consistent story. There might be a God of Power and a God of Knowledge. And they used gender neutral pronouns, unless that was an affectation. Didn’t sound like any religion I had ever heard of, and I’d heard of a lot.
Maybe that was what I’d been missing. I’d thought of Comparative Religion as an easy A, something to do when I couldn’t get the FAANG internships all of my friends were winning. Maybe the idols were telling me to take myself more seriously. Maybe there was something there, some signal in all of the noise. I imagined the sort of entity who would create omniscient gods beyond my comprehension just to send humanity the tiniest ghost of a message, and all my concerns about making less money than the Comp Sci students started to feel very small. Maybe Comparative Religion was the field for me. Maybe I should stop feeling so smugly detached from everything and actually study.
Was that the message? “Stop being such a loser, do something useful with your life”? If I was being honest with myself, part of the reason I hated this job so much was being in the presence of living gods. Them: omniscient, knowing everything that ever was, is, or shall be. Me: barely scraping by a B- in a major I’d been promised was an “easy A”. Them: dwelling in a cyclopean stone temple which tourists came from all over the world to see. Me: dwelling in a one room apartment, eating ramen at night. Them: beloved by some gods, feared by others. Me: three years and counting since my last girlfriend, starting to worry I was doomed to -
All I can tell you is there is something worth knowing.
“Gah!” I shouted, and slapped myself. Then I ran out the door. Sure, I’ll tell the gift shop guy. You can ask him next time you swing by. I was such an idiot.
“Wait!” I yelled, just before she made it out of the door of the temple complex. She stopped. “I did it. I talked to the idols. All they told me was that there was something worth knowing, but they couldn’t tell me what it was.”
“Huh,” she said. “Yeah, that checks out. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to try to figure it out.”
“That makes sense. Please, let me know if there’s any way I can help.”
“Sure. Can I have your number?”