“Good. Then try to go along with the analogy that a human society is like an atomic pile. At one extreme you will have a dying, decadent culture⁠—the remains of a highly mechanized society⁠—living off its capital, using up resources it can’t replace because of a lost technology. When the last machine breaks and the final food synthesizer collapses the people will die. This is the cooled down atomic pile. At the other extreme is complete and violent anarchy. Every man thinking only of himself, killing and destroying anything that gets in his way⁠—the atomic explosion. Midway between the two is a vital, active, producing society.

“This is a generalization⁠—and you must look at it that way. In reality society is infinitely complex, and the ramifications and possibilities are endless. It can do a lot more things than fizzle or go boom. Pressure of population, war or persecution patterns can cause waves of immigration. Plant and animal species can be wiped out by momentary needs or fashions. Remember the fate of the passenger pigeon and the American bison.

“All the pressures, cross-relationships, hungers, needs, hatreds, desires of people are reflected in their interrelationships. One man standing by himself tells us nothing. But as soon as he says something, passes on information in an altered form, or merely expresses an attitude⁠—he becomes a reference point. He can be marked, measured and entered on a graph. His actions can be grouped with others and the action of the group measured. Man⁠—and his society⁠—then becomes a systems problem that can be fed into a computer. We’ve cut the Gordian knot of the three- L ’s and are on our way towards a solution.”

“Stop!” Costa said, raising his hand. “I was with you as far as the three- L ’s. What are they? A private code?”

“Not a code⁠—abbreviation. Linear Logic Language, the pitfall of all the old researchers. All of them, historians, sociologists, political analysts,