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AN INTERVIEW (AMATEUR SCIENCE FICTION)
Q: Is it numinousness, numinessence,
or numinosity?
A: It's like luminous.
Q: You say numinosity?
A: I do.
Q: And when a thing is numinous it exudes an air of mystery,
of sanctity?
A: Of energy. It appears charged.
Q: I see. And may I ask how you programmed the computer to
recognize and measure the numinosity of these queer items, the "volatic
piles" [1] for instance? A: Twenty of us toiled at it night and
day for eleven months. Into the UNIVAC, known to us as Maud, we
fed everything from arcana pertaining to Zahirs [2] to a catalogue
of army-surplus equipage, from lavish colour-plates of fish lures
to a tea-stained pamphlet on numismatics. 600 miles of magnetic
tape we fed into her! Thank God Maud is a fast learner or we'd still
be at it. One morning she was taken with a cadence we were feeding
her of Gertrude Stein's: "a lightning cooky, a single wide open
and exchanged box filled with the same little sac that shines."
Her console went dark a moment, next thing we knew she was drawing
up plans for the construction of Stein's sac and demonstrating by
means of an elegant equation that once built, 69% of 
sac's numinosity would be attributable to the "potent triad" embodied
in it, by which she meant its Familiarity, Diminution and Radiance.
Despite the early hour we broke out champagne. What relief to know
those eleven gruelling months hadn't been in vain!
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