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DISCOVERING INFINITY
Copyright 2019 Christina M. Guerrero
DEDICATION
For math lovers.
STORY BEHIND THE STORY
There's that moment when you get to this point.
ABOUT THE DRAFTS
First draft:
Nothing, yet.
“One ... two ... three ... foe-a ....”
He stopped whispering. Someone was walking down the hallway.
He stopped counting his shoes and socks, and instead tidied up the bookcase, just in case they were checking on the progression of his cleaning.
Voices muttered in the hallway: something about the meals for the day.
He grabbed the privacy sign, hung it on the outside knob of the door, shut the door, listened for a bit, then resumed counting.
After twenty he muttered, “What comes den? What is next? Oh ... twenty-one ... twenty-two ....”
He got up to thirty-eight, and frowned.
“What is after thirty-eight? Oh! Foe-ty. Foet-ty-one ... and den fifty ... sixty .. sebenty .. eighty ... ninety ... one hundred!”
He smiled.
Then he gasped.
“Dere’s more!” He whispered loudly. “One hundred and one. One hundred and two ....”
He looked around the room and at everything he could count.
“What’s after one hundred ... and ... and ... ninety-nine?”
He giggled. “Two hundred! And thwee hundred! And all da way up to ... nine hundred. What’s next?”
Words came from his memory ... “Oh! One thousand!”
He counted on his fingers. “One thousand and one. One thousand and two. One thousand and thwee.”
A flash of insight made him open his mouth wide and just stare at the walls.
“Uh, oh,” he said softly. “It does not end. It goes on and on. It goes to a million. And den a million and one. And two. And thwee. And nine million. And a lot. And one hundred million.”
Words came from his mother about something called a ‘budget’ -- “We’ll need to be conservative about that expense or we’ll end up with a negative number.”
“What’s a negative number?” He asked himself. “What?”
He remembered opening one of the others’ schoolbooks and seeing little dashes to the left of the numbers; those numbers were to the left of the zero sign on the number lines.
“It does not end!” He said. “It goes both ways! No! It can go up and down. Remember the graphs. Da graphs! In dat TV show!”
Memory taunted him: two-dimensions versus three and four. Some TV show left images in his brain, and he thought about space and time.
He cried silently, feeling scared for a few minutes.
A knock at the door made him stop. A voice called, “You okay in there? Cleaning your room?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He wiped his face and stared at the socks and shoes.
More words came to mind, including something from a science show a few nights ago: “Infinity.”
“Infinity,” he said. “Infinity.”
He put everything away, and lined up his shoes, and straightened up his bed.
“Infinity,” he said. “Dat’s something that never ends. Wow.”
He opened the door and went into the hallway. One of the other children said, “I heard you crying. Are you okay?”
“Yes. I am okay.”
THE END THE END THE END
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