Mad Professor Read online

  “Never mind all that,” I said. “What does it do?”

  “Guess,” he said, showing me the cord with the computer jack. “The silver yarn, clumsily woven, I admit, is a dermo-thalamic web which uploads to the processor inside my Whortleberry to speed up your internal computational sequences. If I hadn’t pissed away so much time grading homework for all those sections of business math, then maybe I would have been able to productize this and . . .”

  “Never mind that,” I said, sensing immortality. “What do I do?”

  “Put it on,” he said. “Start counting sheep, from one, until you fall asleep. As soon as your consciousness logs off, the Whortleberry’s processor kicks in, and the counting accelerates.”

  “Have you ever tried it?” I said.

  “There was no point,” he answered. “It’s only good for counting by ones. I ended up giving her an A minus, since . . .”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “Plug it in. Give it here.”

  I pulled on the magic beanie and lay down on my bed.

  It was tight. “Should I shave my head?”

  For once Jack looked confused. “You’re bald,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah.” I’d forgotten.

  I closed my eyes and started counting sheep. They were jumping a fence, faster and faster. I dreamed I was herding them up a boulder-studded hill.

  + + +

  “Wake up.”

  I sat up. The light through the filthy windows told me it was morning.

  Jack was standing over me, smiling. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” he asked. “Don’t think about it, just say it.”

  “Twelve million, three hundred and forty-five thousand, three hundred and twenty-two,” I said. Even though my head was splitting, I counted to the next number. “Twelve million, three hundred and forty-five thousand, three hundred and twenty-three.” 12,345,323 in digits.

  “Voilà,” said Jack. “You’re gaining on the monk already. You’ll pass him by breakfast.”

  And I did. Jack uploaded the results to the Winners site and we slapped hands. I was now a world record holder.

  I ate some powdered eggs. I didn’t even mind that they had lumps like the oatmeal. I was immortal.

  But it didn’t last. Nothing does. Isn’t that what old age is all about? After lunch, between the Casa Hayzooz and Brenda Bondage shows, Jack checked the Winners site and discovered that the monk in Wichita had logged twelve million, three hundred and forty-five thousand, nine hundred and seventy-nine, beating me by eighty-six. I had 12,345,893; he had 12,345,979.

  “That Buddhist bastard,” I said, with grudging respect. “I thought Kansas was a red state.”

  “He must have nothing else to do,” said Jack.

  “Neither do I!” I closed my eyes and started counting.

  When we logged in later that night, after the McNguyen show, I was ahead by nine hundred and forty six. I went to bed exhausted, but pleased.

  I was immortal again.

  + + +

  Powdered eggs, the breakfast of champions. I was still feeling like a winner when Jack dragged in, late, looking glum.

  “Bad news,” he said. He whipped out his Whortleberry and showed me the Winners site. The mad monk was up almost ten grand; he’d reached twelve million three hundred and fifty-four thousand, two hundred and nineteen. 12,354,219.

  He must have stayed up all night.

  Much as I hated it, I was prepared to wear the cap again. “What if I throw a shit-fit and Nurse Amara sedates me?” I said. “I’ll sleep all day and double my score.”

  “I have a better idea,” said Jack. “Look here.”

  He showed me another Web site on his little screen: Lifels-SciFi.com.

  “Sci-fi? I hate that crap.”

  “Who doesn’t?” said Jack. “But this site’s gonna kick your skull cap into overdrive. The site’s run by a computer science student at a cow college in San Jose.”

  “Computers in Mexico? I hate computers.”

  “San Jose, California,” said Jack. “Silicon Valley. Computers are your friends. This ultranerd has hacked into Stanford’s fully coherent nuclear-magnetic-resonant dark-matter-powered Accelerandodrome. An outlaw link to a quantum computer! If we link your cap to that tonight, you’ll climb so far above that monk that he’ll be eating your positronic dust for the rest of his life.”

  “What about my brain?” I asked, remembering the headache I’d gotten from counting to twelve million.

  “Do you want to be immortal?” he asked. “Or not?”

  To make a long story short, and isn’t that what old age is all about, I pulled on the magic beanie and lay down on my bed. I closed my eyes and started counting sheep again. They were jumping the fence faster and faster, flowing up the mountainside, scaling the cliffs, frisking into the white fluffy clouds. I picked up my dream-colored staff and followed them.

  + + +

  “Wake up.”

  I woke up. I sat up.

  “Say the first thing that comes into your mind,” Jack said.

  I did like the day before, only more so, spewing out a jaw-breaking number name that went like this (and I’m sure you don’t mind if I leave out the middle): “Twelve duotrigintillion, three hundred forty-five unotrigintillion, six hundred seventy-eight trigintillion, . . . , three hundred forty-five million, six hundred seventy-eight thousand, nine hundred one.”

  Whew. The inside of my skull was cold. I felt a faint, steady wind in my face, the air so very thin. Toothed, inhuman peaks of ice towered above me like the jaws of Death.

  “My head,” I whimpered. “I hope I haven’t had a stroke.”

  “Never mind that,” said Jack. “You’re at base camp Googol!”

  I blinked away the mountains and saw my familiar room. Jack was smiling, no, grinning. There were even more lines in his face than usual.

  “Huh?”

  “Base camp Googol,” he repeated. “On the Matterhorn of math, high above the workaday timberline. The land of perpetual snow.”

  “Google? The search engine? What?”

  “I’m not talking business, I’m talking math. ‘Googol’ is an old-school math name that a math prof’s nephew invented in 1938. It stands for the number that you write as a 1 followed by a hundred 0s. Ten duotrigintillion sounds pompous compared to that. You’ll notice that the number you just said is a hundred and one digits long: 12, 345, 678, 901, 234, 567, 890, 123, 456, 789, 012, 345, 678, 901, 234, 567, 890, 123, 456, 789, 012, 345, 678, 901, 234, 567, 890, 123, 456, 789, 012, 345, 678, 901. That’s why I say you’re at base camp Googol. By the way, Bert, I’m impressed you knew how to put all those digits into words.”

  “Don’t forget, I’m an insurance adjuster.”

  “Were,” said Jack. “Now you’re an immortal. I’ve got a hunch you’ll be ready for my secret pretty soon.”

  He logged in and authenticated me on the Winners Web site, and all day we were riding high. Just before bedtime, right after Philosophical Psycho, we checked into the Winners Web site one more time.

  I was still the champ. The mad monk was history. Or was he?

  “He can count day and night for ten-to-the-ninetieth-power years and he’ll never catch you,” Jack reassured me. “No one will ever catch you. You’re the winner forever.”

  “Cool,” I said. “But I cheated. A bunch of machines did it for me. I was asleep.”

  “Count a little higher on your own,” said Jack, looking eager. “I’d really like that. Do it, Bert. Leave your footprints in the trackless snows. According to the Winners’ rules, you can just say that same number again, and then continue from there. On past base camp Googol.”

  “Sounds good. Only I forget the number.”

  “I’ll write it out for you,” said Jack. He scribbled with his pencil on one of the triangular scraps of paper he always had in his pockets.

  So I read the number out loud, and then I said the next one, and the one after that, and then I got into a counting trance for
a while, and then—

  “What?” said Jack, who’d been watching me alertly.

  “I lost my voice,” I whispered.

  Jack poured me a glass of water. “Try again.”

  I tried again, but for some reason I couldn’t say the next number. “That’s enough anyway,” I said. “I hiked a good stretch on my own. It really feels like my own personal record now.”

  “I want you to try and write that very last number down!” insisted Jack, very excited. “You’ll see that it’s not there!” He handed me his pencil, a yellow #2, made in China.

  Just to please him, I tried to write down the number I hadn’t been able to say—but, sure enough, when I got to the last digit, the pencil lead broke.

  “This is stupid,” I said. Jack was absolutely thrilled.

  He handed me his ballpoint. It ran out of ink on the freaking last digit again.

  “I quit.” I tossed the pen aside and shrugged. “What do I care if I count one more step? I’m already immortal. A proud, solitary figure in the endless fields of snow.”

  “My life in a nutshell,” crowed Jack. “Until now.”

  “Why are you so happy?”

  “Because I’m not alone anymore,” he said. “You and me, Bert. I’m not crazy. You found a hole!”

  “What hole?”

  “A hole in the number line. That number you wanted to say—it’s not there, I tell you. That’s why you couldn’t say it or write it down. The number’s missing, Bert. And now that you’ve come across a big missing number, you’re gonna be able to notice some of the smaller ones.”

  “I thought your magic beanie had me count every single number up through base camp Googol.”

  “It couldn’t help but hop over the holes. Like a rock skipping across water. Suppose you start counting backward. I’ll jigger my Whortleberry to be sure it flags the numbers you miss.”

  “I’m supposed to drag my weary ass all the way home from base camp Googol?” I exclaimed.

  “Starting in the foothills is fine,” he said. “It’s the smaller missing numbers that we’re after. Not the Swiss cheese in the peaks.” He handed me the magic beanie. “Suppose you count backwards from your first record. Twelve million, three hundred forty-five thousand, eight hundred ninety-three.”

  “How do you remember these things?”

  “Mathematicians don’t get senile,” he said.

  “They just go nuts,” I muttered. But I did as I was told. I figured I owed Jack one. I pulled on the beanie, and lay back and closed my eyes, and started counting sheep jumping backward over the fence, tail first . . .

  Ever examined a sheep’s tail?

  It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. The herd milled around me. We flowed across hilltop pastures, down scrub-filled gullies, and into the cornfields outside of town.

  + + +

  “Wake up,” said Jack.

  I woke up. I sat up.

  Jack stuck his Whortleberry under my nose. “Voilà,” he said.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “You found six numbers that don’t exist.”

  Jack shook his head. “Three. Our setup logged the numbers on either side of each missing number, since the non-numbers can’t be displayed. You don’t see a hole. You just see the stuff around it. The un-hole.”

  “Right,” I said. “Whatever.”

  We went to breakfast. The oatmeal was lumpy. Were the lumps the unoatmeal, I wondered, or was the oatmeal the un-lumps?

  While I was thinking about all this, Jack made a few phone calls to mathematician friends—in banking, communications, and government. Mathematicians are everywhere. I listened with half an ear; it sounded like Jack was arguing with everyone he talked to. As usual. After a bit he rang off and summarized the situation for me.

  “Those numbers we found missing: they’ve never been used as ID numbers for bank accounts, phone numbers, web addresses—nothing like that. But nobody cares. My so-called colleagues don’t get the point. Instead of wondering why those particular numbers are hard to use, people just skip over them. Nobody wastes time worrying about the missing numbers.”

  “But you’ve got the time to waste,” I said. “Right?”

  “Wrong,” said Jack, superintense. “Wrong that I’m wasting time. I’m ready to tell you my secret. I hope you won’t think I’m too far gone.”

  For a paranoid instant, I saw his eyes as glowing portholes; his head as a vessel with an alien within. But I couldn’t shut him out. I had to let him in. Who else did I have? “You can tell me,” I said. “We’ll still be friends.”

  “I don’t ask to be famous anymore,” said Jack with a sigh. “It’ll be enough if I can convince just one person. That would be you, Bert. My secret concerns a certain very small number. It’s. Not. Fucking. There.”

  “Never mind all that,” I said, feeling uneasy. “I didn’t sleep well.”

  Jack stared down at the tabletop. He squinted his left eye closed and stared one-eyed at his fingertip. “Do this, Bert. There’s a hole in your field of vision where the optic nerve connects into the eyeball. But you never see the hole. You see around it.” He waggled his hand. “Pick a spot on the tabletop and stare fixedly at it, and move your fingertip from the right side toward the center. At a certain point your fingertip disappears. It’s around two o’clock, halfway out to the right edge of your visual field.”

  I got going on this, and it worked. Hell, I could wedge two whole knuckles into the hole. Funny I’d never noticed this before, a hole right in front of my nose for going on eighty years.

  Hector sidled up to our table, checking us out. “All done breakfast, señors?”

  “We’re fine,” I said, staring down at my un-finger. “You can clear the table if you like.”

  Jack and I wandered onto the patio behind Journey’s End and sat down side by side in rocking chairs, gazing out at the cornfield behind our rest home.

  “The holes make the world,” said Jack. “The world’s the figure, the holes are the ground. Phenomenologically speaking, the illusions of space, time, and matter—they all result from the psychic work we perform to avoid noticing the missing numbers.”

  I was digging this. I felt smart. “What’s the lowest hole, do you think?”

  Jack beamed at me, happy and sly.

  “Four,” he said finally. “It’s not there. That word, it’s only a sound. A belch, a fart, a flatus vocis. There is no four.”

  Somehow I knew he was right. “Four, four, four,” I said testing it out. “Four, four, four, four, four.”

  “Just a sound,” repeated Jack. Out in the cornfield, three or maybe five crows were talking to each other. “Caw caw caw,” said Jack, echoing them. “God’s voice. Around the holes.”

  “You knew this all along?” I said, savoring his wisdom.

  “That’s why I told my business-math students that two plus two equals five,” said Jack. “And that’s why they fired me. You weren’t ready to hear me before. But now you are. The holes are everywhere.”

  We sat there, rocking and smiling, and later we went in to watch TV. It was more fun than usual, knowing the walls and the ceiling and the TV screen weren’t really rectangles. They were squashed pentagons maybe, or googolgons, or, hell, nodes in the all-but-endless web of human language.

  One thing for sure, nothing is square.

  ELVES OF THE

  SUBDIMENSIONS

  (WRITTEN WITH PAUL DI FILIPPO)

  FOREVER and again, the alvar were gnawing at the quantum walls of their prison.

  Down where photonic light itself was too gross to serve as a basis for perception, they raged to be free. Ceaselessly shifting congeries of forms, interpenetrating shuggoths, they scratched and clawed in the basement of the cosmos like dissatisfied servants, seeking an entrance to the bright and happy privileged realms above.

  The alvar had little actual experience with the macroscopic world they irrationally but fervently longed to breach. Only occasionally did a few of them manage a brief
escape, frenetically enjoying the odd pleasures of the supradimensional zone for a short time, before inevitably dropping back down to their ground state below the Planck level. Once trapped again in their subdimensional prison, the adventurous alvars would recount to their fellows the hardly believable experiences they’d undergone. These tales were passed from one alvar to another as they constantly chattered amongst themselves, eventually attaining the proportions of myth.

  “The high-planers ingest sweet chunks of their worldstuff!”

  “They use picture boxes to learn their hive mind’s mood!”

  “Of flurbbing, they know not!”

  “Their landscape is static across lesser timescales!”

  “They tend symbiotes called cows!”

  Such was the stimulating talk exchanged between the fits of importunate scrabbling.

  But now several alvar were holding a different kind of conversation, one that was more purposeful than fanciful.

  For the duration of this discussion—the time it took for a single excited electron to jump shells—these particular alvar remained remarkably stable. To their own peculiar senses, they resembled naked old human males, stooped and bearded and wrinkled. All save one. This exception took the form of a supremely beautiful human woman, anomalously equipped with a horsetail shading her rear.

  “When I finally reach the supradimensional realms,” said the female, “I intend to experience sex.”

  “I have heard of this,” said one of the gnomes, his skin decorated with blue swirls. “A ritual akin to flurbbing.”

  The female shivered, temporarily losing definition. “No, something much more delicious. For in high-plane sex, it is said, the two partners retain their identities!”

  “Impossible!” “Scandalous!” “Insipid!”

  The female grew wrathful. “You are weak and pusillanimous! You will never reach the supradimensional realms with such an attitude. Resume digging now! Faster, harder, deeper! Tear away that quantum foam! We must be ready to pounce upon any growing tendril from the ideational spores we’ve sown.”

  The female alvar dissolved into a writhing nest of medusa flails that lashed her fellows, who shrieked and spat, but nonetheless attacked the walls of their sub-Planck-length burrow with renewed vigor.