too_many_numbers

Senza misura, sopra una corda, rilassato

There are too many numbers.

Look, there’s 0, and 1, and 2, and 3, what’s next, 4? 5? 6!?!

And, oh no, we can go on forever! And, it doesn’t break anything if we take forever to be a number, and we go forever plus one, and forever plus two!

And look, we can go backwards! Minus¹ 1? -2? -3!?! Too many paths! Too many options! Too large!

And we can fall between the cracks! What if, instead of stepping a full meter forward, we stumbled, gasp, a fraction of a meter? What if we stumbled such that, if we stumbled an identical distance and direction, we’d have stumbled a full meter? Well, that seems like a special amount of stumbling, and so that amount is so uniquely monikered ‘half’. But wait, we can subdivide¹ further! What if it takes three stumbles to equal one meter? Why, we have a ‘third’! And so it goes.

Wow, that’s a lot of numbers! Though, if I’m being honest, the first step was the hardest. Accepting they exist at all. Doesn’t feel like we got much bigger than that…

’Least upper bounds’¹ and ’Castille sequences’³. So many numbers to hold in your head! Not only is there a root¹ 2, and a root 3, and a… no, you already know root 4… root 5, and a root 11, and a root -1… there’s so much numbers and not enough head. Eugh!!! Yet this is all out in the universe, and all these stupid sophonts are able to function!!! How ignorant! Oh, they were born from the infinite¹, why do they spurn it so! Why do they not allow their head to be cracked open and washed away by the universe, the bloody treads of the infinite wheels in bloody⁴ wheels mashing their brainbits to a pulp, O, stretching them and stretching them until there is nothing¹ left, They’ve been stretched too thin, because they aren’t just their souls, they are their bodies, too, and their bodies can only take so much. Yet they tolerate it so.

They don’t need to hold every number in their head at once. They can group¹ them together², and hold the group¹ ². It’s enough for me, and I’m enough for you.

⁰ Unadvanced base case.

¹ Advanced math term.

² Advanced nonrigorous handwaving.

³ Math, uh, thing. Dammit, ‘Callister’, how are sequences defined? Why am I forgetting right now? Ilthilumia should have plenty of books on this, if you’re so inclined. If Ilthilumia still exists.

⁴ wheels in bloody⁴ — Johnathan ‘Johnny Wheels-in-Wheels’ Penrose⁵.

⁵ Me. Hullo, ‘Callister’. Still clinging to the god of your wife’s corpse?