The Numberer

Why this number, why this moment? Why did the four, and the four, and the eight command his attention like this? It wasn't as if there was even anything he could connect it with in his mind...was there? He thought for a moment, but drew a blank. A date? Part of a telephone number? An address? No, nothing. And yet, there it was; the number, attached to the badge of a black cab, had simply frozen him in place, capturing all his attention. Four four eight. It was almost, he thought, like a sum: four plus four equals eight. Or maybe a 44 and a 48, crashed together like one of those cars made of two scrapped wrecks. What was it called? Ah yes - a cut and shut. Was it because it was on a taxi that he was thinking about cars? Four four eight, the numbers kept repeating in his mind like a mantra, and he knew he'd have to say the number's name before he could be free of it, before he could move on from it. Inwardly he groaned. It was always a problem when a big number caught his eye, because he could find himself standing for what seemed like hours, until he had fully spoken the number. Dates were the hardest. A date could catch your eye at any time, they seemed to be much stickier than other numbers. Maybe it was all the associations that attached themselves to dates that made them such rich food for thought. But say he'd seen the year 1944 or 1948 ... well, that was nearly two thousand words to fully speak out the name of the number - all the names of the number - in words. He didn't like to think about what would happen if he didn't do what the number demanded. Bad things. Very bad things. Bad things without number, he thought, and giggled to himself. Was there some hidden meaning in this number? What if one of the fours was like those textspeak "for"s? For forty-eight? Four for eight? That sounded like some kind of sports score ... not that he knew much about that kind of thing. When you had to say the numbers all the time, well that didn't leave much time for other interests, he reflected. Nearly done now, surely. Was there something else he knew about this number? Of course sometimes you could think everything you knew about a number and still feel like there was a great mystery still attached to it. Perhaps that's what kept him doing it, drove him on. There was always more to learn about them. This was one of those times.



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