Oin

The number 272457835645356604 entered a difficult stage of his life. Suddenly he was dawned on the idea of his insignificance which hit his head like a hammer. Wound into a ball, it suffered melancholically and bemoaned his senseless life:

“Poor me! So unneeded, useless, doomed to solitude and indifference! How is possible that nobody’s ever thought of any use of my number? At the same time there are a lot of stupid and trivial ones that have been acknowledged. They even have names – Avogadro’s number, Riedberg’s constant, Planck’s constant, not to mention Pi and e. All of them until recently were numbers as ordinary as me.”

The number sighed, grieved to the brains of his digits. An accidentally passing by function heard the sad monologue and sat beside the number in order to comfort him.

“Don’t fall into despair, 272457835645356604. Man never knows when his luck will show up. I used to know someone called 273.0482. He, like you, was looking for his destination. It’s true that he always used to hang around with the big shots – with six, even five digits. Once on a party he was even presented to 2416 himself! I don’t know if these acquaintances helped but at the end a chemist discovered that this is exactly the atomic mass of the chemical element Plutonium. Perhaps someone will find anything like that about you too. For example, the distance to a new star, the diameter of a quark, the possibility that a man evolves into a cockroach. Just wait a while – you’ve got enough time.”

“No, I’m sick of waiting. I can’t even sleep: counting sheep up to my own number doesn’t help any more. I’ll just start traveling through the Universe to search for my destination.”

“Do as you like,” said the function, “that’s better than staying idle and taking pity on yourself.”

The function flew up because she had to keep her graphics and waved with her variable to the number.

An active period came for 272457835645356604. He was flying tirelessly through the Universe, stretching himself up to his whole length and measuring the distance between the stars. Alpha Centauri, Sirius B, Altair, Betelgeuse, Antares and all the other known and unknown stars. However, none of the distances matched the number. The black silence of the Universe didn’t want to accept his mission.

Then he moved into the microscopic world and started to count the atoms in a given unit of volume, quantum possibilities of various elementary particles and their energy levels. Afterwards he tried to compute new constants like intellect times beauty and spirit times matter.

Nothing matched him. Evidently this world was not created for the poor number to live in. When he got tired of his fruitless search he laid down on a cosmic ray and decided to put an end of his existence.

“They’ll see! Some day they’ll need me to express the quantity they’ll have found but I will not be there. Let them find another one if they don’t want me now. I can’t stand this hopeless life anymore. I’ll scatter to my components and nobody will meet me any more.”

The desolate number came back in his thoughts to the moment of his birth. He remembered the God of Numbers who in the Big Zero was allocating the digits and was giving life to the numbers. The same God who treated him so unjust condemning him to loneliness. He knew that a lot of other numbers shared his fate but that couldn’t make him feel better.

The decision was taken. 272457835645356604 apathetically started his disintegration tearing off the last digit of his tale. The 4, left on its own easily floated into the space. The 0 which had no valence without support of the 4, tore itself effortlessly and disappeared.

The number with eyes full of tears felt the silent resistance of the Universe against his serious deed. He knew that he inflicted pain and irretrievable losses to the whole cosmos by destroying himself. Although, he didn’t change his mind. The Universe hadn’t found a place for him inside it and the number was just relieving it from his useless presence. The number stretched his hand to the 6.

Suddenly, a strong shout was heard:

“No!”

The number looked at the direction from which the shout echoed. Another number pushing ahead the two light-hearted children – the zero and the four, was coming closer.

“It’s pointless to stop me. I don’t want to keep on living.”

“Listen to me carefully” answered the other number, “I need you as much as you need me. Don’t do anything stupid but paste your digits back to your body and come with me to do our job.”

The suicide killer curiously looked at the newcomer 192931454468.

“What do you mean, 1929...”

“Call me Oin. That’s an alias I thought out in order to ease the communication. In fact my story is very similar to yours. After a long search I couldn’t find anything that matched my number. I was no less desperate and hopeless than you. But on the verge of my own disintegration a savior idea occurred to me.”

“What was it, Oin? And what has it got to do with me?”

“It consists of the fact that all measuring units are relative. They are accepted by men as a standard. At instance, the meter doesn’t exist on its own in the space. It’s the length of a stick which was accepted for a length standard. If we assume that the standard is not one meter but 192931454468 meters, then…”

“Yes?” said the number excitedly.

“Then the volume of the Sun will be exactly your number! Because your number times 192931454468 equals the value of the volume of Sun in meters.”

“And as 192931454468 is your number and you’re called Oin, then I am the same as the volume of Sun measured in oins!”

“That’s why if you and me are separated, we would be just useless numbers, but if we stick together we thoroughly give a meaning to our existence.”

Inconceivably happy, Oin and The Volume Of Sun In Oins hand by hand flew towards the Sun.

Aleko zhelyazkov, 2003