Chapter 2
Pointing At Numbers
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| "We'll succeed based on that seventy-eight" |
(Another day goes by at the office)
BIGGY showing off their system on the wall,
Our rig-up: the giant graphic net data!
SMALLY pointing up at it,
I think we’ll succeed based on that seventy-eight.
BIGGY
Yeah?
SMALLY
If my theory is correct?
BIGGY
Ancestors have shown that luck, special ritual
or religious observance are not out of the question
in reflecting those numbers up there on our chart.
Are they?
SMALLY
Hardly... Or not.
How can we say yet?
BIGGY
What is it that we need to do?
SMALLY, gesturing toward an index on the table,
Touch this. Read this sacred paper of signs and symbols.
BIGGY
Woah! Will it change, re-order or obfuscate
the numbers on the wall chart?
SMALLY
Read it. Read it out loud!
(Biggy starts reading and mumbling unintelligible bad gurk stuff)
SMALLY
Nothing of that makes sense!
And no new numbers have jumped out,
reordered or changed positions with each other.
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| Ancestors have shown! |
BIGGY mocking with a sing-song voice,
No One - in front of another.
No Two - twirling hand in hand
or skirting the issue.
No Three - bouncing off of each other
and curling around the steady center.
No Four - with average sensibilities compared.
Or Five coming.
Or, Six - utilizing its prerogative to jump over,
upside-down, to prove itself Nine
before Eight is compared.
Or, Ten - bursting in,
shoving all the older numbers over
(the ones that have been out there long enough -
all stretching themselves out, withering).
And the Seven - angling, arching for a place
benevolent over them all;
called from sacred scripture’s roll
that hardly means anything to us now.
Because it’s not working!
SMALLY
But it could if we can improve it -
I mean prove it - and be using it
altogether in our chart.
(He becomes dejected and blames the numbers)
Useless correspondences!
Stiff broad black conflicts
unused to each other
front to back, back to front
unwilling to join, to accumulate as one.
BIGGY
Unwilling to share!
SMALLY
These numbers!
Always wanting to be separate from each other.
BIGGY
Un-tuned, musically speaking, so they’re not
the best notes, beats or conglomerated wholes.
SMALLY
Stiffly sat up standing in a square,
holding steady - thickly, blackly pronounced.
BIGGY
Filling in only so much space
in that important square to mean so much...
SMALLY
To broadly show what it contains for us.
BIGGY
To be absolutely certain of what it itself means.
SMALLY
A certain figure
as an unchangeable sum
BIGGY
An un-altering figure for a certain sum
set there above, aloft on our chart.
SMALLY
A definite figure handed down to us
from posterity.
BIGGY
For prosperity.
SMALLY
These forms are powerful;
induced to work for us and stretched out
and charged like magnets
to attract more and more…
(He pauses. He cannot say exactly what is ‘attracted’
to their numbers now but finishes his sentence anyway)
… fulfilling our future.
BIGGY
But we’re stopped now, Smally, aren’t we?
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