The Number Devil: "The First Night"–"The Third Night"

Well, in the middle of the night, still woozy with sleep, he staggered down to the basement in his pajamas, and what did he find next to the wine cabinet? A dead mouse.

And when the fantastic racing bike came back to haunt him, or a computer game he couldn’t live without—there it was, right next to the telephone—he knew it was just a hoax.

And what did he see but a gigantic beetle glaring at him, a caterpillar perched on a blade of grass, and an elderly man the size of a grasshopper bobbing up and down on a spinach leaf and staring at him with bright and shining eyes.

“How dumb can you get!” said Robert. “A colossal waste of time if you ask me. So get going! Scram! Shoo!”

“I see,” said the number devil with a wry smile.

“I’m sorry,” Robert said meekly, though the whole thing was getting weirder and weirder.

“And that’s not all,” the number devil added, picking up a walking stick with a silver knob and twirling it in front of Robert’s nose. “When you get to five million etcetera, you can go on. Indefinitely. There’s an infinite number of numbers.”

“Okay, now let’s pretend that everyone’s gone on a chewing spree and we’re down to the last piece of chewing gum. I pull another one out of my pocket, the last one that I’ve saved for myself, and what have we got? All those trillions of chewed pieces of chewing gum plus one. Do you see what I mean? I don’t really need to count them. All I need is a recipe to take care of anything that comes along. And that I have.”

“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
Robert thought that the number devil was a bit too confident. Maybe he was just bluffing.

He had fallen out of bed and was a little dizzy, but he laughed to think he had outwitted the number devil.

Robert saw he had to do something, so he clambered onto the nearest mushroom.

“It’s fine,” said Robert. “I just wonder who came up with the number flies and the forest of ones. I couldn’t have. Not in my wildest dreams. It could only have been you.”
“And if it was?” said the number devil, preening himself on his mushroom.

“Because zero was the last number to be discovered. Which isn’t surprising, given that zero is the most sophisticated of numbers. Here, look.” And finding a space between two tree-high ones, he wrote some letters in the sky with his walking stick: MCM

“Tell me, when were you born, Robert?”
“Me? In 1986,” said Robert a bit reluctantly.

I told you we couldn’t do without it. That brings us back to the Romans. They reckoned they could, and look what happened. Instead of 1986, they had to fiddle with all those M’s, C’s, L’s, X’s, and V’s.

“Fine! Go ahead!” Robert blurted out when he couldn’t bear it any longer.

“Hopping?” Robert said scornfully. “What’s that supposed to mean? Numbers don’t hop.”

“Now, the fives of the ancient Romans could never be anything but fives. Why? Because the Romans didn’t know how to hop. And why didn’t they know how to hop? Because they had no zero to keep places. Which meant they ended up with monstrosities like MCMLXXXVI...."

“Really now! You’re brighter than that! Try the year you were born, 1986.” The number devil started growing again, and his mushroom followed suit. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he bellowed. “Get a move on!”

“No problem,” said Robert warily, “though I'd appreciate it if you didn’t fly off the handle over every detail.”

“Here I come to a rank beginner out of the goodness of my heart, and no sooner do I open my mouth than he starts making wisecracks!”
“The goodness of your heart!” Robert cried.

“Good,” said the number devil, his anger subsiding as quickly as it had come.

“There are two types of numbers,” he whispered. “The garden variety, which can be divided evenly, and the rest, which cannot. I much prefer the latter. You know why? Because they’re such prima donnas. From the very first they’ve caused mathematicians no end of trouble. Wonderful numbers those! Like eleven, thirteen, or seventeen.”

Robert couldn’t get over how blissful the number devil looked. He might have had a piece of chocolate melting in his mouth.

“Zero,” said Robert, to get his dander up.
“Zero is forbidden!” the number devil shouted, brandishing his walking stick.

“Zero,” said Robert, to get his dander up.
“Zero is forbidden!” the number devil shouted, brandishing his walking stick.

“Well, maybe I overstated my case a little.”
“I’m glad you can admit you’re not perfect,” said Robert.

"...That’s what makes them so devilishly interesting—and what is devilish is fun, don’t you think?” And so saying, he twirled his stick with great relish.

“You haven’t seen anything yet!” he said, savoring Robert’s curiosity.

For a while the number devil had a rather crotchety expression on his face (as he always had when he didn’t know quite what to do), but when he heard Robert laugh he laughed too and started puffing on his pipe again.