The earliest thing Clive could remember, the first thing, was pressing his face right up against the TV screen so he could see the picture as a neat grid of tiny pixels. Clive started to count them. Did you like the bright colours? his mother had asked him as she lifted him gently away. Clive had to go back a second time to see what she meant. Clive was gifted. All his teachers said so. He was years ahead of his classmates, they said, when it came to anything mathematical, which was true; Clive could do long division before he learned to read properly. At primary school they had worried about his temperament, he whizzed through his maths work, was bright, questioning and always careful and accurate, even with problems usually considered far too advanced for his age, but when it came to other subjects his manner changed completely, he became lethargic and disinterested, doodled numbers in the margins of his stories. Clive saw the world in series of graphs and charts, numbers, tessellating shapes. To him a tree was area of shade at various times of day, number of branches and leaves and equally, number of rings on the stump, the sky was percentage of cloud cover, the speed of the wind calculated from the movement of the clouds. He hated cloudless days. Clive liked computers, but rarely ever used one; he loved the idea of computers converting everything, pictures, words and sounds into binary, loved the idea that things could be quantified so purely like that. He had the idea of writing a whole book in binary, practised translating sentences from his schoolbooks until he was fluent, but he couldnt think of anything to write about. At secondary school, times grew worse for Clive. He was on the concrete curled up; he counted the kicks, counted the time between each one. They were shouting things at him now but he didnt hear them, he counted their syllables, and in front of his eyes flashed a ratio for each assailant, number of kicks against number of syllables, he tabulated the results mentally before black dots with thin silver rims like spots of ink on a pane of glass gathered and joined in his field of vision. He estimated correctly that it would be three seconds before he passed out. He didnt have many friends at school. Most of Clives teachers hated him; his attitude to non-mathematical subjects hadnt changed since primary school, but luckily Clive didnt care what they thought, or perhaps thats putting it too strongly, it didnt occur to him that they thought at all they were outside the moment, outside his mathematics. Clives exams went surprisingly well. Of course, he passed the maths exam with embarrassing ease, tackling each question with an unmatched relish and speed. In the English exam he shocked everyone by writing an eerily moving story about a girl who took a summer job as a gardener, and went blind because she was violently allergic to the most beautiful tropical flower in the garden. Clive just managed to pass enough subjects to stay on at school, owing to the good grade in English. The subjects he chose to carry on though, were maths and further maths. He couldve done more subjects, but he simply wasnt interested, and the teachers at school didnt try to change his mind; Clive was disconcerting to talk to, he had a polite, distracted air, and only ever seemed to be half concentrating on the conversation. When you left him alone, he didnt seem to notice, didnt change his posture, but carried on staring into the middle distance. Clive never looked at anyone when they were talking to him. It was as if hed never learned how to converse properly some people arent very good at talking to people because theyre shy, or because they feel intimidated, but conversation didnt scare Clive, he just seemed mildly annoyed by it, talking to him made you feel like youd walked in on something, interrupted his private circle of thought. Clive didnt have many friends. It was autumn, and school was starting again. Clive was feeling excited to be learning maths again. Over the summer he had read Pascal and Betrand Russell, mathematical philosophers, but they hadnt meant much to him really. He had also spent many joyous hours puzzling over Andrew Wiles solution to Fermats last theorem; the proof was so beautiful, so flawless that tears welled up in Clives eyes, he was crying at the purity of Wiles work, but also because he didnt think there was anything left. He felt as though he had plumbed the depths of maths to its very core, that he had exhausted all known sources. He still loved what he knew about maths, but it was the discovery, learning new thing tht gave him the most pleasure. And now he felt there was nothing new out there. In fits of desperation he spent the last few week of the holidays ploughing through books and magazines at the library in the vain hope of finding something he had missed. But as you might imagine, Clives keen, logical mind had already devoured everything. If there was hope, it lay back at school. Clive learned that of everyone, he had achieved the best score on the maths exam. It didnt surprise him, but the school decided to give him an award anyway, and he and his parents went there one evening, when lots of awards were being given out. Because it had been such an important exam, Clives award was one of the very last to be presented, and protocol demanded that he say a few words of thanks when he received it. On stage in front of the microphone Clive looked out at the columns of heads, instinctively he started to count them, number of people present, percentage of women, percentage of children, average estimated age these figures, and graphical representations of them, pie charts and tables floated through his mind. He shut his eyes, but the bright stage lights burned a bright orangey-red through his eyelids. He blurted: Thankyou into the microphone and bolted from the stage. The first maths lesson of term was a great source of excitement for Clive, his new teacher, Miss Lecksi only taught maths at this advanced level, and was reputed to be among the finest mathematical minds in education. Her repuatation at the school was somewhat enigmatic, since so few people ever found out what went on behind the doors of her maths lessons, and those that did were generally reluctant to tell. Miss Lecksi was a greying, almost bald woman with a stuffy, Victorian style of dress. Clive, who was normally very good at that sort of thing, estimated her age at anywhere between thirty and seventy. Now she addressed the class, there was an atmosphere of nervous expectation, of poorly concealed fears, Clive could barely sit still. Miss Lecksi spoke of the course they were about to undertake, of exams and homework, the tension began to fade. Perhaps the rumours werent true. But then Miss Lecksi stopped and surveyed the class, a blunt, affected look in her eyes. She spoke slowly and deliberately, as if there were some part of her story that she couldnt quite reach, but which was the most important part: The day after I finished my finals at university, my elderly proffessor, for whose teaching I am eternally grateful, called me to his office. Once there, he showed me this now she went over to a small shelf at the front of the room, and pointed to a small box there in the middle on its own. It looked old, but perfectly preserved, with a fine, rich green baize covering offset with an ornate gold trim, and a tiny, delicate jewel-studded lock. The classroom was silent. In this box, her hand quavered above it, lies the secret to all mathematics, the key to its understanding, the essence of number. Nobody knows for sure when it was made, but it has been passed down for aeons from great mathematical mind to great mathematical mind, she stared straight at Clive my proffessor gave it to me that day, its the reason I went into teaching. It has never been opened since its creation, we can only guess whats inside. So the rumours were true! The class immediately burst into a flurry of questions, Clives hand was one of the first in the air, but Miss Lecksi batted them all away. It remains here for inspirational purposes only, again her gaze turned to Clive, and I have the only key. She pulled a thin metal key on a fine gold chain hanging from her neck and showed it to the class. Now. she said, her voice returning to its more usual matronly tones as she handed out a stack of battered textbooks, Page one. A few weeks later, at home, Clive was once again poring over Fermat, but his attention kept returning to that box in Miss Lecksis classroom. He went to bed early and immediately began to dream. He was in a windowless room, full almost to the ceiling with tiny stainless steel ball bearings. Clive wasnt sure how he had got there, but he knew that his task was to count the ball bearings, he looked around him, it was an impossible task, he wasnt sure how far down it was to the floor and where was he to put the balls he had counted? They were all identical. He also had to lie flat on top of the pile, if his weight wasnt evenly distributed then he would sink and surely suffocate. He lay there for a few minutes, puzzling over the problem before a solution came to him, as he counted each ball bearing he would swallow it. Pleased at this idea Clive began methodically eating and counting the tiny metal spheres, each one trickling cold and hard down his throat. This went on for some time, until Clive began to feel quite ill, whenever he moved he could hear and feel the balls rolling and clattering around in his stomach, they wouldnt stay still. He didnt seem to have made any impact on the amount of ball bearings in the room either, and he had counted more than five thousand. Reasoning with himself, he knew there was no way out other than to finish counting, so he wearily commenced the torture once more. After twenty or so more ball bearings Clive suddenly began to feel a violent pain in his stomach, a hundred times worse than his earlier discomfort, horrified he felt the tiny balls stretching at his skin, almost breaking through, he squirmed to try and somehow rid himself of this awful pain, but as he did so the now paper thin skin of his stomach burst open, and hundreds of ball bearings began to spill out. Clive reared up onto his knees with the pain, and as he did so he began to rapidly sink into the balls, knowing there was no way out Clive tried in vain to take one last gasp of air before his head went under. He awoke gasping and sweating. It was just after eight oclock, and the light was just beginning to fade outside. Clive gathered his things and snuck downstairs and out of the front door. Now he could breathe. He looked up at the cloudless sky, knowing it was fruitless to try and count the stars. The moon was a sickly sliver of yellow light, waning, waning. Sometime later he arrived at her house, checking the address was right on a bit of paper. Finding it had been easier than hed imagined. He correctly guessed that she would already be in bed, her front door had been left open and he had padded up the stairs, his footsteps muffled by thick carpet. Her room was deathly calm, there was a strange emptiness to it, the walls stark and unpainted, and the only item of furniture was the small, even child sized bed upon which she now lay. Clive crept up, so close that he could hear her heavy breath, feel her movements, gently he pulled back the bedsheet, the clasp glinted orange in the streetlight below, his hands cringed from the sallow, pock marked skin of her neck and shoulders as he carefully undid it and removed the chain. Pocketing it, he hastily left the house, remembering not to shut the front door, so he could return the key as easily as he had attained it. Brimming with excitement, Clive near sprinted to the school. But he must be calm, he knew that, and he paused in front of the black, wrought iron school gates to catch his breath. He crouched and forced his way through a small gap in the fence used by savvy latecomers after the school decided to shut its gates on the stroke of nine oclock. Clive made his way round to the maths block, his heart doing a mile a minute in his chest. He knew the caretaker lived on site, but there was no light from his window so Clive figured he must be sleeping too. With that in mind, he snuck up to Miss Lecksis door, and with a great deal of relief, he thought of the doddering caretaker ambling through the coridoors, admonishing people for running in the halls, though they were barely even at medium pace. Clive grinned. Even if he did make enough noise to wake the caretaker, he would be long gone before the old man had made it out of bed. Miss Lecksis classroom door was mysteriously unlocked and as Clive pushed it open he couldnt help feeling slightly uneasy. Miss Lecksi locked her classroom whenever she left it during the day, and it was rumoured that even the cleaners werent allowed in at night, so it seemed odd that it would be left unguarded on this particular evening, but Clive was not about to question his good luck, so he soldiered on. Inside, the classroom was very different to Clives daytime experience of it, theres something lost and sad about an empty classroom and even in the dark Clive noticed scuff marks on the threadbare carpet that he hadnt seen before. His head reeling, Clive made his way toward the box, sizing it up. Not wanting to arouse suspicion he hadnt had a proper look at it up close, even tried to ignore its presence where others deliberately walked past it, near brushing against it on the way in and out of lessons. Clive kept to the other side of the room and was never seen staring at the box, though it permeated his every thought. And now, now he could see its rococo gilding, the gleam of the gems around the lock, the work of a master craftsman. Clive pulled the key from his pocket and sized it up against the lock before pushing it in. It was a perfect fit, of course it was. He shut his eyes as he turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid, his fingers brushing the exquisite baize, even he who knew nothing of fabric could tell that this was of the highest quality. When he opened his eyes he was taken aback for a moment, and had to steady himself on the desk behind, he rubbed his eyes violently with the heels of his hands until they watered, and looked again. There was nothing in the box! His mind flooded with a million questions, a million images, Fermat, Wiles, Pascal, Pythagoras! He reeled back, clutching his head in trembling hands. And then he stopped with a slow realisation that made his eyes burn and stood up straight. He strode deliberately back to the box, the wood inside was rough and grainy, he ran his fingers over its untreated surface. Of course! he muttered to himself, and only the worry of waking the caretaker stopped him from shouting it out loud, he barely stifled a joyous burst of laughter. Of course! He quickly closed the box, locking it tight and almost ran from the room, from the school until he was back outside, panting and ecstatic. He took his shoes off and felt the grass and the ground, hard and moist, tickling under his feet. As he approached Miss Lecksis house, the first light of dawn was beginning to rise and he heard the birds trilling and chirping, saw the greenish glow of dawn just behind the horizon. He felt tired and elated as he once again mounted the carpeted stairs. Inside her bedroom, the light had changed everything and Clive saw there was a fine balance to the décor, saw the subtle shades on the walls that he had not picked up on before. He stopped a second. Now Clive once more approached the bed, once more pulled back the bedclothes and began to replace the chain. This time the skin felt soft and inviting, he let his hands linger there a second. As he turned away a calm voice called out to him from behind, Wait. He looked back, and saw the new dawn light shining in her eyes, looking straight at him. He moved towards her. She understood. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Take care - Kieran _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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