Noni, the juvenile Nine, was sitting on the floor, dividing his toys over and over, and then multiplying them back together. Luckily, he got bored just when his dad got home.
"Daddy!" he squealed in excitement.
"Well, hi there, Noni," Kilenc said in greeting. "What have you been doing while Mommy and I have been gone?"
He blew a raspberry. "Playing with my dumb toys. I can only divide and multiply them. I want to by a Cube-Rooter!"
"Noni, you don't need a Cube-Rooter."
"But all my friends have one!"
"You don't need it! I can entertain you."
"What, like... tell me a story?"
"Is that what you want?"
"Well, yeah! Tell me a story."
Kilenc took a seat, and said, "Hmm... Maybe you want to hear one about the Numeric Republic?"
"Yeah! Well, what is the Numeric Republic?"
"You live in it!" Kilenc said in disbelief. He took Noni to the window. "Look outside," he told his son, pointing to all the numbers walking outside. "See, there's a four. And there's a six. A one, a three.... They didn't all used to live together."
"Really?"
"Yeah. The Calcuverse used to be divided one-dimensionally, like on a number line. Do you want me to tell you how all that changed?"
"Okay."
"Well, I actually nearly killed the boy who made this."
"What!? Dad! Are you a villain?"
"Well, I kind-of was... will you just let me tell the story!?"
"Well-- okay."
"Thank you. It all starts with a human boy named..."
YOU ARE READING
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AdventurePeople always talk about fantastical things happening when you divide by zero. A black hole forms, society crumbles, or something like that. But Victor, or as his calculator friends call him, "Vector," is brought into the world inside his graphing c...
