Error

Chapter I: The Error

"Victor! Did you hear me?" Mrs. McSalls was normally one of the nicer, well-tempered teachers, but, around Victor...

With a surname like Godel-Pythagoras, many thought that Victor was supposed to be some kind of math genius. He was not. At all. In the slightest. He didn't hate math, he just didn't... understand. The numbers never really clicked with him, but if you gave him a pencil and some lined paper, his hand acquired creativity of its own.

He started writing at seven, when he comically learned that books didn't write themselves. He started to come up with little adventures, most often featuring his cat and his five-year-old little brother. When he was angry at him, he would die horrible deaths, but most of the time they fought pirates and won. He showed most of them to his parents, but not the ones where his brother Terrance fell into abysses, got crushed, was shot to death by arrows...

After his parents' divorce, his stories matured. He wrote a lot about the divorce itself, along with plenty more melancholy topics. After a while, he got over it, though, and his writing matured further but strayed away from doom-and-gloom. He presented it to his English teachers in private a few times, and was met with encouragement each time.

They would have said that either way, he always thought bitterly.

After the divorce, he stayed with his father, who seemed to never get tired of talking about grades. "Why aren't you doing good in math?" he would say about once a week. "You're doing all right in science, and that's just fancy math. What's the deal?"

He never understood that science was stuff. Math was numbers. They were very different; they didn't go together in his head.

He wanted to get away from his dad. He didn't want to move in with his mom, either, but he couldn't stand his dad. Maybe his aunt would take him...?

"Oh, uh... Yeah. Sorry Mrs. M." Victor's voice was timid, more so than usual. His messy black hair fell over his dirty glasses that made it so he could see through his piercing blue eyes. One of his friends nudged him, reminding him she had asked him to solve the equation on the board. Victor took out his calculator and began to tap in the equation. "Uhm, X equals... 12 is what I got." He said, looking up from the calculator.

Mrs. McSalls looked down in disappointment. She didn't know what to do about Victor anymore. She looked up once more and began to lecture as she showed the class how to solve the equation.

As she droned on Victor was typing random things in to his calculator: 4*18= 72, 72^(8 = 214628.9751, 214628.9715/ 0 = "DIVIDE BY 0 Error," read the calculator. "Aw, crap," he said, getting frustrated at the machine. He reset it, but wasn't met by the familiar cursor afterwards. The device began vibrating, softly at first, but enough to be really weird. Victor looked at it and Mrs. McSalls stopped talking. Everyone else stared along with her. The calculator was violently shaking now.

"Guys, I don't know what it's... OH MY G--" With a final scream and a cry for help Victor was simply gone. No one was able to help him. Not even his best friend...