999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [244]
Virtually the most important thing I have ever discovered is the idea of digital roots. To find the digital root of a number, the aim is to reduce it to a single digit. You achieve this by adding up all its existing digits: 943521, for example, adds up to 9 + 4 + 3 + 5 + 2 + 1 =24. This, of course, still has two digits, so you add them together 2 + 4 = 6. The digital root of 943521, therefore, is 6. What is interesting, however, is that to speed up this process you can simply cast out the 9s. If there’s a 9 in the number, or any of the digits add up to 9, you can ignore them. In 943521, therefore, you ignore the 9, and also ignore the 4 and 5, which add up to 9. This leaves you with 3 + 2 + 1, which gives you 6. The same answer.
I ended up here completely by chance. I don’t know, can’t chart the steps, which brought me this way. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything in particular, but then maybe it could have been something so small that I wouldn’t have thought it was important enough. I can remember some books some conversations some dreams some things I saw. But nothing spectacular. No major blows to the head.
You look for what makes sense.
Susan the new girl who works in the bookstore is lovely. She’s got a great smile and she always looks so cheerful and as if she knows something funny is going to happen sooner or later. And she’s prime. I guess it’s a vacation job or something. She noticed my accent straightaway. I think she thinks it’s cool. I hope so.
Gerry was on the phone again earlier this evening, hassling everyone about what we’re doing for the Millennium. Max is getting all hot and bothered about it too. Who cares? Everybody thinks that the year 2000 is going to be the big one. It’s not. We’re already there. It’s already started. Cast out the 9s, and see how it is so. Last year was 1998. 1 + 9 + 9 + 8 = 27, and 2 + 7 (or ignore the 9s and just add 1 and 8) = 9; cast it out. Zero, in other words. 1998 is ground zero or the end of things, a nothing year in modulo 9. 1999, on the other hand, has a digital root of 1. 1999 is year 1; 2000 roots down to 2. 2000 isn’t the start of anything, it’s after it has already begun. Millenniums don’t mean anything to real people. Their lives revolve around much smaller circles. You strip things down. If you can’t reduce a number down any further, then it means something. Otherwise it’s just addition.
Got the Macillsons’ house painted today. Did some work inside for them too, fixing up stuff. Think their neighbor might need some work done too. So it goes, luckily.
It’s very much like something breaks. When it’s done, you go through this hell. Like grief. At first the units are minutes, and then hours. Weeks, months. Cycles of guilt and grief and sometimes glee. Once you’ve been through it once, it’s different. The first time you’re culpable, there’s no getting away from it. Afterwards it’s different. All the structures, once so hard, become fluid forever, like a bag full of broken glass in treacle. When you push your hand in, it’s sweet and sharp together.
People are nice to me, but that just makes me feel sad and guilty, because I know I’m not very nice. It’s really painful. I have good friends, and I always have a laugh with the guys at the store where I buy my materials. Susan at the bookstore waves now when she sees me go by. I don’t deserve it. I want to be nice. It’s important to me. I was nice once, I think, and bits of me still are. I used to drive miles, for example, every weekend, to see someone. I had it in me then, the capacity for being good. I still do. Bits of me seem not to be touched by it all. But they’re no help, either, and you have to wonder where the energy, the motivation and glee come from. Doesn’t any of it come from that part of me, the part I like? It must do: or if not, why is it so powerless? It must be very weak to be unable to do anything, in which case it’s obviously not so blameless after all. It’s all very well