Five ( a short story )

 

            The first time I ever made Aline laugh with something of my own was when we were walking from the college library to the bus stop – we had gone there to study, the first opportunity I had to get closer to her.

It was a stary night. She took a donut from her purse, asked if I wanted a bite – I said no thanks – and she confessed that she probably shouldn’t be eating that.

-         I guess I’m a little over my weight – she said.

-         That’s physically impossible – said I, with my smartest face.

She laughed like a flower, and after a while, asked:

-         Are you a scientist, then?

The door then opened in my mind for all possibilities. Yes, I was feeling hesitant about revealing something of myself. But I hadn’t had too much success in starting a conversation when we were in the library, and it seemed better than fifteen minutes of awkward silence anyway.

-         In fact – I answered – I have a brother, one year older, and we always discuss all kinds of crazy things.

I was looking at the paving stones in the walkway.

-         Like what? – she asked.

-         Well, for instance, we have some theories about the numbers…

-         Complex stuff?

-         Not really. Want to hear some of it?

-         Well, yeah.

And this is the “theory” that I explained to Aline as we were walking in that stary night:

It is about the numbers from one to five. Well, One is God, but God doesn’t want to be alone. Two is for computers, and Three is for life.

-         Wait – she interrupted – This is weird. Two for computers like in that, how they say it, binary code?

She was right. The binary code, the language of just Zeros and Ones that computers use to write down information and make operations with it, totally fits what I was thinking about.

But the simplest way of thinking about it, is to think of day and night. In the number One, there exists something in the Universe, instead of nothing. In number Two, we have two different opposites. Day and night.

And the number Three is for life. Putting the contradiction to some mean. Think of the number Two as the number of the physical World, in the sense of planets, particles, billiard balls, fire. It’s an ever expanding and dividing Universe.

Like a simple computer operation. All numbers are represented by a sequence of Zeros and Ones. And adding them generates a bigger number, a longer sequence of Zeros and Ones.

So we can imagine this: after adding the two numbers, we have these two numbers and the result of their sum. Now we have a new result, a fourth number. Then we add the four and get a fifth, then we add the five and so on…

 

It seems like an interesting illustration of how the universe of Physics works. We can imagine the One as Positive and the Zero as Negative – then these two forces go interacting with each other, generating more and more little Ones and little Zeroes, a set of Ones and Zeros that get each time longer and more complex.

Like Positive and Negative forces interacting and dividing things. Dividing planets into smaller ones, and etc. Dividing and expanding.

 

Then something happens between the numbers Two and Three. Things start to gather for some reasons, new substances form, gases, water, all paving the way to Life, that is when the opposites start to really work together for a goal. Like all those chemical reactions in our body. Or, simply, day and night. Feeding during the day, sleeping during the night. Or the contrary, but marrying day and night for a common goal. The third element, that points ahead.

-         I like it – said her – And the number four?

The Four, I explained, is the Human Being. Life with self-consciousness. You have Three, a living being putting contraries to the same direction. The we have Four, a living being that is aware of himself, that he is an individual, that he is unique. Three plus One.

-         Does it have to do with God? – she asked – Life plus God?

-         It totally does – said I.

Because if God can be considered the Original “I”, then Three plus One, Life plus self-consciousness, Life Plus “I”, is Life plus God.

-         Cool. And the number Five?

Five would be the something more each of must find for ourselves. Because a person can know that he is an individual, know that there is a higher Intelligence or Order above, and still go wrong, still get lost. Five is the little extra thing we must find.

-         An extra finger – she smiled.

Think of it this way: The psychologist – I think it was them – realized something about how our brain processes data in chunks. Like, when you see two things, you don’t need to count – one, two – no, you just immediately see two things and know it’s two. The same thing with groups of three our four. You don’t need to count, you see immediately that it is three or four. But five is the first number that people – or at least, the vast majority – have to somehow count. You see a chunk of four and then add that extra one, and know it’s five.

Like whenever we see something in life, we must try to at least see a little something more, go at least a little further from what our brain is predisposed to see. In the number Four, we already know we are an individual, and there is God. But Five remembers us that we never know all.

Could be a little something more creative in the work, could be a situation that you saw many times before and think you know everything about, but there is always something a little different.

-         Wow – she said – I like it. Do you think that’s why we have five fingers?

-         Well, I don’t know, it’s just something I like to think when I look at my hand.

-         Well – she said – Then you should make a little song: this little finger, reminds me of this, this little finger, reminds of that…

Then it was my time to laugh.

And so she kissed me in the cheek and got the bus.