9.

Joshua knew where he was before he opened his eyes. He knew where he was because of the sound of that water in the pipes, the eternal anguishing drip, pong, drip of the water. Still there were only those deep-toned shadows everywhere, a bog of purple worse than blindness.

The white, shirtless, bald stranger was sleeping. Joshua pulled his knees into his chest as the sleep left off him, trying to get warm in this eternal chill.

The man woke up. "Jack's beanstalk," he said.

"I don't know what that means," said Joshua.

"The idea that if you go high enough--up and up and up enough--you'll break through to some other world. How do autistic people do complex long division with a half-second of unwritten meditation? How do they look at some incredibly intricate maze on paper and draw--in pen--the solution as quick as you might draw an X over the page with your own pen?"

"I don't know what to say to that," said Joshua.

"Ha! I don't care. I really don't care if you find the solution to all of this. It won't mean a lash more or less on my back."

Joshua lay down in the fetal position, his ebony bare arms wrapped around his shins.

"Counting," said the man, "is climbing the beanstalk. You get high enough--up into the numerical ether--at some point you've got to break through to something new. Count higher than any man ever has--you'll find yourself in a magical land, you'll find you've crossed into a new world with new rules, new possibilities. Count higher and higher for weeks, months--you'll get there one day. That's the only way to the gods--and gods are nothing but beings who add a column thousands of rows high in the way that we'd add two and two. Too bad that gods here on earth are regarded as madmen, autistics and schizophrenics."

"Madness is a disease," said Joshua. "It a fault, not an advantage."

"Ha!"