The Omega

§1.Awake

I awoke in a white room from a sleep similarly devoid of color or form, the dreamless sleep out of which I'd arisen offering nothing in the way of apprehension or the peculiar fog that hangs over one in the moments just after awakening. My mind felt crystal clear like the soft white lights that illuminated my environs, casting the small cot of likewise white blanket and pillow into an ethereal glow. It seemed to me that the strangest thing about this setting was not the unfamiliar situation I had been placed into - for a room is a room, and in that basic bit of architectural familiarity I am at peace wheresoever that room may be *eight corners, six sides, 12 edges, ah yes this was a room all right* - but the nature of my shoes. I plucked at my shoes - they were neither sneakers or sandals or any footware I knew of, but a continuous white polymer that conformed perfectly to my foot. Applying slight pressure to a strap that came up to touch my ankles made the shoes loosen and fall off my feet. They felt strange, like a mix between those short socks that always seem a few sizes too small until you try them on and typical padded shoes. Why it was my shoes I paid the most attention to over my bewildering circumstances I do not know, but it is often in times of confusion when the mind will want to hold on to any detail, however insignificant, and probe it for meaning like those small fish that enter the maw of gaping fish to search for morsels to eat. My mind traced the form of these peculiar foot holders in much the same manner as one would trace the form of an unknown diagram in a textbook manual, and still no real origin story for their peculiar design could materialize.

My clothes were similarly white, and my pants were fitted - snug - but not too tight, made out of the same elusively undefinable white polymer as the shoes, with four large pockets that could be closed and opened like they had been lined with velcro - but there was no velcro. My shirt was like a wet-suit in it's fitting, and I felt near the nape of the neck a small circular bump distinctive against my flesh and amidst the rubbery texture of my clothing. Perhaps it was my mind's penchant for becoming so engrossed in details that it was at last this peculiarity amidst peculiarities which set off the metaphorical alarm bells in my mind, and as I walked to shut each of them off in quick succession I briefly thought about how badly I'd wanted to pull those red fire alarms with the lever when I was younger. Only of course I never would. Even seated by one there would be a sudden rush of adrenaline as I contemplating pulling that lever, hearing panicked voices and being escorted out by the hand of a worried parent - or more disagreeably shown out if I had done it in plain view. But I never pulled it.

*Hello?*
My voice ended as soon as my lips closed. The acoustics of this space was damped by the walls and ceiling and floor, which were of a likewise white color. In this geometry was not even afforded me the luxury of well-defined edges, but only edges which on closer examination were smoothed curves, darker only compared to the broad face of the walls as to give a close facsimile to edges if one did not examine as closely I was examining now. The cot on which I had awoken was metallic, and not made out of the white polymer. Instead it was a light grey and creaked every move I made. I decided to do what any sensible person in such a predicament would do and go back to sleep, seeing as I'd forgotten what I was supposed to be doing or even who the "I" that was supposed to be doing these things even was. I am aware of a certain phrase that drifted through my mind at this point: *amnesia*, but I gave it no further consideration than as a word which rolled quite nicely off of the tongue. I thought this was a dream, and so turning back to the wall I gazed at it, lulled into a state of half-sleep by the sheer lack of sensory stimuli around me. The silence knew no end, and paradoxically the sheer quiet made conditions intolerable to my rest. After staring at the wall in that half-dazed state and scratching at it lightly with my hand for what might have been 15 minutes I decided to get up.

I say I stared at that wall for 15 minutes because I counted to 900 at what I assumed was over 4 syllables per second, but really it could have been much longer. To count time without a watch, I count the number of seconds in the number of minutes. Only of course since you tend to count those numbers early on slightly quicker than a number per second and the numbers later on much longer than a number per second, I had to compensate for this by guessing at the average number of numbers I would be speaking a minute, and then count to the figure at a speed made by this average. By the time I had finished this calculation I now had to factor in the length of the calculation and jump ahead to a number that seemed to adequately account for this, and the smaller time in accounting for the accounting of the calculation, and so on. I am meticulous.

For example, let us suppose you are counting out 15 minutes. This is 15\*60 = 900 seconds. There are 10 syllables for the names one to nine inclusive and 18 for ten through nineteen, the odd number names. Now twenty to ninety-nine is easy. There are 80 names with seven sets of numbers one to nine for 70 syllables plus the number accounting for the name part with the -ty at the end. All are two syllables but seventy which adds 10 more, to make 170 syllables, which when added to the 70 from before, 18 from the odd names and 10 for the first nine makes 278 syllables to count to 99. From 100 to 900 there are 801 number names, all of which have "hundred" making for an easy 1602 syllables. There are eight groups of 278 syllables plus an extra 100 syllables from the 700s (if elegance is beauty and beautiful things are associated with the divine one wonders why seven was gifted an extra syllable and yet retains a place as an especially fortuitous number, but I digress...). This makes 2324 syllables, which when added to the 1602 from before and 278 for one through ninety-nine makes 4204 syllables... in 900 seconds. This is a little over 4.67 syllables per second, which is easily manageable but means your starting numbers will be significantly less than a second. As the minutes go on this rate increases. To count 3,600 seconds in an hour you would need to speak 19,639 syllables for a rate of 5.45 syllables per second. This may sound only slightly worse than the 4.67 of 15 minutes, but for an hour it's quite tiresome. Generally, even people who you may fancy talk more rapidly for longer durations of time in your life may find it a tad difficult. Here the initial seconds are even more foreshortened. In this paradoxical way, you have to count seconds wrong to count seconds right. At any rate, counting relaxed me so I did that until the silence became too much of a bore and I sat up again.

[To be continued...]