Ahmed.
Ahmed is standing squarely on stage, like a professor. He addresses the audience in a didactic tone.
AHMED. How many of you are there, looking at what happens on these boards?
Let’s say a hundred. I only like round numbers. I like a nice neat sum. A number like one thousand seven hundred eighty seven point three thousand nine hundred two, what’s that like? Badly made couscous. A round number, it’s beautiful, it’s clear. It’s like a beautiful woman, if you see what I mean.
Improvisation on round figures and feminine forms.
This isn’t to say that you, the hundred of you who are here, are like a beautiful woman. Far from it. But you work with the material you’ve got. There aren’t just beautiful women in this world of ours. In heaven it seems that’s all there is. Maybe that’s a little too much. A million beautiful women is too many for one man. If you see what I mean.
Improvisation: Ahmed at the mercy of a million beautiful women.
OK, enough about paradise. Let’s say that a zero walks into the theater. It’s not easy to imagine, a zero walking into the theater, but you’ve got to do some work! You have to imagine the unimaginable! Come on! Concentrate! A magnificent zero walks into the theater. A perfectly round zero.
Ahmed enacts onstage the zero coming in.
And so, what happens then? The zero sits down at the very end of the one hundred. And just like that, you have a thousand. A zero at the end of a hundred, that’s a thousand, no doubt about it. Because of a beautiful zero, there are a thousand of you now. I’ve got stage fright! Acting in front of a thousand people, I have terrible stage fright. And what do I see? Another zero entering. He’s a little skinnier, this zero, but he’s not bad. He’s still plump. He’s eaten a fair number of ones, two, threes. He even devoured a seventy-eight. Because, to be a zero, you’ve got to eat everything that isn’t zero. That’s why they’re round, zeros. They’re well nourished; they stuff their faces with numbers all day long. Just so they can stay zeros. Having said this, I don’t see why these zeros are arriving late. You know, uh, you zero there, this started a while ago already. They’re already a thousand! Sit down all the way in back and don’t chitchat with the five.
I’ve got stage fright like you wouldn’t believe! Because a second zero at the end of the thousand, that makes ten thousand! It’s the Roman circus! It’s a concert by the rock group Majestic Brown Egg!
13 It’s no longer just a cozy little community playhouse! But … watch out! Yet another enormous zero! He’s eaten a seven-hundred forty-two, that one! And another one! And another one, there, there … Stop them! Guards! Where are the police?
Improvisation of a desperate struggle against the invasion of the zeros. At the end, Ahmed succumbs; he remains lying on the stage, exhausted.
They’re coming, they’re still coming … Millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions, sextillions, septillions, octillions … Countless masses of zeros adding themselves incessantly to the ends of each other … All the living are there, and all the dead and all the not yet born. A total audience, totalized by the infinite roundness of all the zeros that show up! All of humanity in my theater, humanity past, present, to come …
Ahmed sits down and looks attentively toward the back of the auditorium.
What do I see back there? There’s one that looks funny … It’s like a double zero … Twins? Twin zeros? They look more like Siamese brothers … two zeros stuck together … it looks like an eight, if you see what I mean, one zero on top of another … but not standing up, no. An eight lying down. Lazy good-for-nothing of an eight! There’s no sleeping, in the theater! Get up! But no, it’s not an eight. So what could it be? Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! It’s infinity! It’s infinity that came after the multitudes of chubby zeros! And now there are no longer any zeros at all! They’ve all run off! A grade of zero for the zeros, when there’s infinity.
That’s what’s happened. So many zeros showed up, that it was necessary to go further, further than all the quintillions of sextillions of millions! There where one is beyond number, there where one can no longer count. And infinity arrived, calmly, at his appointed time. He said, “My dear Mister Zeros, with me here, for all that you add yourselves together, get behind each other, form a long line, it’s as if nothing happened.” Disgusted, the zeros walked out. It’s as if they all got a big grade of zero minus and fell into it.
I’m deeply honored, Mr. Infinity. Thank you infinitely. For locking up the theater, for expelling the zeros, I could only count on you. May I begin? Thank you.
How many of you are there, looking at what happens on these boards? There are one hundred of you. One hundred, plus infinity, of course. But one hundred plus infinity, that’s infinity. For one hundred, next to infinity, that’s like saying zero. So, there’s an infinite number of you. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for having come here in such great numbers. Such great numbers that even if some oaf of a zero sneaks in here, it wouldn’t make any difference. No difference at all. What peace! The peace of infinity. Quiet! I see that infinity’s asleep, back there in the last row. Infinity is often asleep. Let’s wait for him to wake up. When infinity sleeps, the finite shuts up. Shsh!