Numberland

Numberland is a novel by George Weinberg. This book is a story about the lives and thoughts of numbers. The numbers in the book believe they are immortal and cannot die like people. One number, the number Six, believes that numbers are mortal just like people. In the book, Six has three different meetings with a human named Elizabeth. In these meetings, he comes to the conclusion that numbers are mortal and there is no "biggest number" but infinity. We create numbers as big as we need them. It is also recognized that time is not accounted for in Numberland.

In Six's first meeting with Elizabeth, she is a little girl who is just starting to learn and understand math. She gets frustrated because the numbers to not make sense to her. Six watches her without saying anything at first and then he cannot stay quite. He blurts out to continue studying math and never give up on the numbers.

In Six's second meeting with Elizabeth, Six had a vision of her as a college student. She was studying numbers and The University and when she saw Six she thanked him for giving her courage and for being her friend. Six did not understand that Elizabeth got older. The last time he saw her there was a crib and now she was taking longer strides. This made him really believe that life is special and mortality is not what numbers thought it was.

Six saw Elizabeth for a final time. During this meeting, Elizabeth was even older than before. She was a woman now. She also had just won a Nobel Peace Prize for her studies in palindromic functions. Six asks Elizabeth what is the biggest number. Elizabeth answers that there is not a biggest number and that humans create numbers as they need them. Six also asked Elizabeth if numbers are immortal. She explains that numbers will die when humans die. Humans only use numbers when they need them and when the last of the humans die, the numbers will die with them.

Through Six's