Safety In Numbers

The Corridor of Numbers

As I came to light it seemed I was in a long Corridor in the servants' quarters of an Edwardian mansion. Panelled doors punctuated each side of the dimly lit avenue.

On the first door I saw my name scrawled on a yellowed card and entered. Two giants stood in a playground surrounded by children of all shapes and sizes, playing strange games with hoops and climbing frames, looping bodies weaving elastically between the bars. A stooped figure in long, black coat tails stalked over the asphalt towards me. I looked for a means of escape but saw that green railings stretched before me into the haze. “Perhaps there is safety in numbers” I thought. “If I stay, the stooped figure will pluck one of the other children”.

But a deeper voice within told me this didn't seem a risk worth taking and I headed off at a dreadful speed. The railings blurred before me as the pace of my fear increased and I found myself back in The Corridor. I passed through the next door.

A terrifying game was in progress. Muscular boys gripped each other in a seething organic clump which meandered over a muddy wasteland, sometimes disappearing into fog. A harsh February wind lashed my exposed limbs. Cringing on the edge of the field I saw three frightened creatures huddled together for warmth. It was Fatty, Weedy and The Nerd. Instinctively I made my way towards these familiar friends, but a track-suited figure with a glittering silver whistle thundered over the frozen earth towards me.

“Back to the scrum, boy! Safety in numbers!”

A shrill blast on a whistle and the scene changed. Grey, bayonet-armed figures swarmed slowly from a gash in the earth into the machine-gun chatter of a routine morning massacre. “No running” shouted a head-masterly voice and I saw the stooped black figure in long tails emerge from the fog before me. “Safety in numbers” piped a thin, aged voice from somewhere as bodies went down like wooden ducks at a fairground shooting booth. From the corner of my eye I saw the vague outline of a shattered chapel wall, an arched door still embedded in the ruined shell. I hurled myself through it and found myself back in the long Corridor.

Through the next door a scene of quiet desperation emerged. The machine-gun chatter dissolved to the hypnotic tapping of numberless office workers at their computer consuls stretching into the far haze of an eternal open-plan office. Each individual resembled a worker bee contributing to the growth of a boundless hive. The sky above had become a swirling blue screen, a collective consciousness from whose cloudy vortex the words “Safety in Numbers” formed and dissolved. An empty desk beckoned me but I clicked frantically on the cross at the corner of my screen and the was able to exit through an open Window to a place where rose perfumes hung heavily on the evening air, and the senses awoke to the Theremin call and easy contours of the feminine realm.

And here in a stately conservatory the women danced in fine silken frocks of many colours, their swirling bodies reflected kaleidoscopically in the myriad panes of glass that surrounded them. For a time – I forget how long – I immersed myself in the gyrating disco bauble of human coupling, partners coming and going as the dance tempos quickened or slowed. With so many women to whirl and twirl with, there seemed a certain safety in the feminine realm, a place where one could dance at ease, singing of the birds and bees.

But ease of coupling soon gave way to desperate grasping at illusive dresses, as dance partners became scarcer. Gradually - and finally - the chandeliers grew dim and I found myself alone in an empty room, star-light penetrating the glass roof, lighting the way through piles of torn silks to another door.

Now finding myself sitting on a beach and before me the persistent, stooped, tail-coated figure tapping his cane upon a blackboard silhouetted against the glittering sea.

“Imagine the sun which warms this world is a grain of sand,” he piped. “Now imagine that every grain of sand on this beach is a sun. That is the number of suns there are in our galaxy. Now imagine that each each grain of sand is a galaxy. That is the number of galaxies in The Universe.”

He advanced towards me and uncurled a parchment finger beneath my nose, upon which a single grain of sand sparkled in the mazy whorls of his ancient skin.

“Now imagine, that everything I said to you was a gross under-statement and that in reality, the situation I described to you is equivalent to just one grain of sand on this beach, and the Universe is everything I said multiplied by every grain of sand on this beach and even then you have to consider that all this is merely equivalent to a single eye in the composite eye of a fly in a swarm of flies greater than the number of protons known to exist in all the stars visible in the night sky...”

He picked up a piece of chalk.

“...and it can all be summarised by this equation...”

He started chalking numbers upon the blackboard, which seemed to elongate along the coast-line. The chalk tapping increased in volume in my head and I felt myself spiralling into numerical oblivion before coming back to consciousness in The Corridor.

The next room presented a more reassuring sight. An over-weight chap in a stretched waist-coat sawed with moderate skill on a violin. A heavily spectacled nerd of a scholar turned the brittle pages of a Billy Bunter novel, one of many that stood in shaky towers around his mahogany desk. A weedy, under-nourished pianist accompanied the obese violinist. An air of quiet melancholy hung over the room, quite different to the desperation of the Infinite Office. Each man was harbouring his own very unique despair and had created a certain calm in their personal ocean. I realised that the golden calves and wine-filled goblets for which the great crowds of humanity strove - and sought a kind of safety - for were not for me.

There were great spaces between these individuals, and though there had once been many more people here, it felt as if few others were now likely to enter this room.

Although I could see that The Corridor stretched onwards and the muffled chanting of monks could be heard far off, here I would stay - among those who pursued their little craft and whose sad eyes sparkled in the infinite sunlight of acceptance.