And he lands in a park ordinary in every way except that:

1. There are no people.
2. A being made of two blocks-- of the sort used to teach children about addition-- with arms, legs, glasses, a line for a mouth, and a floating numeral 2 over their head-- is curled up with their knees to their ?? chest ??? and sobbing.

Is he lucid dreaming while passed out on the floor of the Stata center? He totally is, isn't he.

. . . He doesn't actually want to wake up. If he wakes up he has to walk home and if he gets three hours of sleep first probably nobody will find him. This is sleep-deprived dreaming person logic but it's very compelling.

He walks over to the crying dream being and asks, "Are you okay?" because it feels less awkward than not that.

"No!" Two sniffles. 

Bruce has no experience comforting crying . . . dream . . . alien . . . children, or whatever this person is. At least the stakes are low.

"Do you want help?"

"Yes! Helping solves problems," says Two with the air of someone who learned a great secret yesterday, which in fact he did. 

Oh no, they're tiny and cute. "What do you want help with?"

"Three and I were running a race," Two explains, "but Three kept winning because she's bigger than me. So I found a One and we merged and then I was part of a numberblock that won the race." Two wails. "But it wasn't a Two that won! It was a Three! Three has still won all the races!"

That . . . has a definite sort of logic to it, when you think about it. He doesn't have a solid enough opinion on which skills meaningfully derive from one's own virtue and resound to one's own credit and which are external advantages to explain it to himself, let alone the talking concept of the number two, so he decides to do an end run around the problem.

"Is there some other kind of contest you could have instead where you might do better than three? . . . Limbo, maybe?" Was that quantity-ist?

Sniffle. "What's Limbo?"

"It's a game of who can bend over backwards farther. Someone holds out a stick and everyone else takes turns trying to walk under the stick without touching it and then they move the stick lower until only one person can do it."

Two turns himself sideways! His eyes, smile, legs, and numeral rearrange themselves so as to be in approximately human positions, but instead of his blocks being vertical they're horizontal. 

"I'd be really good at Limbo!"

"Oooh, that's really cool, I can't do that." It does mean that if Three is what they sound like any game of limbo is likely to be a boring tie and he needs a different kid-distraction strategy in the medium term.

"What number are you?"

I'm not a number, I'm a human being! Oh no, he accidentally a meme. It's actually kind of an interesting philosophical question. He's made up of a specific (but constantly changing) number of cells, and ditto of atoms, and if you converted his brain to a binary file it would be any of several different possible numbers depending on the encoding scheme. And of course he has a student ID number and a social security number but those aren't interesting. He should probably actually answer the question. 

"You know, I'm not sure. I might not be a number at all, or it might be changing all the time. My name is Bruce."

Two looks confused, then dismisses the confusing statement. "Is Bruce larger than Seven? The largest numberblock we've met so far is Seven!"

"Hmm. I'm not Zero, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, or Seven, and I think I would know if I was negative, so if I'm a number at all I'm larger than Seven, but I think Seven is probably taller than I am. If I'm a number I'm probably a very large number indeed, but my parts are much smaller than yours." Maybe he's imaginary, he thinks, and has to stifle a laugh.

"Who's Zero? And what's a negative?"

"Well, you have two blocks. If you had one less block, you'd have one. If you had one less than that, you wouldn't have any, which is to say you'd have zero. Zero is also the number of fingers I'm holding up right now," he says, holding up a closed fist.

"Oooh! I wonder how to make Zero!" And Two splits--

And now there are two red blocks with a single eye and leg, but for some reason two arms. Over their heads floats the numeral 1. 

"Hello!"

Oh gosh that's kind of neat and also kind of trippy. Do they have the same mind and memories and stuff as the Two? Are they telepathic with each other? If they split again would they make halves and would it be awful?

"Hello! It is once again very cool that you can do that." For once it's very cool how English lets you be ambiguous between singular and plural you.

"Hi! I'm One!"

"And I'm also One!"

"Who are you?"

Wooooah that kid just (temporarily?) wiped (some of?) their memory. Weirdest dream. 

"I'm Bruce! Do you share thoughts with each other? Like if you" he points at one One "saw something while the other One wasn't looking would the other One know what it was?"

"No, because we're in different places!"

So which of you is in the tens place? That probably isn't what they meant. "And you don't remember being part of Two a minute ago?"