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?"

"No, but we guessed we were from a Two."

"Because there are two of us!"

"Very logical."

Wow, he would Not want to turn into two people and lose all his memories. Maybe they'll get them back if they combine again? Oh, but they should know what Two was trying to do first.

"Two was trying to make Zero. Which is the number of things you have when you don't have any things. Can you . . . take . . . the difference of yourselves? Is that safe?" If he gets the small children deleted from existence because the concept of nothingness is an infohazard that would suck.

"I don't know what taking a difference means," Left One says. 

To explain or not to explain? Oh, his mouth appears to be explaining without him.

"It's when you compare two numbers to see which is bigger and by how much. Like Two was bigger than you are by one block."

Left One looks suspicious. "I don't think that comparing me to Two could make me be Zero. That's not how numberblocks work."

"But maybe you could split, like a numberblock," Right One says. "Except you don't... split... because you only have one block...?" Right One looks very puzzled.

"Hm," One says, and then tries very hard. 

And there are two Ones and one floating mouth with a numeral 0 above it.

"Hello!" she says. "I'm Zero!"

That's creepy. Awesome, but creepy.

"Good job! Hi Zero, I'm Bruce." He's just gonna refrain from explaining fractions for a couple minutes while he gets used to there being a disembodied floating mouth with what his brain is convinced is a blank staring eye.

"We're going to be a Two again."

"Hi! I'm back! It worked! --How did it work?"

"You can split off nothing and then that makes a Zero. I don't think you have to be a One to do it."

"Cool! I want to make a Zero."

"I don't see any reason why not! If the Zeros decide they don't like there being two of them they can merge into one Zero and then maybe since the result will still be a Zero they won't lose any memories. Unless having two sets of memories of the same events sounds like no fun, then maybe wait."

These children are very cute,  but he doesn't have even a vague sense of what things are good and bad for them and it's stressing him out a little. Or maybe they're just very childlike adults, given the total absence of parents, and he's being ridiculous.

"Ooh! I want to know if I get two sets of memories! Learning is fun!"

"It is," says Two, and they concentrate very hard and spin off another Zero--

Who immediately merges with the first Zero.

"Two sets of memories!" Zero reports. "I'm going to know EVERYTHING."

They're so unafraid of everything. Probably because they're used to being numbers the way he's used to being human, even if they don't have episodic memory. It's frankly endearing, creepy eyeless mouths and all.

"If you're going to know everything you might need to go look at everything! What else is there around here, do you know?" Allegedly there's a Three somewhere, unless they merged with someone (some-n?) else.

"There's One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven," Two says, "and Bruce, and the mirror that copies numberblocks, and trees, and toys, and food, and monsters!"

There being a mirror that copies nunberblocks just seems correct and reasonable, in a dream-logic kind of way. Clearly additional population in a species like this has to come from forking. Can it copy him? Something to think about more before mentioning it.

"What do you guys eat? What are the monsters like?" Are the monsters complex numbers. Or irrational numbers. That would be kind of hilarious.

"We eat things that smell nice and are easy to chew! If something smells bad or is hard to chew it isn't good to eat."

He's not sure what he was expecting, there. "What are some things that smell nice and are easy to chew?"

"Pizza and ice cream and salads and spaghetti!"

"I like to eat those things too!" For all it's hard to get decent vegan pizza around here. Way harder than the ice cream. Oh wait, he's dreaming, if there's dream pizza he can totally just eat it. (Bruce is a broke grad student with broke grad student priorities.) "So what are monsters, if they're not numberblocks or the same kind of thing as me?"

"Fluffies fall on you and then they tickle you!"

"Oh, that sounds annoying." On the one hand: adorable. On the other hand: if the integers themselves are beset by annoying creatures, what hope does anyone else have?

"Can I meet the other numberblocks?" He's pretty sure two is significantly more mature than a human two-year-old, and One and Zero seem about the same as Two mentally, but meeting Seven still feels like the best way to get information about whether this is a society with adults or what.

"Yes! We should go on a walk until we find them."

"Okay!" Would Two like to pick a direction or should Bruce do it? It would be very on theme for this place to be shaped like the inside of a torus such that it doesn't super matter which way they go.

Two sets off in a direction!

The Zeroes get distracted playing with a board game they found. 

They pass sports equipment, books, trees, a karaoke machine...

The only way that's different from normal dreams is that they're not in his middle school building . . . oh hey, books, if he snags one off the ground can he read the text at all?

He sure can!

It's a picture book about numberblocks in which One wants to paint, but Four wants to climb trees. They argue with each other, but eventually decide to take turns playing and climbing trees. 

Oh sweet, he's literate! He's never had a dream (lucid or otherwise) where text worked right before and it has always sucked. Also: adorable number children are adorable.

"We get a storytime before we go to sleep."

"That's a good thing to have. Reading is important. Have you learned to read?" He sounds like a PBS show but it's not like he has any better scripts available.

"Numberblocks don't learn how to read. They already know how to read when they're created. Do Bruces have to learn how to read?"

"That's neat! I didn't start out knowing how to read but I learned a long time ago."

"How did you learn?"

"I don't remember all the details, but other people showed me all the letters and told me what sounds they made and helped me practice."

"Were they Bruces too?"

"You know how you and One and Three are all numberblocks? I'm a human and the people who taught me to read are also humans but they aren't Bruces. There isn't a magic mirror where I'm from, and people can't split or combine, so I'm the only Bruce there is."

"That's so weird!!!!!"

"Yeah, it's pretty weird." Just wait until you hear about the process for creating new humans. It's going to be a long wait because no way in heck is Bruce explaining it if he can get away with not that. "Where did your mirror come from?"

"When One appeared, every kind of thing that existed already existed. But only one of them."

Seems as plausible as anything else but also like a really cool creation myth. "Huh. And there couldn't be two of anything until some Ones combined to make you the first time?"

"Yes, because I can duplicate things! See?"

Now that one tree is two trees.

"That's so cool! . . . Can you duplicate me?" And this is why he shouldn't be trusted with anything important eh, whatever, it's a dream, worst he can do is annoy himself.

"I'll try!"

Bruce is noticeably unduplicated.

Safe from the consequences of his choices for now, eh? "Hm, looks like a nope. I'm pretty odd, though. Well, pretty weird, at any rate; my cardinality modulo two is anybody's guess."

"I have no idea what any of that means!"

"You know how you can split into two smaller numberblocks that are both the same size as each other? That means you're even. You know how Three can't do that? That means Three is odd."

Look, it just doesn't seem right that his subconscious mind's abstract personification of the number Two might not know all the math he does. And all the English words for discussing that math.

"And even numbers can be made of two of the same, smaller numberblock! Like I can be a One and a One, but Three has to be a One and a Two."

"Right! And four can be made of two twos, so four is even, but five is odd. Can you tell me whether six is even or odd and whether seven is even or odd?"

"Six is even and Seven is odd! Four is made of the Terrible Twos."

"That's right! Are the Twos in Four not the same as the Two you are? What's terrible about them?"

"When a Four breaks apart into Twos, the Twos are very mischievous! They like pulling pranks on people and hitting them and being very mean." 

"Huh. And if you and one of those Twos then combined into a new Four, and split up again, would both of the resulting Twos be terrible or would one of them be you again? What if one of the Terrible twos split into two Ones and then both those Ones combined with different ones to make two new Twos, what then?"

He's aware that he can hardly take this small child's words about which other children are badly behaved as unquestioned truth, but the answer should at least have some relevance to how Numberblocks handle identity questions even if actually all Twos are equally chill.

"They would both be Terrible Twos! None of the Twos were terrible before there was a Four. I don't know about the other thing. Maybe we can find out!"

"Okay." That sounds kind of awful, actually, in much the same way dying does, but it's clearly okay with them, and if he says it sounds awful they might start thinking of it as awful and that would suck.

And here two Threes are turning a jump rope for a Seven! The Seven has one block that's each of the colors of the rainbow. 

Awww, rainbow seven. Oh no, does this mean his brain buys into the Renaissance mystics' indigo bullshit? Whatever, it's cute. And they're apparently still a kid but also, yup, taller than he is. He waves hello but doesn't say anything to interrupt the jump rope rhythm.

The jump rope ends anyway and the two Threes merge into a Six. "Hello! Are you Twenty-Three?"

No I'm 24, my birthday was wrong stat. "I don't know what number I am! I might not even be a number at all. I can't split and merge like you do."

"It's easy! Here, you hold still and I'll pull--"

Probably he should be hoping for nothing to happen but he's actually kind of hoping something will happen--

oh fuck that feels incredibly weird--

There are two people here! They're a little shorter than Bruce but far more than half his height, and they have arms and legs and eyes and all the parts a human has, and they're a lot more like human body parts than they are like numberblock body parts.

Two simultaneous voices that are more like Bruce's voice than like anything else ask, "Where am I?"

". . . Who am I?"

Then the symmetry breaks when they both look left before they look right and one sees the other and goes "Wow, we're identical!"

"See! You can split after all."

"We--split?"

"We used to be the same person?"

"I don't remember that."

"I don't remember anything."

"Me neither."

"We gotta learn some stuff."

"You used to be a Bruce! And now you're two smaller... uh, you should know what your name is."