Book of Numbers: A Novel

by Joshua Cohen

  This led him to develop the following resolutions: 1.) His language had to be written, not spoken, because the intimate intricacy of his expressions would be lost to time (the time required by human processing), and 2.) It had to engage that processing in a way that convinced his parents he wasn’t frustrating their ability to comprehend, or respond—instead he was encouraging their interpretation (what his mother called “active communication”).

  What Cohen decided he needed was an alphabet of a single letter—something familiar, something recognizable[—a grapheme for the wall of his puerile silicon cave]. The letter he needed had to have a shape that allowed for representational or symbolic variance—many points, many limbs.

  After auditioning and discarding the Hebrew letters Shin, Mem, and Ayin (), Cohen settled on the . [The fourstroked digraphed double , which evolved from the —the dubya, the last ligature remaining in this language.]

  A normal , as it would be read in this language, would indicate Cohen himself, in the nosistic or firstperson plural [a note: Cohen always speaks plurally—at what point to mention that?], but rotated 90° to , it would indicate Cohen’s relationship with his father, rotated another 90° to , it would indicate Cohen’s relationship with his mother, and rotated yet another 90° to , it would indicate Cohen’s relationship to the both of them[, and to everyone and everything else?]. All pages of this writing had, at their fundament, a variationally turned , , , or —all expressions founded on the kinship of possession. But, notably, each glyph also served as a chronometer, a timeline of a pastless futureless single day, with each of the four prongs divided into six hours, for a total of 24:

  Primary rotations of the had secondary modifications: indicating the happy/sad continuum, the sleepiness/wakefulness continuum, hunger/thirst, and health/infirmity, with the intensity of whichever condition being expressed by the location of the primary’s junction with the secondary: indicating very happy, moderately happy, signifying apathy or a median mood, indicating moderately sad, very sad, and the same scaling applying to the rest: very sated with food/drink, moderately sated with food/drink, again the baseline, moderately hungry/thirsty, very hungry/thirsty.

  At the refined culmen of his language’s development Cohen was operating at 28 fully rotationary levels of physical, mental, and even psychological elaboration [NO NEED TO ELABORATE], supplemented with a variety of auxiliary markers providing spatial context to the foundationally temporal and intensitive: a solid circle indicating school, an open circle, home [NO NEED BUT REPRODUCE AND ANNOTATE AN EXAMPLE].

  Above would be a typical day, translating to: Cohen [] at 24:00 [timemark] at home [open circle] was hyperawake [junction marking the , or secondary sleepiness/wakefulness continuum, at its alert extremity], at 06:00 was tossing between waking and sleeping [ marked at midpoint], at 08:00 found himself at school [solid circle] and indifferent to alimentation [ at midpoint], though at noon had forced himself or been forced to eat/drink until he was full [ at its satiated extremity implying an intervening lunch], by 16:00 was back home again and feeling moderately unwell [, junction at third apex] and moderately depressed about it [, also at third apex], by 22:00 was 25%/1 prong more awake than the median or 25%/1 prong less awake than he’d been last midnight, but by this midnight, he was undisturbably asleep [implying, perhaps, that a homeopathic soporific had been administered to him in the interval—Cohen’s was a language of elision and duction by absence].

  A single expression, then, might easily fill a page. But if a page of Cohen’s language was laborious for his parents to decode, it was doubly laborious for them to reply to, especially by hand, and as the wordprocessing programs of the period weren’t yet capable of typesetting such convoluted hierarchies, Cohen had to code his own, and he did, producing versions for the IBM PC, Tandy, and the Commodores 64 and Amiga. Upon distributing this unnamed or unnameable free langware to his parents in summer 1985, he gave up the language entirely, and never wrote in it again. [Cohen’s mother never installed her writer.] [While Cohen’s father installed his writer, he found his son had failed to equip it with the marks expressing approval (‘-), and disapproval (-’).]

  Cohen’s most significant initial coding, however, appeared under the auspices of another letter—C. [SHITTY TRANSITION] That language—developed in the late 1960s and early 70s at AT&T Bell Labs—reprogrammed his life, involving him more deeply with the concept of the algorithm. [EXPLAIN ALGORITHMS] At the time C was best learned from a book, and books were best available in libraries. But the Harker School’s library also contained the only two computers it made available to students. It was there that Cohen could be found on most mornings, before school began, and on most evenings, after school ended, and, increasingly, skipping class, at all times between—waiting for a no show, or for a scheduled user to quit a session prematurely. According to school policy, each student could use a single computer for only an hour each per day. The slotting sheet was clipboarded at the edge of the circulation desk, and the librarianship behind the desk was responsible for enforcement. Cohen convinced the librarianship to let him automate the slotting, and they agreed, allowing him exclusive use of Computer 2 until the program was completed.

  But Cohen stalled, complained, stalled and endured the complaints of his fellow students waiting, until the librarianship approached him offering condolences for his failure and gently requesting that he move aside and let other students take their turns, at which point Cohen unveiled a palindromer and an anagrammatizer—which rearranged the letters of any input, not semantically yet, but sequentially, a program he called “Insane Anglo Warlord,” an anagram of its dedicatee, “Ronald Wilson Reagan”—and finally, two different schedulers, one that would run on the librarianship’s computer, and was merely a database of times and student names, and the other a gameified version, which would run on the two student computers and allow users about to complete their sessions to compete for more time by answering a battery of SAT questions, with the user answering the most correctly in a two minute span declared the winner and awarded a session extension related to their score.

  Cohen’s life beyond a computer terminal was minimal. He joined no athletics teams and only one extracurricular—The Tech-Mex Club [WHAT, IF ANYTHING, WAS MEXICAN ABOUT IT?]—which he dropped out of after one meeting. He chewed tinfoil once—“it tingled the tongue”—he did whippets once—“it was on TV”—both alone. He never smoked and throughout highschool was convinced that caffeine was alcoholic. He [WHEN?] shoplifted [WHERE?] topical benzoylperoxide acne treatments his mother had told him were cancerous. His father noticed the creams in his room and gave him empty toothpaste tubes to squeeze them into for storage. He read through the Achs (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein), (Avram) Davidson, and avoided romantic attachments [EXPAND?].

  Any other justification for leaving the house, besides school, had to be computer-related. He’d ride his bicycle two hours to rummage the dumpsters behind the Santa Clara Intel plant, riding back with a backpack of faulty chips he’d use to assemble computers that wouldn’t work [WHY NOT?], and then he’d upclock his own machine and participate in overheated rating wars in area diners [TO UPCLOCK IS TO RESET THE CYCLE, AND/OR TO MODIFY THE PIEZOELECTRIC CRYSTAL, OF A CPU’S CLOCK, SO THAT THE COMPUTER, NOW PROCESSING AT A SPEED NOT ENDORSED BY ITS MANUFACTURER, CAN FIGHT BATTLES ROYALE WITH OTHER COMPUTERS SIMULTANEOUSLY EXECUTING THE SAME MATH PROBLEM SET: THE VIRGIN WARRRIOR WHOSE OVERDRIVEN HOTROD SOLVED FASTEST OR JUST DIDN’T MELT DOWN GOT GLORY AND TAPIOCA PUDDING?].

  In winter 1986, with Cohen a sophomore, Harker invested in a networked computer system of IBM ATs, and a program called N-rollment, which integrated student information and grades. Cohen, irate at having been banned from library computers for session abuse [EXPLAIN?], waited for the viceprincipal [NAME?] to leave her office, went in and inserted into her computer a diskette containing a program he’d coded, which instructed the computer to log the viceprincipal’s keystrokes. The next opportunity he had, he entered her office again, save
d the strokelog to diskette. At home he managed to identify two strings, one of twelve characters, the other of eight, that, being “vpdernfurstl” and “hearken1,” didn’t seem to have any function in an administrative memo.

  A week after the end of the quarter, the day after grades were due, Cohen skulked into school by explaining to a janitor he was a member of the jv beach kabaddi or innertube waterpolo team who hadn’t cleaned out his locker. He picked the lock on the library, whose main computer was patched into the network, hacked into N-rollment as vpdernfurstl, pword hearken1, registered his Social Studies and Language Arts teachers as students in their own classes, failed them and had reportcards sent to their home addresses.

  Further, as Cohen had determined that viceprincipal ? Dern-Furstl? used the same logname and pword for all of her access, he was also able to hack Paymate and have all the staff’s paychecks mailed to an erotic wares outlet in Redwood City.

  Viceprincipal ? Dern-Furstl? was contacted, and she contacted the PTA for recommendations on whom to consult on a sensitive computer issue in midsummer, was referred to Abs Cohen, who, just from the phonecall, had his suspicions [WOULDN’T SHE HAVE HAD THEM TOO, IF SHE’D BEEN APPRISED OF THE LIBRARY SCHEDULING STUNTS?]. Abs came into school, went through the viceprincipal’s computer, and found the strokelogger [WHICH HAD BEEN KEPT INSTALLED FOR FUTURE NEFARIOUSNESS?], recognized a few things in the rogue code that seemed familiar from mealtime conversations, and, without hesitation, fingered his son as the culprit.

  Cohen was suspended, and threatened with expulsion, unless he developed a network security system. The school, essentially, gave him a job—“Harker prided itself on fostering creativity, they made us their IT guy for nothing.” Cohen set about synthesizing a number of security protocols already on the market, “but too sophisticated for any school, too expensive for even a WASPy private school to license.” His only truly original contribution he called Doublestroke, a 1987–88 keylogger logger, a program that could detect programs that kept track of keystrokes and, rather than purging them, shuttled them false clists, or character lists, that, if used to gain access to the network, gave access instead to a decoy in which the intruder could be studied.

  Abs was so proud of Doublestroke that he tried to license it to Symantec, but Symantec became ambivalent after the patent provisional admitted that he wasn’t its author, rather his son was, a minor. Finally they outright refused after they received a letter from a lawyer claiming the trapware they’d been considering was the legitimate property of the Harker School. Cohen had boasted too much. Ultimately Doublestroke was sold, not licensed but sold, to Prev in 1988. The price was $8000. Split two ways, and less the lawyer’s commission.

  ://

  from the Palo Alto sessions: We had so much anger back then, so much rage, which psychoanalysis might claim comes from our parents or from the parent of society, the crass materialism of the 80s assaulting through media that was matched in its destructive violence only by the counteroffensive of our domestic life. The strict discipline, the rules and regs. The bylaws. But our rebellion against them was not a slacking. We were much too young for the hippie thing and much too old for the punk thing. School had every demographic. Cliques were Bimbos, Himbos, Nerdlings, Geekers, Dorklords, Fagwads, and Whegroes but we complied with none of them. We were not even dweebazoids though we could have been if we had not been resistant, basically, to all category and class.

  We felt more as like hardware, mauve, taupe, beige, boxcolored, putting in an intense amount of interior hot effort only so that our exterior, our skin, would appear jointless, seamless, cold. We felt more as like software, writeable, rewriteable, if not compatible, we would adapt. Point is, we had secrets, we hid. Our rebellion thing was that we were aware of it, our compatibility or adaptability thing was that we worked through that awareness, though both impulses might be genetic and if so in regard to work ethic it could be cur to examine dopamine levels in the striatum of the brain, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior insula.

  But our ultimate repression or suppression was just so überwestern. It was that we were doing all this work in the service of not doing any work and, if we accomplished that goal, that would be our revolt. It is überwestern to be conscious that this was what we were doing and to feel bad about it, to try not to feel bad about it, to feel bad about feeling bad, to try not to feel bad about trying not to feel bad. It was as like we were getting revenge, but on ourselves. This attempt toward automation. Or better toward autognosis.

  Hardware, software. Both used to come packaged, not readily unpacked. Now everything installs itself, feeds and grooms itself, selfexplains. But we were not that 1D propellerhead tech d00d you want us to be who needs to hack the drives of Gorbachev before he can POP3 his cherry. Before this all was math. After just math. When we applied we were pure. When we were pure we applied.

  We refrained from accessing records of past GPAs and class ranks and comptrasting them w/r/t college admissions. Our personal statements, which M-Unit helped write, mentioned only our facility with numbers. The recommendations D-Unit got for us did too. We were going to restart and core dump ourselves of computers.

  Let Trey Kerner [?] who still played the arcades bust open the Pac machs to change our high scores manually, let Mat Plokta [?] brag at school about reprogramming the barcoder at the GalaMart to read the Marlboro Reds and Olde English 40s as like $1 discounted each, only $1 to keep it plausible, we had higher scores and sums in mind.

  Acceptance envelopes came daily from Cal Tech and the Ivies and even phonecalls as like the one that asked for Mr. Cohen and we answered that we were speaking and the voice told us that we had won the Reverse Turing Award. Cowon. [FOR WHAT? W/ WHOM?] This was spring 1989 and we accepted the prize on behalf of D-Unit and even made the travelplans for him to attend the banquet ceremony in Washington DC. We wanted a direct flight from SFO, we wanted a corner room at the K Street Sheraton.

  That day we were admitted on full tuition to MIT, and D-Unit went to get the prize on his own and while on a visit to the Mall, the National Mall, had a mild myocardial infarction. A heartattack. 04/20. M-Unit visited him in the hospital in DC. “The unshittiest,” Aunt Nance said. “Of the shit hospitals.” GW. She had come over to take care of us. Dr. Nancy Apt. Berkeley, Econopsychology. We had always known her as like our aunt, though we also knew her only sisters were the MFs of the Bay Marxist Feminist Coalition. She moved in and never left. She was on the foldout in the den between D-Unit on the memoryfoam in the kitchen and M-Unit in the parental bedroom. Then she was in the bed too and sharing it with M-Unit and D-Unit might have joined them, he had always been invited to join them before. But now he was too weak. He was weak as like the memoryfoam he dragged all grumptious into the hall.

  Aunt Nance was basically applying all her knowledgebase in conflict/resolution, to mediate. Between D-Unit and his physical health. M-Unit and her mentals. Aunt Nance was invigilating bloodpressure, the betablockers and nitrates, the inhibitors and statins. Transitioning herself from babysitter supportive friend and lover, to babysitter lifepartner wife. Nurse practitioner UN peacekeeper dean. She negotiated both halves of the parental chores, and our third half. Cooked noncholesterol taro callaloo and tzimmes, and took us to the Army/Navy surplus in Campbell to get outfitted for Stanford.

  For graduation she gave us a Nintendo with Zelda and Zelda II and Metroid, and though we had outgrown all that we were gracious. But then one night it along with the 16″ Zenith had been relocated to their bedroom and M-Unit who had cried about Nintendo being a brain pollutant was now giggling playing a Donkey Kong, with Aunt Nance Player 2ing her. Parent child role reversal. Precipitated by Kreem Kush, a midgrade cannabis hybrid. The next morning when they went with D-Unit to a cardiologist checkup we retaliated by wiring their clockradio into the console flap where the cartridges go until the Zenith picked up KQED and the LED 12:00, and though the system was unusable they were back before we had figgered how to set the alarm. After that M-Unit act
ed busy with her scholarship, ignoring us except for that once she remarked on how our leaving would mean D-Unit would have his own room.

  Do not interrupt. Let us tell how it was. Two plus one does not always equal a threesome. Recall the isosceles fallacy, how the midpoint P is outside the triangle. Some nights D-Unit who was not enjoyed by the Is, the parents of M-Unit, would drop us at their house, and in the mornings collect us, and M-Unit would be doing yoga out on the lawn and Aunt Nance would be recycling winebottles and composting joints. Just to get away we went to second Ghostbusters, second Back to the Future, third Karate Kid, and went on fieldtrips to the Artificial Intelligence Center in Menlo Park because no one else ever did and Calonis, the robot that led us around, seemed lonely.

  Computer scientists make good husbands for polyamorous increasingly lesbian feminists because of how functional they are, how booley, steady and quiet as like fans.

  No, do not say that. Rewind, record over. Take two. Compscientists make good first husbands. It is true how silent they are. Cooling fans.

  08/22, what we considered that early in our life to be early in the morning. We had finished packing ourselves doublebagged into trashbags we cinched altogether and rolled down the hall. D-Unit was already waiting outside in the Ford. But we had octalfortied our dorm assignment and had to get the address from the letter magneted to the fridge. Off the kitchen the door was open to the bathroom and in the tub a man was sleeping and on the tile were wrappers and in the toilet a condom. We neglected to mention that M-Unit and Aunt Nance had thrown us a goingaway party the night before.