This is an extract from a short story collection called The City of Numbers.
Zero as a baby wasn’t very big. As a toddler, he wasn’t much bigger. On his first day at school, his uniform – the smallest size available – swallowed his little frame like a shark might swallow a goldfish.
Sitting miserably at his desk in a sea of unfamiliar faces, Zero felt like school might swallow him as well.
The teacher – a 3063 in an immaculate suit and silvery steel-rimmed glasses – called the register.
“1.”
“Here, Sir.”
“2.”
“Here, Sir.”
“3.”
It seemed to take an age.
“Wonderful!” announced the teacher at last. “100% attendance!”
Like his body, Zero’s voice was anything but large.
“Excuse me,” he murmured.
The teacher hadn’t heard him. Zero raised his hand.
“Excuse me!” he repeated. “Sir? Please?”
A pair of eyes were now focussed on him every bit as stern and steely as the glasses they stared behind.
“Yes?” said the teacher. “What is it? Speak up!”
“You didn’t call my name,” said Zero.
“Speak louder, child!”
“You didn’t call my name!”
The teacher looked down at his register. “No-one seems to be missing. Who are you? Are you sure you’re in the right class?”
“Pretty sure,” said Zero. “I’m Zero.”
“Pardon?”
“ZERO!” yelled Zero.
Someone beside him giggled. As loud as he’d meant it, he’d sounded like a ghost.
“Of course!” said the teacher. “My apologies. The headmistress did mention you might be attending. It’s been rather difficult to formally enrol you, given your – um – circumstances. Which is why you’re not here in my register. But I suppose it will be easy enough to add you.”
Whether or not this was actually intended as a joke, Zero couldn’t afterwards decide, but the whole classroom nevertheless erupted in laughter.
“Although where should we put you, I wonder?” the teacher continued, after the laughter had subsided. “At the end, perhaps?”
“No, Sir,” said Zero.
“Excuse me?”
“No,” repeated Zero, in what was very like a whisper. “I belong before 1. I belong right at the start.”
That first day at school had been awful, but it was followed by a long, long, long sequence of days that often felt worse. Zero had never been bullied before, and it wasn’t much fun.
Why are you so small? his classmates said. You belong back in kindergarten!
Was that a mouse? they said, when Zero tried to defend himself. Was that a squeaking bat?
What’s five plus zero? Five! they chanted. What’s twelve plus zero plus zero plus zero? Twelve!
Needless to say, he didn’t make any friends.
One day at lunchtime, alone at a table in the corner of the dining room, Zero was surprised to see a 17 approaching him. She sat down next to him, but didn’t acknowledge him. She looked both furious and miserable. She looked like she was about to cry.
“Are you OK?” asked Zero.
Now the 17 was crying, but she was trying very hard to pretend she wasn’t.
“What happened?” he ventured. “Was someone mean to you?”
“Shut up,” said the 17.
“Sorry,” said Zero. “I was only trying to be nice.”
But now the 17 rounded on him, her eyes flashing.
“What would you know about it?” she said. “How dare you even speak to me?”
Zero was astounded.
“You’re pathetic,” she said. “You were born nothing. You’ll be nothing all the way through school. And when you grow up, you’ll still be nothing. Now leave me alone!”
Zero felt something hollow open up inside him. It was cold, and appalling, and unbearable painful.
Abandoning his sandwiches, he fled into the playground.
This was where the headmistress eventually found him. Afternoon lessons had already started, but Zero was hunched up by the fence with his head buried in his arms. The headmistress – a brisk, no-nonsense 20,007 – crouched awkwardly beside him.
“Having a rough day?” she said.
Zero sighed.
“It can’t be easy. Being – different,” she said.
Zero looked up at her. “I’m more than just different,” he said. “I mean, two apples are two apples, and six motorbikes are six motorbikes, but what’s zero motorbikes? The same as zero planets, or zero elephants, or zero submarines, or zero anything. Nothing at all.”
“Perhaps,” said the headmistress. “But you’re very useful. Just think what a mess we’d be in, trying to write ourselves down without place value! Goodness! I’d end up signing all my letters with a plain old three cubed!”
“But you’d still be you, wouldn’t you?” said Zero. “I mean, you could sign your name with a hundred and fifty-three different kinds of squiggle, but you’d still be 20,007. And I’d still be Zero if my name looked like a butterfly or a seashell or a sunbeam, instead of just a hole.”
Walking home when school finally ended, Zero felt very close to despairing. Was he really no more than an ingenious trick of decimal notation?
The scary, painful hollowness inside him was feeling worse and worse.
And yet he had a name, hadn’t he? Zero. If nothing was called something, then didn’t that make it something, whatever that something actually was?
Just then, a strange figure startled him. It seemed to have jumped right out of the pavement. It had a body, and eyes, and a mouth, and the mouth was smiling broadly at him, but the whole of it seemed to be shimmering or quivering very strangely, almost as if it wasn’t quite there.
“Hi!” it said.
Zero was too bewildered to reply.
“Do I have the honour – ?” it said. “I mean, are you – Zero?”
Zero nodded dumbly, and the smile of the figure in front of him grew even wider. Zero peered at it, trying in vain to focus. Didn’t it look a bit like the 1 whose name was now called after his in the register?
“I can’t believe it’s you!” this figure was babbling. “How exciting! To meet you in person!”
“What?” stuttered Zero.
“The most important number in the City of Numbers!”
At this, Zero laughed. “Are you crazy? I’m just Zero. I’m the opposite of a number.”
The 1 – if it really was a 1 – shook its head in disbelief.
“Of course you’re a number,” it said. “What on earth have they been teaching you?”
Zero blinked.
“And you’re not just any number! You’re the only number, for starters, that neither division nor multiplication can alter! Just imagine!”
Zero did imagine. He’d never thought of it quite that way before. True, he couldn’t add anything to any of his classmates, but neither could they change him. He was himself, no matter what they did.
“But more than that,” said the kind-of-1, “you’re the only number in the City that’s neither positive nor negative. You’re exactly midway between this half of the City – ” the stranger waved his hands at the cars and shops and office blocks all around them – “and the other half.”
“What other half?” said Zero, and as he did, he realized abruptly that the stranger’s feet weren’t exactly standing on the pavement, but instead were wavering two or three inches underneath it. “Tell me,” he said. “Who exactly are you?”
“I’m Negative 1. Extraordinarily pleased to meet you!”
The number in front of him grinned, and held out his hand.