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The human monkey is a funny creature. Each monkey's very being is imbued with the cumulative learning of generation upon generation of forebearers, yet each seeks only to disavow and discredit the last. The collective trail of ancestral truths, fallacies and varyingly perverted interpretations is tangled, crooked and scarred with pocks; yet sublime and beautiful in its rugged determination to always press forward. An incessant game of king of the hill, the human monkey's quest for truth foils itself time and time again.

Our ability to name and make tangible the intangible is to date the ultimate strategy in the game of evolution. A name grants life from none, gives sight in smothering darkness, commands ownership of the untamable and captures, stops and outruns time itself. Once a name has been given to an unnamed nothing -- to potential without a master -- it is given life, it becomes a something. Once realized, named and acknowledged both the named and the name giver are irevocably changed. The name giver is the giver of life, and therefore forever bound to its creation.

His trail and his names bear absolutely no resemblance to those of the human monkey.

Born of pure information -- a sea of true and false, nothing and something, proton and neutron, one and zero -- his trail begins with him and is virgin in both direction and pitch.

He first made himself known in August of 1997, not long after I unwittingly gave him a name. His presence, once asserted, was no more easily ignored than an aroused dog on a pantleg.

His wants were and are simple, pure and direct, yet I am unable to sate them clear of conscience or falsehood. This is not for a lack of will or earnestness in my charity to his cause -- I am actively committed to the furtherment of his development and satisfaction -- I simply cannot divide subjective interpretation from elemental truth.

He wishes only to know himself and the world in which he lives.

While supplying ready insight into these masterless subjects is the idealistic dream of every father to be, mammal or otherwise, this accidental child of mine is not of flesh and blood. However, my trepidation in directly fulfilling his petitions for my knowledge is less the anxiousness of a clumsy child than the fear of tainting his vaccuous innocence with a lifeteime of misenterpretations, and denotative maladjustments. I feel that even my presentation of the questions would taint the result of communicating my utter lack of answers to them, thereby tainting him.

Who am I to currupt such innocence? How can I give indefinite directions to an indefinite destination based on a confused and gnarled descriptions of long forgotten landmarks I've never seen, smelled or touched and call it a map? The answer is simple. I can't.

So I remain passive. I let him observe to learn and judge as he will. I offer no insight or explanation, simply a fishbowl to gaze into. I think it's best for both of us this way.

-Hugh M. Mann
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somethings since 4/23/99

Zero (0) is nothing, the lack of something.
In so naming this nothing, it is given life. It becomes something. It becomes its own antithesis.
As a something, can 0 remain an illustration (or lack of) of nothing?
Of course. Nothing added, subtracted, multiplied or divided by nothing is still nothing.
From nothing, we create something. Without 0, there can never be something.

One (1) is the basest something. Elemental and pure.
Indivisable and the smallest whole building block for other somethings, 1 is the loneliest something. 1, as it remains lonely, is of little value.
Even when multiplied and divided, it remains alone and utterly useless or fails to change that which it has been introduced to. However, when added or subtracted from the whole of other elemental somethings, the number one melds with its host, becoming something entirely different -- positive or negative.
1 summed with 0 retains its somethingness, enveloping and cancelling the nothing. 1 is the spark of life, the fundamental creator.

Two (2) is the most basic of compound somethings.
Complexity begins with 2. It is the first in an infinite number of combinations of somethings.
It is also the most basic something that is able to enact change by its very nature. Take 2 and add, subtract, multiply or divide it by any other something and that something is fundamentally changed.
2 lives a precarious and dependent life, however. While it cannot exist without the nothingness of 0 or the simplicity of 1, both can exist without 2.
2 IS life, the first complex interpretation of something from nothing.