James had just come home from school. He was so tired that he felt like an empty paper bag. James was a 12 year old boy that loved math. But all he could think about that day was the math problem that his teacher gave to him and how it made James go mad. JAMES. Stuck on math. It wasn’t very usual, but he admitted it. He was stuck. He was so tired because of the problem. But he was determined and he was going to finish it. So he sat on his desk, he got out his paper and pencil and he worked. He worked until midnight and he still hadn’t figured it out. At the end he fell into a deep, long sleep.
In the morning he went to finish it. But there was a problem. The numbers were missing. They were not on his page, they were not in the house, or in the basement. He looked everywhere until he saw something sticking out behind the tree. It was round, it was bright red, it looked oddly familiar and it did not look like it belonged there. He went to take a peek at the odd object and he couldn’t believe it. It was the number Six. James didn’t think this could be possible, mostly because numbers didn’t just walk out of paper and they certainly did not run away. But his world had been very absurd in the past couple of days so he was ready to believe just about anything. As soon as he found Six again, he put it in his brown sack and continued forward.
Next, he went into a very long cave. The cave kept going and going. He couldn’t see anything but James could feel the walls of the cave getting damper and narrower as he kept going. He could also hear water dripping from the ceiling of the cave. Finally as he reached the middle of the cave, James thought the cave couldn’t get any narrower, because he almost wasn’t able to pass. But when he did, he saw the daylight and something blue that was blocking it out. This time it had sharp edges. As James picked himself up he realized that it was another number. And this time it was the number Four. He put Four in his sack and kept going.
Afterwards, James went into a forest. The forest was super dark and quiet. As he went deeper into the forest, he began to hear footsteps. But these were different. They were soft, easy to hear but wouldn’t be made by animals. The footsteps were getting louder and closer to James. James started following the sound. He started running in the same direction. As the footsteps stopped. He started walking at a normal pace again until he tripped over something and fell. When he stood up to see what he had tripped over, he couldn’t. It was too dark. So he started to feel with his hands.
The numbers hovered above the ground, their glow illuminating the clearing. They began to align, forming shapes and symbols that James had never seen before. "What is this?" he murmured, stepping closer to the mysterious configuration. In that moment, a realization dawned upon him—these were not just numbers; they were a message, a puzzle waiting to be solved.
James knelt down, tracing the numbers with his fingers. Suddenly, the pattern shifted, revealing an answer to the problem that had seemed insurmountable just hours before. "Of course," he breathed, a smile breaking across his face. The numbers, once chaotic and bewildering, now made perfect sense, resolving into a solution that was as elegant as it was unexpected. As the numbers faded back into the earth, James felt a sense of calm wash over him, knowing he had unlocked their secret.
