three numbers

by horace p sternwall

clarence albert fanshaw was a dreamer, had always been one, and had never done an honest day’s work in his life. in his youth his dreams had been somewhat varied, involving fame, achievement, romance, and even good works, but after his small inheritance had been wiped out in one of the more obscure financial crises of the late twentieth century, his dreams had focused almost exclusively on money - on winning a lottery, finding buried treasure, doing a good deed for an anonymous person who would turn out to fabulously wealthy and properly grateful, or some other windfall which would restore him to some measure of the comfort he had known in his youth. meanwhile he spent his days in the streets, cafeterias, libraries, and homeless shelters of the great city, dreaming… always dreaming… the times changed, never for the better. clarence missed the cheap movie theaters where he had spent so much time in the vanished century, and which had virtually disappeared. so had the old-fashioned missions, which would give you a feed and ask nothing more of a guy than that he say a prayer or sing a hymn. they had already been fading away when clarence first hit the streets, and he had rather enjoyed them. clarence had another, somewhat curious grievance. there was not as much paper to be found in the streets, or left behind in cafeterias, as before. one of his most persistent fantasies had always been of finding a letter, or scrap of paper, which would contain a secret message which would somehow unlock a mysterious source of wealth, or contain a map or clue to the recovery of buried treasure. treasure island and the count of monte cristo had been his two favorite books as a child, and had made a permanent impression on him. but now, of course, in the miserable and unromantic twenty-first century, nobody wrote letters, or wrote down telephone numbers or much of anything else on paper. everything was transmitted or recorded on the same infernal cell phones which prevented them from meeting the eyes of a guy asking for spare change. so it was with both pleasure and surprise that clarence found, one rainy morning on a table at a burger king, a small piece of lined paper, apparently torn from a pocket sized notebook. the piece had three numbers written on it in blue ink. the three numbers were: 3,000,000,000 8,000,000,000 150 what could they mean? * despite his hatred of the modern world, clarence had learned to use the computers available in libraries. so, the first thing he did when he found the piece of paper with the three numbers was to google the numbers. the first thing he did was google the three numbers together. what he got seemed like a whole lot of nothing, including. “the annual report of the secretary of state to the governor of ohio”, and “ the annual report of the water department of cincinnati”, and “coins of the world - netherlands” and “growth - coconino community college.” nothing much there. next he tried the numbers separately. when he put in 3,000,000 he immediately got “convert 3,000,000 seconds to years”. it turned about to be 95 years. that might be promising. the treasure had been buried 95 years ago! next he put in 8,000,000,000. the first thing that came up was “don’t take that call from 800-000-0000”. all right, clarence thought, i won’t. he scrolled through 4 more pages and found something on reddit - saying “there are about 8,000,000,000 people on the planet”. yes, and they are all looking for the treasure. finally, he tried 150. all sorts of nothing. the best was on the fourth page of scrolling. “nancy pelosi removed a 150-year-old sign reading “in god we trust" from the entrance to the u s house of representatives chamber.” what a bitch! to do somerthing like that! but did it have anything to do with the treasure? maybe the 150 year old sign was worth 3,000,000 dollars? maybe nancy pelosi was going to bury it for 95 years and come back and dig it up and it would be worth 8,000,000,000 dollars. clarence felt that he was getting somewhere now. but just then he heard a loud recorded voice behind him announcing: “the library will be closing in ten minutes. if you have anything to check out, please do so now.” clarence sighed. he would have to come back and resume his researches tomorrow. but maybe it was just as well, as his head was starting to hurt. why did everything have to be so complicated? and would his dreams ever come true? like 8 billion other people living lives of possibly 3 billion seconds, clarence asked himself these questions about 150 times a day.