It’s a bummer, but whenever you try to cram too much into too small a space, black holes inevitably form. That’s the danger of trying to imagine the largest of numbers.

Huge numbers contain a lot of information, and information has weight. Ten trillion gigabytes of data weighs about as much as a speck of dust. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re dealing with the size of numbers that I do you have to be careful that your head doesn’t explode.

Or, more precisely, implode.

A thing most folks like to avoid. I did for most of my life. But when the Extrasolar War began and Earth was dealt a punishing blow, I got called in by the top brass. I’d once been a government mathematician that specialized in very large numbers--Avogadro’s number, the Eddington number, Googolplex, Graham’s number, TREE(3)--until those weighty numbers crushed me.

Broke me.

If you let those numbers get inside your head, they don’t resolve. They’re finite, containable, but wildly opportunistic. They’ll always always follow the fool’s path to infinity, and there’s only one end to that: black hole head death.

It can happen. Calculating the largest of numbers in your brain is equivalent to ten billion trillion trillion trillion trillion gigabytes of information. That’s a lot of very localized weight. Enough to form a black hole with the same radius of a typical human head. It makes for a rather singular singularity. A very catastrophic one.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

That’s why the war generals wanted me. There was no way our hastily cobbled defense forces were going to beat a foe that had mastered interstellar travel. The only thing sparing Earth from a full scale invasion was the invaders’ very sensible caution. They weren’t entirely sure what they were dealing with. I mean, we haven’t exactly figured our species out either, so they had to be wondering: What makes us tick? Could they subjugate us? Should they annihilate us?

Right after their initial salvo to demonstrate their superior might, the invaders pulled back. Went dark. Went sinister. Went hunting.

A diverse cross section of humans of various ages, races, and professions went mysteriously missing. This rattled the populace even more than the initial attack from orbit, but, as the pattern of abductions became clearer, the top brass saw an opportunity to strike back at our extraterrestrial foes.

They called the top secret operation Beavis and Black Hole which seemed fitting since the idea was diabolically asinine. Along with other numerical savants, I was trained and then put in a more likely position to be abducted. Why?

Suicide bombers are better off not asking why.

If abducted I was to continue calculating Graham’s number as I had been trained to do until the crush of information in my head reached criticality and formed a black hole. A formidable weapon against any enemy.

Now as bait, I wait. Counting not just the hours, but the near infinity of the finite, because my days are absolutely numbered.