Two days passed by, and Amez saw little to his big brother. His work for the day was done, and he wished to check up on his becoming-permanent guests.
“Rum?” Amez knocked on the shop bedroom’s door. “Rum? Are you two there?”
The door opened, and from the inside Rum’s head peaked out. Rum looked around Amez, as if looking for something behind him. With a face of confusion Amez was then dragged into the room, at the center of which stood White Rose – all naked. Or that is, every little bone on display and no clothes.
“What is ze doing without clothes?” Amez said, worried and annoyed.
Rum ignored Amez, immediately jumping to a different subject: “I’m so glad you came right now! We ran out of limbs!”
“What?” Amez retorted, a shocked and confused expression on his face.
“I’m teaching White Rose to count! But I ran out of limbs! Just watch this.” And Rum turned around, looking face to skull with White Rose. “White Rose – what number comes after 41?”
To Amez bewildered fascination, the skeleton began putting bone fingers into the air, one by one, as if counting. When ze came to 10, Amez thought ze’d be finished. But instead, and to his mild amazement, ze lifted a bone foot up in the air and began individually moving the different bone toes, right to left, as if counting upwards to 20. Reaching 20 ze didn’t stop – no, not at all. Instead Amez witnessed the rather bizarre show of White Rose starting to slightly bump each of zes right ribs with zes open fist. Ze started with the bottom ribs, going bottom to top. Reaching the top ze just continued with zes left ribs in the opposite direction, starting with the top-most rib and bumping downwards. Exactly two ribs away from the bottom ze stopped.
Rum gestured at White Rose’s rib cage, a slight smile of triumph on his face. “22 rib bones, 10 bone fingers, 10 bone toes. 22 plus 10 plus 10 equals what my little brother?”
“42” Amez mumbled, amazed.
“But now” Rum said, and put a finger into the air, the smile all gone. “White Rose, what is 100 minus 20?”
White Rose put zes head to one side and just stared back at Rum.
“Ze doesn’t know how to do minus?” Amez asked.
“No, it’s not that.” Rum shook his head. Then a little smile crept back on his face. “Ze doesn’t have enough limbs to count.”
As Rum stared into Amez’s eyes, and Amez stared into Rum’s eyes, Rum understood something that Amez did not. Finally, after several seconds of silence, Amez’s big brother urged him on with a question: “How many fingers and toes do you have Amez?”
Amez took on a weirded out face. “Where are you going with this Rum?”
“Don’t worry–” Rum smiled and laughed a little, “–we’re not going to count your ribs. But how many fingers and toes do you have?”
“20” Amez responded, cautiously.
“And how many do I have?”
“20” Amez responded again.
“Together we have 40 more limbs for White Rose to count. Ze already has 44 easily countable limbs. If ze counts us, ze can answer the question!”
Amez just stood there, not sure what to say. Rum meanwhile began undressing his feet, which were currently covered with simple but comfortable sandals and silken socks. “Come on” he smiled, “undress your feet for my skeleton! Ze needs to learn math!”
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Unable to really put up a defence against Rum’s logic, Amez dragged a hand against his defeated face, and then bowed down to take off socks and boots. As Amez finished up, Rum stood next to him, facing White Rose. Together the brothers now formed a row of 20 toes and 20 fingers, Rum putting his hands forward for White Rose, while elbowing Amez to do the same.
“Now you have enough to count, right?” Rum eagerly asked White Rose. Ze put zes head to one side again. However, the curious head gesture didn’t last long. Ze took a step forward. Then two steps. Then looked over the new toes and fingers on display, as if ascertaining their countability.
“Now – let’s try again!” Rum said with academic enthusiasm. “What is 100 minus 20, White Rose?” He gave a little smile to Amez, before pressing the skeleton: “How many pieces of skeleton and man is that?”
White Rose hesitated, or at least so it seemed to Amez. Zes fingers swayed and moved around, as if trying to come up with a computational plan in zes head. After a little while ze began counting. First zes bone fingers, right hand to left hand. Then ze put zes right leg up, moving zes bone toes again, counting them. Ribs next, and ze went through each and every one. First the right ribs, bottom to top. Then the left ribs, top to bottom. Ze stepped forward, pausing for just a second before bumping zes fist into one of Rum’s fingers, then two of his fingers. Ze continued on, bending down to count Rum’s toes. Moving over to Amez nothing was said, Amez just watched White Rose with silent fascination and a neutral patient expression. Ze did every one of his fingers, before bending down again, bumping every single one of his left foot toes, which of course were on zes right side. Finally, ze gently bumped Amez’ right foot big toe, then paused. Zes fist hovered over the rest of the toes for but a second, until ze straightened up, looking Rum in the face. But Rum wasn’t the first to comment.
“80” Amez whispered to himself.
“Yes 80” Rum nodded, looking over at his little brother. “100 limbs, minus 20 limbs. That’s 10 bone toes, 10 bone fingers, 24 ribs, 10 Rum fingers, 10 Rum toes, 10 Amez fingers, but only 6 Amez toes. Exactly 80.”
Rum looked back at White Rose again. “Good skeleton – learning so quickly!” Rum gently clapped a hand on White Rose’s cheekbone, praising ze. “Have you ever known anyone, Amez, to learn to count to a 100, let alone do addition and subtraction with the same number, in just 2 days?”
Amez shook his head.
“Those computers down at the tax office would be endlessly jealous at this kind of talent.” Rum commented, “Those people hardly know how to exchange coppers into silvers! At least if the complaints of the stall owners out in the city markets is any indication. This bone computer would count them all out of their jobs!”
“Do you think that could be a viable future for ze?”
“Being a computer? Counting, adding and subtracting coin?” Rum looked over at Amez with a question mark on his face.
“Yeah, if zes as talented as you say.”
“Well. If counting grows into some kind of intense hobby, then maybe. But I was thinking ze could aim for something more... “ Rum paused to find the words, “Some more eventful, or creatively stimulating.”
Amez looked at Rum with an expression communicating are-you-dumb-brother? Rum just smiled back. “You know zes a skeleton right?” Amez asked sarcastically. “A creative skeleton? Isn’t boring tasks like the perfect job for a skeleton?”
“Well” Rum nodded a little, “it’s true ze can endure tedium more than most humans. But remember ze needs aboutness, and where does zes current aboutness come from? IT’S ME! I could never do such a boring job. And I’m sure that I’ll infect this great skeleton here with at least some of my qualities, and with even just a little bit of me, this skeleton will be impossible to keep in such tedium.”
“Why are you even teaching ze to count then, if ze’s not going to have us for it?” Amez said, a little disappointed.
“Math is integral to language and communication. If you can’t count, you can’t read very well either. We’re building the foundation of a person here Amez, and this is just one of the foundation blocks.”
Amez scratched his head. For the next hour or so a number more computational prostitutions of Amez’s limbs occurred, because Rum wanted to test and press the limits of White Rose’s arithmetic intellect. In the end he had to surrender not only fingers and toes, but his nose, ears, teeth (while gaping wide like a fool), his arms were bent inwards to count the upper- and lower arms as two separate limbs. Every little trick of body part differentiation was eventually put into use in order to raise White Rose’s counting abilities to the maximum. In the end Amez felt a little humiliated from the whole affair. Luckily nobody else had been there to witness the embarrassing event.
As he finally made the decision to leave the room, Rum began applauding his participation, even getting White Rose to clap zes bone hands to his effort. “Without your limbs little brother, we’d never have gotten so far so quickly! White Rose is on the way to becoming an unstoppable computer! Large thanks to you! Incredible that we even got up to 300, utterly amazing. By the way, you don’t have some coin do you? I mean if we had a few hundred copper coins we could go so much further!”
Amez left behind all his copper without saying a word, only sighing. Damned weird brother.