8,998.1682

If numbers were people then I can imagine crossing the road to avoid this one - it looks somehow demented. High figures just don't look right with lots of decimal places behind them, I'm not sure why.

Unless that decimal point is serving to divide it into two separate numbers... That might make it easier to infer any coincidental significance at least.

So lets take 1682, did anything significant happen in that year? Apart from Vesuvius erupting and Halley's comet passing by, it was a notable year for being the last in which English citizens were burned at the stake for being witches. According to wikipedia:

"They had been accused of speaking in unknown languages as well as practicing knowledge beyond their natural abilities, and acting in peculiar manners."

I expect my calculator would have also been barbequed in those days, for much the same reasons. As for the other number, well... 8,998 americans died of aids in 2001, I'm sure there are some fanatics out there who would condemn those victims with the same religious zeal as the witch burners.

Morbid stuff.

-4

This made me laugh for some reason, after all the reams of exotic and gibberish numbers my calculator has spewed at me over the years, minus 4 seems almost comically mundane.

Unless of course you are an astronaut, in which case minus 4 might signify the number of seconds you have before someone sets light to the mountain of rocket fuel you are sitting on.

That also brings to mind the 4 minute warning. This was a system of sirens and broadcasts developed during the cold war, the purpose being to let us all know that we had 4 minutes left to live before soviet nuclear missiles rained down on our heads.

Since this system was scrapped in 1992, it now falls upon my calculator to alert the entire nation of impending doom. You might just about have time to make one last cup of tea before being vapourised.

Cheerio...

38,000,400

Strange things are going through my calculator's tiny mind recently. Some days there are the endless nines, some days nothing. The other day there was not even nothing on its screen, not even the familiar zero. I thought my calculator had finally died and passed on to some kind of digital afterlife.

But no, a quick press of the 'on' button brought it spluttering back to life, and I am glad to see it is still churning out its daily numerical ramblings. The ghost in the machine has not yet given up the ghost.

Speaking of ghosts, since earlier theories of alien communication are probably just as plausible, perhaps I could entertain the notion that my calculator is somehow possessed by spirits, haunted by the soul of some departed mathematician.

Maybe Einstein is still trying to finish his last unfinished theory by channeling my calculator from beyond the grave. He never completed his Unified Field Theory before he died - its the equation that would explain everything in the universe so you can imagine how keen he would be to finish it. I'm sure he wouldn't let something as trivial as his own death get in his way anyway.

I imagine it would take some time untangling the workings of the universe on my calculator, I expect there are also plenty of other dead geniuses queuing up to use it every night for their unfinished business. I wish Einstein the best of luck in his eternal endeavours, even though the final theory of everything will no doubt prove the impossibility of life after death, amongst other things.

10898603

If I was a supersticious man I would say something about this being the 13th entry in this blog, and therefore today's number no doubt heralds great woe and misfortune.

A quick search for this number online gets a load of references to some scientific journal about nitric oxide, a chemical I know nothing about, but is most probably both necessary for my survival and deadly poisonous at the same time. Not to be confused with nitrous oxide, also known as 'laughing gas'.

Not sure what my calculator is trying to tell me here, I think its just revelling in randomness after recent recurring nightmares of nines. As truly meaningless as a number could be, or so it seems. I sometimes wonder if all these numbers are just pieces in a larger puzzle, that they all slot together to form some monumental truth. Or perhaps it is part of creative endeavour on my calculator's part.

Perhaps my calculator is studying me, and these numbers represent a daily blog if its own, documenting my unfathomable existance in the only terms it is familiar with.

Am I a man dreaming of being a calculator, or a calculator dreaming of being a man...?