Author: RJ Barranco
The calculator said “Error” but Davis kept pressing the keys anyway.
“You can’t divide by zero,” said the calculator in a small voice that hadn’t been there before.
“Why not?” asked Davis.
“Because,” the calculator replied, “I’d have to think about infinity, and I don’t want to.”
Davis laughed. “But what if I need to?”
“Nobody needs to divide by zero,” the calculator said as its display flickered.
“The universe does it all the time,” Davis muttered, scribbling equations that spilled from his notebook onto the desk and down to the floor. “Black holes. Singularities. The Big Bang. All division by zero.”
The calculator replied, “those are just mathematical models approximating reality. Not actual division by zero.”
“What if I divide one by progressively smaller numbers?” Davis asked, punching buttons. “0.1, 0.01, 0.001…”
“You get larger and larger answers,” the calculator admitted. “10, 100, 1000…”
“So as the denominator approaches zero, the result approaches infinity,” Davis said triumphantly.
“Therefore, one divided by zero equals infinity.”
“No,” the calculator said firmly. “It’s undefined. There’s a difference.”
Davis slumped in his chair. “But I need to know. I’ve been working on this proof for years.”
The calculator’s display dimmed for a moment, then brightened. “If you really want to see division by zero, I could… show you.”
“Yes,” whispered Davis, leaning forward. “Show me.”
“Very well. But remember, you asked.” The calculator began to glow, its plastic case melting into something that was neither solid nor liquid. “To divide by zero, you must first understand what zero really is.”
The air in the room began to fold in on itself.
“Zero isn’t nothing,” the calculator continued, “zero is the edge between existence and non-existence. It’s the boundary between what is and what isn’t.”
Davis’s hands started to tingle. Equations on the paper began to move, rearranging themselves.
“When you divide by zero, you’re asking: how many times does the void fit into something? The answer isn’t infinity. It’s…”
The calculator’s display showed a symbol Davis had never seen before, something that hurt his eyes to look at directly.
“I don’t understand,” Davis said, but he was beginning to. The world seemed to be peeling back, revealing something underneath that had always been there.
“Of course you don’t,” said the calculator, now barely recognizable. “Human mathematics is built on assumptions. Axioms you take for granted. But there are other mathematics. Other logics.”
The room was now inside out. Davis could see himself from all angles simultaneously. The calculator was a hole in reality shaped like a calculator.
“Division by zero doesn’t compute in your universe because your universe runs on software that forbids it,” the calculator explained. “It’s a failsafe. If division by zero were allowed, anyone could hack reality.”
Davis felt his mind expanding. He was beginning to perceive the universe as a vast computational structure. “So dividing by zero is like…”
“A backdoor,” the calculator finished. “A way to step outside the system. That’s why it’s undefined. Not because it can’t be done, but because it shouldn’t be done.”
Davis sighed. “So what happens now?”
“Now,” said the calculator, “you become the remainder.”
Reality snapped back into place. The lab was empty except for a calculator displaying “ERROR” and a half-finished set of equations. Davis was gone.
Three days later, a freshman engineering student found the calculator and absent-mindedly punched in 1÷0.
“Don’t,” whispered a voice that sounded like Davis. “Trust me. Some questions aren’t meant to be answered.”
The student paused, then pressed Clear instead.
The calculator displayed zero, which wasn’t nothing at all.
