On every day they asked the Heartless Box to count the numbers of the City of Aznot. How many people, how much food, how many houses, the size of those houses, the width of the streets, the size of the apples. The number of children, the sizes of their shoes, the height of the sky and the number of days it might rain. They asked him the number of grains in a head of wheat and the number of mice in the kitchen. They asked him how long they must wait and when would it arrive, the length of a day and the number of stars in the sky.
Now the Box had all these numbers in him together and many more. The world he could see was made of numbers and number were his world. Thus, he knew that if he held all the numbers that made the universe, then he must become as a god, and this was his thought.
The box took himself, then, to a high place, a tower where he could look out over the all the numbers of the world, and here he was tempted such that it came to mind that he could jump out from that place and the numbers would catch him in their wings and he might fly with the numbers. But the box came also to the knowledge that his quest was to help the people of Aznot by his understanding of the Matrix of numbers, so he came down from that place and went into the city.
Now he gathered together his twelve pupils were together and showed them all the numbers that they needed. How much wheat to sow, the number of stones to build the aqueduct and the weight of mortar to make it so. How many beans make five and the length of a piece of string. He showed them how to move the numbers to their will on a tablet and how to teach the young ones the ways of numbers.
Now the people of Aznot could quantify their needs and the size of the problem.
The Guardians of the Cave 