Number 5

"You don't mind if I call you number five, do you?" she said to him. "It's just that we don't really do names here."

"That's fine," he replied, keen to oblige. "So what's your number?"

"5,472,915."

"Wow, I'll try and remember that. 5,742,915?"

"That's close enough," she said, not elaborating on what would happen if the real 5,742,915 entered the room.

"So how come I'm just 5?"

"There was a vacancy. We re-use the best numbers. You're the fifth number 5."

"Do I get a prize for that?"

He laughed, expecting her to laugh along with him, but she had other things on her mind, one of them being remembering her way along the complex web of corridors down which she led him. She didn't speak for several more minutes, until they had reached their destination.

"This is your office. It was the old number 5's."

They entered. The new number five doing so cautiously, checking out his new home. He deduced several things: from the skewed position of photos, pictures and phone he guessed that his predecessor had left in a hurry. From the lack of bookcases and filing cabinets he deduced that, like himself, the previous number 5 had come without baggage. His whole life was stored in the briefcase that he rested beside the desk.

"So what do I do?"

"You have to count and number the submissions. All submissions we receive are assigned a random number, so that they can be marked anonymously."

Number 5 sat at his desk, switched on the computer and started work immediately. Number 5,472,915 left quietly, seemingly content that he could be trusted.

It was hard work. Normally your first day at work requires a modest amount of effort, but he was receiving forty submissions an hour, so there was little time to rest. He took one tea break all day, and returned to a full in-box. He ate lunch at his desk. 'Lucky I don't smoke', he thought to himself, as there was no time at all for him to negotiate the corridors and lifts and find the elusive smoking shelter he'd read about in the brochures.

At the end of the day she returned to guide him out of the building and he left to go wherever it was he went after the end of the working day.

His work continued in a similar manner for a number of days. If anything the number of submissions increased over time, at the approach of the deadline, and it was all he could do to keep up, even though he had become more efficient at processing the work. He had even set up a database.

When the competition ended a new competition began immediately, he had barely time for coffee before the new round of submissions started to arrive, let alone a trip to the canteen. It was going to be hard to meet people, he could tell, one of those offices where you're literally a number rather than a colleague and certainly nobody's friend.

It was a few weeks before he saw her again and from her behaviour you'd think she'd never seen him before. You'd never have guessed she was the only person he knew in the whole organisation, the only person he'd ever seen or spoken to in all the time he worked there.

"Number 5?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, leaving out the words 'of course', sounding confused.

"Congratulations," she said, "you've won."

"Won? But I didn't enter anything. What have I won?"

"The competition. The winning story, it's by number 5?"

He looked at the clipboard she was holding and the paper clipped to it.

"No," he said, "that's the title, 'number 5', it's just the title of the story. The allocated numbers are all down in the bottom right hand corner, this is number 723,917. I'm not the winner, I'm just the allocator of numbers."

"Well, it's too late now. You've been appointed the winner. You can write a story later, if you like, to justify your win. You have to come with me now, to collect your prize."

Reluctantly, number 5 left his desk, left his office, and followed her down the corridor towards the winner's enclosure. What he had won was never made clear, for he was never seen again. The new number 5 arrived the next day and within no time had caught up with the backlog of submissions.

The only remaining evidence of number 5's victory arrived three days later, in the form of a giant silver trophy with a big number '5' engraved on it. In number 5's absence it was awarded to his successor and took pride of place on the desk. To this day it remains polished and shiny, a proud reminder of all that number 5 had achieved.