The Magic of Numbers

Trevor had always liked numbers. In fact he'd had a special gift for them right from being young. He loved the order in numbers, the symmetry, the architecture. He liked the color of numbers; he saw rainbows in 5's, 7's and 3's. Everything to him could be reduced to numbers. The world was built on mathematical principles. There must be some secret number which would completely explain the universe. Such ideas fascinated Trevor. He knew Da Vinci was one of the first to find a number for divine proportion: it was 1.1617. Our bodies were perfect; certainly in mathematical terms.

Trevor always hoped he would be at the forefront of mathematical discovery. He studied more and more as he grew older, went to university, and did research. All of his life he had been obsessed with numbers. His mind then turned to the lottery. After all, all it was, was numbers. He was sure he could find a way to win, maybe devise a computer program to predict a winning line. He spent many years working on this, always secretly of course, for he was not sure if it was completely legal. Then eventually he thought he'd come up with a winning formula. It was all about numbers and now he thought he'd cracked it. 

He invested all of his savings on his plan; it was many thousands of pounds. Yes, it was all about random chance but now he was convinced he had got a foolproof way of winning. He had 100,000 lottery tickets and had filled them all in. All he had to do now was wait for the draw and collect his earnings; the fruit of many years labor. 

The draw took place. The numbers did not ring any bells but then he had 100,000 different lines. All he had to do was painstakingly check them. It was a lot to get through but he was sure he could do it. The following day, however, he fell ill. He seemed to be getting a very bad bout of flu. Things would have to wait. Flu turned to pneumonia though and Trevor ended up being admitted to hospital. 

Trevor began to worry; surely he hadn't done all of this for nothing. He got his wife Deirdre to check the tickets, and after she got over being furious at him for 'wasting' their savings, she laboriously got to work checking the tickets.

Eventually she found it. It was the winning ticket. Trevor had done it - he did know all about numbers. As Deirdre appeared at the hospital that night, however, there were grim faces all around."I'm sorry," said the doctor, "I'm afraid Trevor's number is up." Yes, it is, she thought but now poor Trevor won't benefit.

As she claimed all of the millions she thought to herself Trevor really did understand the magic of numbers, albeit too late. But as she looked back she realized her wedding day had been on the seventh of the seventh of seventy seven, and yes, seven had always been her lucky number. Maybe Trevor hadn't cracked it after all.