Undeniable

Written 55-E15 [2023-11-24], Edited 55-E15 [2023-11-24]

Image credit: Twitter Twemoji

I was walking among the fruits and vegetables in the supermarket when a thin scruffy man walked up to me and said, “My name is Dio. Tell me something undeniable.”

I looked at him weird, but humoured his request.

“1 + 1 = 2,” I said. “What are you going to do, deny that?”

“Well,” said Dio, “How do you know you have one of something?”

I picked up an apple from the fruit section.

“I have one apple in my hand,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t have 1.0000000000000000001 of an apple?”

“What does that even mean? How would that even work?” I asked.

“Well if you cut up an apple into tiny pieces, and one of the pieces got stuck to the apple you are holding, then you would have 1.0000000000000000001 apples.”

“Okay this is a bit off track, I said 1 + 1 = 2 is undeniable,” I said.

“But why?” asked Dio.

“It’s in the definition,” I said.

“What definition?” Asked Dio.

“Look, I’m pretty sure some mathematician actually wrote a proof that 1 + 1 = 2, and it was a hundred pages long, to prove how numbers work based on some tiny assumption,” I said.

“What’s the book?” Asked Dio.

“I forget the title,” I said.

“I’m not sure about this book,” said Dio.

“Well check Google,” I said.

Dio pulled out a Nokia phone made in 2004.

Notes

This was written in 15 minutes during a Joy of Writing meetup.

Feedback from The Joy of Writing group

• Could add something about ‘googol’