BtZ 42: Triple zero, mesdames et messieurs

[Monte Davis]

p. 20: "Today it’s been a long, idiot chase out to zero longitude
[Greenwich, Pirate's "incoming mail" V-2] with the usual nothing to show."

Beyond the spatial zero would be the direction from which the rockets come
=  "plus" longitude by convention = Netherlands, Germany, Europe, Eastern
Hemisphere. As M&D will remind us, this is a quintessentially arbitrary,
quintessentially British-Imperial line. (There were many other claimants;
Greenwich wasn't accepted globally until 1884.)

p. 25: " 'jeepers, Tantivy, listen, I don t want to upset you but...  I
mean I’m four years overdue’s what it is, it could happen any time, the
next second, right, just suddenly... shit... just zero, just nothing...
and...'
   It's nothing he can lay his hands on... ”

Beyond the existential zero would be whatever follows death by warhead.
This Slothrop at this moment doesn't grasp that, for all the encouraging
epitaphs in New England.

p. 28: "The profits slackening, the family ever multiplying. Interest from
various numbered trusts was still turned, by family banks down in Boston
every second or third generation, back into yet another trust, in long
rallentando, in infinite series just perceptibly, term by term, dying...
but never quite to the zero..."

Beyond the financial zero would be... negative interest or debt?... IF the
declining family assets were ever to reach that state, but they don't,
quite.

Sorry to be so negative.






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