Another fragment out of the Lanfrey story.
Mathemeticians and quantum physicists are the only scientists left who still believe in magic. The latter believe because their newborn science has grown too weird for the rational constructs of the world; math nuts like me believe because numbers always had the irrationality option. I mean, think about it. What's zero? It's nothing, and there's no such thing, according to science. Nature abhors a vacuum. Zero is that which does not exist. Did you ever try to wrap your mind around that? It hurts to. I've kept all these years a magic formula someone wrote for me after a calculus class which showed weird things happening when you put infinity and zero in an equation together. You can do things with numbers that you can't do with anything in the real world. Numbers are outside that world, you know? Immutable. Three will always be three, whether you've got three apples, three Mack trucks, anything.
This is all part of the real reason I had that 30-60-90 triangle. It was just a clear green plastic angle measurer with a ruler on one side, but to me it was so beautiful. Wonderful things, triangles. No matter how small or big, if I could fit this tool over a questionable triangle I'd know the angles on it. Thirty degrees is always thirty degrees--do you have any idea how reassuring that is in a world in constant flux? I can't express it right in words--you see now why I hate English class so.
Now I wasn't always so abstract-thinking when I had that triangle. Mostly I thought of it like a Light Saber. It had a beveled edge so if I twisted it just so, if I sort of flicked it with my wrist, I could make it look like a streak of light would go skittering off. A flick, and the light loaded at the base would run straight up the hypotenuse to the utter tip, and then flash far beyond, hitting its target with laser accuracy.