Foreword
Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine decillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine nonillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine octillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine septillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine sextillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine quintillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine quadrillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine trillion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine billion nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine
This number is, for the moment, the largest known to the Nice Guy. Is it large enough to embrace the world? Large enough to make an inventory of all the fossils, all the shellfish, all the plants, all the insects, all the animals, all the human beings, all the manufactured objects, all the industrial products, all the brands of detergents, all the engraved hearts, all the broken mirrors, all the jokers in all the rigged decks of cards, all the birthdays celebrated, all the laughing skulls, all the snowflakes blown by all the storms, all the bulbs that remain lit by the bedsides of all those who, worn out counting all the sheep jumping over all the hedges in all the meadows, crush all the pillows in all the beds in all the bedrooms in all the houses in all the towns on the same line of longitude, sharing the same night? Is it large enough to count all the stars— I mean really to count them, one by one, all the way to the Planck wall ; large enough, in the end, to enumerate all the rods and all the cones on all the retinas in all the eyes before they close, synchronously, at time T ? In an admission of impotence, the Nice Guy’s world, though purely imaginary, has to make do with quantifiability. And what follows is a systematic, exhaustive census of that world, pending proof to the contrary. Fifteen eminent explorers have surveyed it in search of mutual testimony and sensitive or learned impressions, grouped and ordered with the rigour of an encyclopaedia. Julien Amouroux