Arthur's Text Game

Moef was delighted when Arthur made a game of the Unfinished Book in order to let her become involved in it. Arthur’s personal uneasiness about her reading his writing resolved itself imaginatively in this way. He decided he would let Moef choose any eight texts out of the several thousand that existed, all of which were numbered, Pythagoras was a reigning spirit in Arthur’s private pantheon. He would then ask her, indeed require of her, a written response to each chosen text. Who knew where things might lead beyond that?

Moef thought only a few minutes about the numbers she would choose. Fixed on “8” as she was, it was not very difficult. She chose: 8, 88, 888, 26, 1943, 71, 808, and 4888. that night, searching through his many boxes of texts, Arthur was continually surprised at how uncannily apropos their own circumstances her choices were. He was resolved to offer no commentary on any or the game itself until after she made her responses. Still, unknowingly he had thrust HIMSELF into an entirely new and unexpected relation with his own book, and he felt the chill if the vast spaces he had experienced so vividly during the first years of the Book, in Turkey. Was the “game” only a new immersion in the bracing waters of Created Time?