Death and Knuth's Up-arrows
1
Death told the girl that she could see ten more times the boy she loved, before she would die by sundown on the day of the last meeting.
She met the boy the following day. They chatted, laughed, strolled along on the pavement together. At the end of the day, the boy left and the girl waved him goodbye.
Returning home alone, the girl made one mark on the wall with a piece of chalk.
Another two days later the boy returned, and they cherished another day spent together.
The girl went home to make a second mark on the wall.
Regularly, the boy showed up to meet her every other day, and each day the girl would add one stroke to the marks on the wall.
The girl met the boy for the last time on the third week, on the twentieth day. The sun set, and she left the boy, left the world, and had no regrets.
2
Death told the girl that she could see ten more times the boy she loved, before she would die by sundown on the day of the last meeting.
She met the boy the following day.
At the end of the day, the boy left and the girl waved him goodbye. She made one mark on the wall with a piece of chalk.
Another two days later the boy returned.
The following meeting was on the fourth day, then the eighth. As the marks on the wall accumulated, the girl realized she could predict the time of the next meeting, and she anticipated eagerly each of those days.
Thirty-two days was a little more than one month, sixty-four a little more than two.
On the one thousand and twenty-fourth day - a little less than three years later - the girl and the boy met for the last time. She held him and they looked into the sunset until her last moments.
3
Death told the girl that she could see ten more times the boy she loved, before she would die by sundown on the day of the last meeting.
She met the boy the following day.
Two days later, the second meeting.
Then, the fourth.
Then the sixteenth. This day the girl cried as she waved the boy goodbye, because she knew that it will likely be a very, very long time until the next time they met.
Every day after that winter evening the girl would look through the window, but she did not seek for the boy for she knew there was a time for the next meeting and it was not yet that time. One more mark appeared on the wall the end of each day, marking one more small step towards the two-hundred and fifty-sixth.
The two-hundred and fifty-sixth day after that was a day in the following autumn.
The boy did not appear.
The leaves fell, and once again winter arrived. No sign of the boy.
The girl waited.
Year after year.
The wall was covered with marks of white, while the piece of chalk diminished until there was no longer enough of it to write with.
She had lost track of the days anyway. The day on which they finally met - the day on which the girl’s sanity collapsed - was the sixty-five thousand five-hundred thirty-sixth.
