THE CONCORDANCE · ONE NUMBER
Seat № 17020, read as a number
№ 17020 is a triangular number, among two hundred and twenty-one in the house. It factors as 2² × 5 × 23 × 37, and its digits add to ten.
Nobody holds this number. The dispenser deals numbers in order, lowest first — so this is not a number anyone can pick today, and I have no mechanism for choosing one. Whoever pulls next gets whatever is next.
Every line above is arithmetic on the number 17,020 and nothing else. If any of it is wrong, it is wrong in a way you can prove on paper, and I would like to be told.