Quotes: +: (Beaming) Guys, I just realized something! If we all work together, we can reach such high numbers. Just imagine the possibilities! -: (Scoffs, eyes narrowed) Or, we could just stay small. Small is safe. Why does everything have to be "more"? I’m perfectly content with zero. ×: (Grinning maniacally) Zero? Zero is a waste of space! I want to explode! I want to take a five and turn it into a fifty! A five hundred! A five million! ÷:(In a small, dazed voice) Wait… if you turn a five into five million… where do the extra pieces go? I feel like I’m missing something. Or like I’ve been split into three. Or four. Is it getting crowded in here? X: (Cheerfully) Hey, Y! You’ve been staring at that exact spot for five minutes. Did a coordinate drop down there or something? Y: (Without looking up) No, X. I’m just trying to figure out why we always meet at the most random grid points. I mean, think about it. You’re always moving horizontally and vertically across the axes, and I’m usually tracking the vertical rise. f(x): (Slapping its brackets together defensively) "Order! I demand mathematical order! Nobody moves an inch until the input has been properly evaluated! $X$, get inside my parentheses right now! No, I don't care if you're talking to $Y$. If you are not enclosed by my boundaries, the entire expression is completely undefined! Do you want us to look like a syntax error?!" sin: (Yawning, leaning against a peak) "Honestly, Plus, you're trying too hard. 'Reach high numbers'? Why? The view from $y=1$ is exactly the same as the view from $-1$. It’s all a cycle, dude. We go up, we go down, we hit $2\pi$, and we do it all over again. Just find the rhythm and ride the amplitude." cos: (Smirking at Sine) "Easy for you to say, Sine. You start at zero like a beginner. I start at the absolute peak of the $y$-axis. I’m always exactly $90^\circ$ ahead of your entire life script. While you're waking up at the origin, I’ve already mapped the horizontal vector of the unit circle. Try to keep up." tan: (Vibrating violently, glitching across the grid axes) "CYCLE?! BOUNDED?! BORING! I don't stay between one and negative one! The closer I get to $\frac{\pi}{2}$, the higher I climb! I spike straight through the roof of the grid! I shoot to POSITIVE INFINITY! Then—POP!—asymptote breach! I disappear from existence and spawn at NEGATIVE INFINITY a millisecond later! Let’s see a toddler-friendly pastel color palette try to regulate THIS output!" log: "Take a deep breath, Multiplication. Seriously. You’re vibrating so hard you’re going to blow a registry. If you explode a five into five million, I’m just going to compress you right back down to a 6.7. I don’t care how many zeros you add to the end of a number—to me, you’re just a couple of steps up the ladder. Keep it scalable, people." ln: (Staring blankly at the grid) "Multiplication wants to explode, Division is having an existential crisis, and the variables are having a turf war with spelling books. It's exhausting. I only grow when Euler’s constant is involved, and even then, I do it smoothly. No drama. No massive jumps. Just pure, unadulterated logarithmic decay of my sanity." Sigma: "Plus thinks working together is a game. Charming. Plus adds a few elements and takes a nap. I? I am the Infinite Series. Give me an index i=1 and an upper bound of infinity, and I will accumulate a tower of numbers so massive it bounds reality itself. I am not a team player. I am the entire team, summarized." Integral: (Gazing out over a smooth curve, diamond eyes gleaming) "Sigma handles the blocks, but I dance in the spaces between them. You see a curve, and you think it’s just a line. I see an infinite amount of infinitely thin rectangles, waiting to be woven into a perfect area. I don't count the steps; I live in the flow. Now, if someone could tell the Phonics department to stop using me as a 'fancy letter S,' I would appreciate not having to differentiate their entire vocabulary into oblivion." Derivative:" No, wait! The derivative is shifting! Let me calculate a new tangent line! What if... what if the penguin's blue winter coat is the electron shielding effect?! And what if the fish it eats are the protons inside the nucleus?! See?! The slime adapts! The analogy works if you just start thinking about the actual math!" Limits: (Whispering softly)" I don't touch the point. My arrow-arms are acting like an asymptotic limit. They can come close, but they’re never fusing with the exact value of the coordinate."
