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Not much happens in this novel: Zero is the hero (or anti-hero, depending on your value system and method of reading), and what can happen in a novel about a guy named Zero? Nothing much. What else would you expect?

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But this *is* a story, so there'll be some conflict of course--mostly between Zero and his ex-wife, who moved away with his twin boys when they were very young, but also between him and his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, who is a dangerous type. And lots of inner conflict too--you can count on that.

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The form of the novel will be conflicted as well. That's just part of the game. And the novel will grow. Split. Divide. Become more complex, like the computers that it resides upon. These eight bits will expand to 16, 32, 64, 128.

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For now, here are the things you need to know: Zero's father, Janusz Adumbrowski, a Polish Jew escaped from Europe during WWII, was a professor of mathematics but now drives a cab in St. Paul. Zero's mother, Maureen McCarthy, is an alcoholic and always has been. Zero himself is a computer science teacher at a posh private school in Manhatten, and he also teaches a philosophy of mathematics class. Zero wants to kill himself on New Year's Day of the New Millenium, so that his gravestone will say that he died on 01/01/01.

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This is the last bit. For now.

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--->