Stories about math are always interesting to me, and this short story has a cool premise with a researcher working on calculating very big prime numbers (in the 200 million digits range), where she find something unusual.

Analog March/April 2025

Vera is using an expensive quantum computer to calculate the biggest prime number found so far. While the calculation is running she chats with a tech working in the lab, and when the calculation successfully finds a new prime number; strange things starts happening with her computer.

This story reminded me of Dark Integers by Greg Egan and I am sure it has been an inspiration for the author, as Vera in the story is reading an Egan novel. I like how that is included.

Sadly however, the story more or less fell apart for me with its ending. Without revealing too much, the story takes a rather violent turn that I didn’t think were really warranted with the very sparse character development that was established, and it doesn’t really make the whole prime number mystery more interesting. It just adds more action that is completely unnecessary. The discovery was exciting enough on its own.

Read in Analog March/April 2025
Rating: 2