"I'm a number ....  !!???!!" ,  I asked, underwhelmed ...

He adjusted his glasses, continuing to look at me straight...

yes. that's what I'm trying to say. anything that's infinite in nature, by definition contains everything. we humans have thought up numerical infinity, and now we have to face the implication ...

our food lay untouched on the table. a cafe sandwich, croissant , coffee .... rites of passage. noises of the cafe washed over us. beyond the cafe chairs, people moved about carrying books and baskets. The library was our regular place of meeting.

of course I felt like a number. age, employee number, date, time, lat, long, salary, bank balance of assets, number of kids,  friends, car registration .... you could put together and assign a number to all this , and some government and some marketing agencies would've done already, in aggregate. (I wondered what mine was. Half-expected some bureau form would show it) 

but this was not what Slobov was saying.  Slobov was a scientist. But with the madness of a mathematician  . His friends considered him an irrational number himself. He studied dark matter matter while sitting in research ships at the edge of the empire , ran experiments with strange apparatus, and sent reports to research central office in the Far Centre.