Zero Is a Lie

By Kassahun Alemu

We take the number zero for granted.
It is the hero of mathematics, the silent partner in every calculation we make. It is the void from which creation arises and the destination where all debts are settled. It marks the start of the number line and acts as a blank slate for new beginnings. We have built our architecture, economies, and digital identities on its elegant, absolute promise: that a thing can be null, that a state can be empty, and that an end can be final.

This book starts with a simple, unsettling question that lingers in my mind: What if zero isn't really a number, but just an idea? And what if that idea is false?

I looked at our world and saw it everywhere. The zero-sum game of the boardroom. The zero-tolerance policy of the law. The urge to erase our accounts, our inboxes, our past mistakes. Our faith, whether secular or spiritual, often relies on a kind of final judgment, an ultimate oblivion, or a heavenly salvation where suffering no longer exists. It is the tempting promise of a complete stop at the end of a sentence.

This novel is a thought experiment that takes this foundation and removes it. It explores what would happen to a civilization built on straight lines if it were suddenly forced to confront the logic of the spiral. It tells a story about convergence, the moment when our linear world, with its frantic march of progress and desperate hunger for finality, is compelled to enter the realm of a logic that is cyclical, relational, and unending.

This isn't a foreword-often written by an expert to establish credibility-instead, it's a personal message from me to you, serving as an invitation to the story ahead. Think of it as a letter from me, a brief guide to the philosophical landscape we are about to explore together. You will meet characters that embody the logic of our world: an architect who constructs with straight lines, a commander who sees in binaries, a physicist searching for a final equation, and a prophet promising an ultimate end. These characters are tested when faced with a man who holds up a mirror and shows that the flaw isn't in their world but in the very number upon which it was built. Life lived is not a journey from zero to zero but the creation of a permanent one added to a cosmic ledger.

The journey you're about to undertake is meant to be unsettling. It is designed to challenge the very foundations of your thinking. The goal is not only to tell a story of a collapsing world but also to explore what it means to be rebuilt, not on a foundation of endings, but on the unsettling, eternal principle of transformation.

I believe the most powerful stories aren't those that give answers but those that leave us with better questions. The main question of this book is one I still wrestle with: Which is more frightening, the promise of a final, peaceful nothingness or the reality of an unavoidable, endless becoming?

The convergence is upon us. Welcome to the spiral.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FFTGCHDM
• ISBN13: 9798285919209
• Release Date: June 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"