12 November 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2919: the wrong formula

"OK, so basically, we can't get a warp drive because we have the wrong formula for rocket fuel?”

“No, bro. We can't get a warp drive because it doesn't matter what fuel we use. Ain't got enough horses for that much horsepower.”

“But we can fix that – hey, Pop-Pop, we need to borrow a couple billion dollars real quick.”

Whereupon 66-year-old Thomas Stepforth, billionaire, could not take the conversation any more between nine-year-old grandson Milton Trent and eight-year-old granddaughter Gracie Trent about why the jump from rockets to warp drive was not going to happen anytime soon, and fell out laughing.

“No, I mean there aren't enough horses on the planet,” Gracie said, completely undisturbed by her grandfather falling over on the sofa laughing.

“Okay, we need to put the seahorses in there,” Milton said, heedless of his grandmother, Mrs. Velma Stepforth, shaking her head with a smile. “Pop-Pop, we're gonna need you to go make a couple trillion real quick.”

“No,” Gracie said. “This is not a problem money can fix – you could burn all that too and you still can't get there. You need Rob's skip-a-few type of numbers.”

Five-year-old Lil' Robert Ludlow from two doors down was always ready, and just beamed at Gracie. “Yep, that's the power of the skip-a-few!” he said.

“So, what's the biggest number you can count to?” she said.

“One, two, skip a few – a zillion!” he said.

“That's the problem, Milton,” Gracie said. “How much is a zillion, Rob?”

“When you don't know what the number is, but you know it's bigger than anyone knows about, it's gotta be a zillion!” Lil' Robert said.

“The skip-a-few is the warp drive of math,” Gracie said, “and so people are out here talking about high octane fuel … you need zillion octane fuel, Milton, for a warp drive.”

Mr. Stepforth rolled right onto the floor as his grandson said, “Oh, never mind – ain't nobody got time to count all those numbers out of the skip-a-few. Let's just go play dominoes and stay on Earth.”

So they did, and Mrs. Stepforth went to her helplessly laughing husband.

“I've been telling you about walking in on Gracie and Milton in particular doing science!” she said. “You already know you can't take it!”

“I'm just never ready!” he said. “And then they pulled poor Lil' Robert in, and you know he's going to go home talking about he invented the warp drive of math, and that's going to be Big Robert Ludlow's problem!”

“For sure, and George and Milton and Grayson just about killed him laughing yesterday,” Mrs. Stepforth said. “Well, y'all old men need the exercise anyway!”