Infinity is not a number. It’s a concept.

The first mathematician walks up to the counter and orders a pint of beer.

“Sure thing,” says the bartender as he pours him a glass. “What’s bringing you here at this hour, if you don’t mind me asking?”

The mathematician sighs. “I’m not a mathematician.”

“What? I never said you were.”

“I know. I took up applied mathematics a year ago, but even though I’m acing the course, I feel so empty.”

The bartender slides the glass over the counter and sticks a cigarette between his lips. “Why’s that, do you reckon?”

“I don’t know. I feel like a fraud, I guess. My mom’s rooting for me, but I don’t know if I’m even fit for this subject. As a child, I used to really love math. I was always the smart kid in class. Now I’m not sure who I even am.”

“Ah, cheer up, lad. The course might just be too boring for you. Maybe you should try branching out a bit from your field of study.”

The mathematician smiled. “You’re right. Screw this course. I wanna go do some of my own stuff! You won’t believe this, I’ve been working on a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. Do you know what—?”

“Sorry, bud,” the bartender suddenly interjected. “Could you come back in two minutes? I don’t want this place filling up.”

The mathematician’s face drops, and he hurries through the door and back into his dull life.

This exchange lasted two minutes.

Another mathematician promptly enters the bar, this time sporting a slightly merrier face. He hops over to the bar and orders half a pint.

“Sure thing,” says the bartender. “What’s with the smile?”

“You won’t believe this,” the mathematician almost stammered. “I heard there’s someone in the same college as me working on a rigorous proof of the Riemann hypothesis. I heard they’re almost done. Do you know what the Riemann Hypothesis is?”

The bartender shakes his head, stifling his enthusiasm.

“It’s a brilliant thing, it is. A mathematical mystery that’s gone unsolved for a decade and a half. At its core, it’s rather simple: there’s a function called the Riemann zeta function, which takes as an input a complex number and outputs another complex number. The Riemann Hypothesis says that the only times this function outputs zero, aside from negative even integers, is at complex inputs whose real part is ½. This fact seems absolutely true from many studies, yet no one has actually shown that it is in fact—”

The bartender sighs rather loudly, then says, “I apologise, although I’m enthralled, I must ask you to leave. I’m expecting more visitors. Please visit again in two minutes.”

Clearly insulted, the mathematician storms out of the pub and leaves a one star review on Google.

Though he spouted many a word, this exchange lasted only a minute.

Another mathematician walks into the bar. Giddy with excitement, the bartender preemptively pours him a quarter of a pint and asks him, “Describe the Riemann Hypothesis in 30 seconds.”

At first stunned, the mathematician quickly regains his senses and says, “Imagine you had an infinite chain made of axes connected to each other and facing opposite each other with the first axis at (-1, 0) pointing towards (0, 0). If you started rotating them, each axis at a speed of log(n) RPM, with n being the number of the axis, you would imagine that the ‘final’ axis of the chain should pass through the point (0, 0) multiple times. The Riemann Hypothesis states that this only happens, however, when the distance between each of the axes is—”

“Sorry, we’re out of time. Come back in 2 minutes and 30 seconds, then we can finish this.”

Contented, the mathematician pays and leaves. How lucky he was to be able to explain the hypothesis in a mere 30 seconds!

Another mathematician enters the bar. The bartender pours an eighth of a pint. The mathematician gives him a funny look.

“Uh, can I have a—”

“If you can explain to me the Riemann Hypothesis in the next 10 seconds, I’ll give you a thousand bucks.”

“What? Dude, I’m not a mathematician. Can I just have some scotch, please? Why are you looking at me like—”

“Sorry, better luck next time. You can try again in 3 minutes and 15 seconds.”

Terrified, the mathematician walks out of the bar. Those had been the most puzzling 15 seconds of his otherwise meaningless existence.

Another mathematician walks into the bar. She skips to the counter and asks for a sixteenth of a pint.

The bartender is suddenly struck with an idea. In a swift calculation, he tells her, “Here, for you and the rest of your friends, have this eighth of a pint,” which he then hastily pours and hands over to her. “Uh, you mathematicians should really know your limits, or whatever.”

Disgusted, the mathematician says, “Are you implying that we all drink this sixteenth of a pint from this one glass? That seems highly unhygienic and, given an infinite number of drinkers, absolutely certain to start some sort of bubonic plague that will surely wipe out humanity an infinite number of times.”

“Yeah, well, this isn’t a theoretical club, bitch. Get out. And tell the rest of your buddies to come back in n minutes and 7.5 seconds.”

The mathematician walks out of the bar and tells the rest of the infinite array of mathematicians waiting for a two-to-the-nth of a pint what happened. They are all angered by the bartender’s trick, but luckily, an infinite subset of mathematicians has an idea to retaliate against him. When they return to the bar, as the bartender has asked each of them to, they shall each order not one pint, but 2ⁿ pints, and thus he would exponentially go out of business and be forced to close down! Haha, what a clever trick!

Unfortunately, as soon as the first mathematician comes back, he realizes their mistake. The bartender, who appears to have overheard the mathematicians’ plot, smiles and points at the sign on the wall:

THIS IS A 2-ADIC BAR

“Shit,” he mutters, returning his pint. For of course, he understands that the sum of all powers of 2, i.e. 1+2+4+8+16+32+64+…, is equal to -1, in the context of 2-adic numbers. Intuitive, right?

But the bartender has a different idea. He pulls out a revolver and shoots the mathematician 3 times in the back, then drags the body into the bathroom.

The second mathematician walks into the bar one minute later, of course, and after giving the bartender a pint he magically has now, the bartender shoots him too and hides his body as well, and continues this process ad infinitum, receiving one pint every single minute.

Soon he becomes the most successful bartender in the world, with his infinite import of beer granting him eternal wealth. When the bodies start building up, he incinerates them and continues collecting the pints. No one would know his secret, for he is now immortal. He has become one with math, death and the universe.