the author(s) 2020 ISSN 1473-2866 (Online) www.ephemerajournal.org volume 20(3) editorial | 1 Beyond measure Nick Butler, Helen Delaney, Emilie Hesselbo and Sverre Spoelstra The numbered Elias Canetti’s 1956 play The numbered tells the story of a society in which everyone knows exactly when they will die. The people in this society are not given regular names, but instead go through life by their ‘proper name’: a number that signifies the amount of years they will live. While each character knows their own ‘moment’, i.e. their time of death, they do not know when anyone else will die because it is taboo to reveal one’s age. One’s date of birth and death are safely stored away in a locket, hung around their neck not long after they are born. This remains unopened until the day they die, at which point a mysterious character called ‘the Keeper’ opens the locket and takes it away. In this society, murders and suicides are impossible because the date of one’s death is predetermined. Having lost its original meaning, the word ‘murderer’ is now reserved for those who dispense with their lockets in an attempt to escape their moment. They become fugitives and, if they are caught, their ‘moment’ takes place before a crowd, like a public execution. At the start of the play, an anonymous man celebrates the discovery of the ‘moment’ as ‘the greatest advance in human history’. Another man lauds the fact that a person is now certain of their allotted years, so that ‘he stands as firmly on them as his two feet’ (Canetti, 1984: 13). But as the story unfolds,