You're calling this a first draft. Really? Well, that's damned impressive, to say the least. Even if you fudged a little and changed a word here and there, maybe a sentence or even a paragraph, it's still damned impressive. It may well be ready to submit as is, but, being the pain in the butt that I tend to be, I do have a problem with it.

While you bail yourself out at the very last second, you still flirt with a notoriously unforgivable cheat, which is to suck your reader in to a killer development with well defined characters in whom we're willing to invest our time and effort, only to stand off to the side at the end and go, "Ha ha! Fooled you!"

Understand, this is not to be confused with the classic O'Henry style twist, thwarting reader's expectations in a way that arises organically from all that has come before. Nor does it share much of note with stories like The Sixth Sense, where, again, misdirection has brilliantly disguised the truth which was hidden all along in plain sight. What this cheat does is take us to a point where it's time to deliver on all the promises offered by the development, and then switches the channel on us, telling us that all our investment in your characters and their problems was for nothing. I say you bail yourself out, sort of, at the very end, giving us a context to understand all that has come before in terms of the unexpectedly revealed reality. But it's hollow. I really wanted to see what you were going to do with Seventy-Six, and Katherine's efforts to make sense of it all.

I'm reminded of an old Twilight Zone script, the name of which escapes me. You may have seen it; if finds a place in every marathon that's broadcast. We encounter a cast of characters who are uncertain of how, or why they've come together, except that they all have a nagging sense that they've met each other before. This happens more than once, each time with notable variations in personality and relationship. All the while, a strange, echoing clacking sound fills the background.

It's corny and kludgy, but the final reveal shows us a hack writer who can't figure out what to do with his characters, going through draft after draft, trying to get it right, never managing, the clacking sound being his typewriter (it's the 60's, after all). But the point is, even though we don't get to follow the initial cast of characters through to a resolution, the story as a whole is consistent and self-contained. Rather than feeling like we're jerked from one context to one totally different, we instead get a classic pull-back, revealing the full scene that we've encountered all along, just hadn't seen the whole of it.

That's what I'm missing here. I like the way you explain the numbers. But it's too disjointed. The sequel is whiplash inducing. Not sure how you would repair it, but somehow, you need to set us up before hand to the twist. Make it a complete narrative rather than two separate realities crudely grafted together.

Nonetheless, this is a fine story. I hope you find a place for it.