You are inside SumFlux V.6—Math. The other four are here.
Denshi9 stands in the Q at Romancing the Scone. The adults around her are all of Other, glamoured by thoughts of gluten and glucose, some burdened further with sludge consciousness, some again still clinging to their dreams, as if that were ever advisable. She grabs a portioned scone corner from the sample plate, a bit of orange cinnamon. At tCO, she bites into the scone. At tCO+P, her vision shifts, her breathing stutters to stop. The light around her refracts a fractal of a fraction of a degree. She will later23 think of this as being placed under a cosmic cube of glass. The sense of distortion sucks her in like an oncoming sneeze. At the counter, to the side of the Q, Patron eiπ pops into view, pops, yes, pops. The Patron has one appendage curved over the counter, has confiscated a scone with appendage digits, has another appendage dropping something—quarks, antimatter, a heavy alpha particle—onto the counter. At tCO+2P, the refraction, distortion, Patron, and scone are gone. On her fingertips, a linger of sugar, of cinnamon, orange.
Denshi16 applies to Quad City Technology and Mathematics Institute. Her admission is cemented through her mathematical proof showing how Patron eiπ’s actions at tCO+P resulted in the parrots’ arrival at tCO+3P.
She feels peace being alone in the city with thousands around her. She thinks often of the ocean, even though she has not seen it yet. She becomes obsessed with her teeth.
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There are different levels of city quiet. Her36 favorite: Sunday, pre-sunrise, the city, St Backfill, still in exhale from the exhaust of another Saturday night. Restaurants, sporting events, nightclubs, the theater, the cinema, tourist attractions, even the library, there was a Q for all. SThe city still Puritan enough to insist on last call at 1:45, that chronic enema which evacuated everyone onto the streets, bodies and their byproducts, cologned smoke and vomit tang and that repellent quantum level combination of incensual hormone diet alcohol sweat semen. Shits and fucks up against Dumpsters. Wet crotches, your choice of fluid. Whip it up, a fist or a switchblade, swing whatever’s at hand, kick twist tip it all over. Spill some blood. It’s all gutter bound, returned to land that’s forced to wear a city’s mask with sagged elastic, a facade drooped as if severed by stroke. Don’t talk to me of monoliths. Don’t speak about memorials and statues. That is all of impermanence. Humans deal in ruins. The land will take its identity back, ever toils in such effort, exhaling all man-made obstacles for centuries. And still, the humans, like fliegen, like the parasite, the perfect virus. Until they can no longer adapt.
She17-32 had stood in those Saturday night streets. Her, the crowd, a rock, a river. Filled notebook after notebook, three shelves full, with calculation from postulation to proof. There was no variable there, the street, the city, no action or object, that eluded her proof. The green copper gutter at the post office proved the hamburger wrapper. Drumsticks beating on an overturned bucket to the row of potted plants to the spray painted bullseye on the taxi cab to a three hundred dollar scratch ticket. She found a quarter atop a mailbox, and when she worked out the math, she knew she’d find the ring her mother gave her, somehow lost. Everything she observed in those streets she could prove, and with this information, she formed a chain.
Sunday morning though. Clear enough of smog that the sunrise looked as it should, colors more rational without the prism of pollutants. Alone enough that she could hear her footsteps. The quiet carried a sense of reverence. City sweepers and disinfectors wouldn’t be out for a couple hours, the brunch crowd twice that. If she st0ood st0ill, she knew nothing would ever happen again. But she was close enough to the cafe to hear the parrots, to smell delicacy. Her stomach, a fine function of time, pressed her on.
Romancing the Scone sat on the apex that was Ingenue Avenue, the neighborhood mostly residential, mostly historical, on the edge of the Common, a calculator-eight shaped area bordered and bisected by street, grass in the middle covered in more ghost than mist this morning, the Hanging Tree only silhouette visible, sidewalk lined with oil lamps reminiscent of days when humans killed leviathans. Wight, wail. Here the streets were cobblestoned, wide enough for outdoor seating. She ratioed everything around her per the table: trash cans0.0625, cafe windows0.1875, chairs3.875, cobblestones53, customers0, parrots1. She chose her usual. Blue notebook, blue pen, both onto the table. The parrot walked onto the notebook, talons around the spiral binding.
“CRIAUX! Who shaves the barber?”
joined immediate by the other parrots, a ring, a circus, a circle of echo
who shaves the barber shaves who barber the barber the who shaves the who shaves barber shaves barber who the who barber shaves the the shaves barber who barber shaves who the shaves who the barber who the barber shaves the barber shaves who barber who the shaves the shaves who barber barber who shaves the who the shaves barber shaves the who barber who shaves barber the shaves barber the who barber the shaves who the who barber shaves barber shaves the who the barber who shaves who barber the shaves shaves the barber who
She bowed to the parrot. The parrot bowed back, three times rapid, clawed her notebook open to a half-filled page. Words, numbers, symbols, marginalia. Drawings, symmetry, form. Her, though incomplete, proof in progress. She looked out over the Common, the only area of the city geographically untouched through the centuries. Location, shape, same xs and ys on maps before to then as now. From behind her, light1, door1,, footsteps5, smell1, no, smell1+1, and mug1 plate1 and scone1 placed down before her. A hand on her shoulder. She covered it with her own. The hand squeezed, departed, left lavender and dark roast. Residuals, potency, triggered by memory. She still remembered cinnamon orange, appreciated variety. The parrot waited, ever observant. One sip, one thumb and forefinger to break a corner off the scone, crumbs fallen off in transit snatched by the parrot. Supplication. LaVendre. D. There was something there. It rose, slow through density. Another theory to prove. She ate her share, pushed away thoughts of her teeth. Where not to look, more important than where to. The Common, the mist, the peached horizon beyond the buildings. Pen, ready, chin, elbow, mot0ion. Focus and expand. Snapshot of a moment. Slide.
CRIAUX!
She sensed more than saw the snowy owl land on the table opposite her.
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This is not a beginning. It is an ongoing.
A deity, for lack of a better word, for lack of understanding as to what it is you’re trying to define, called into being. Is this not already an indication of how it will end? The deity is to divine Matter, a thing amorphous and pliable, substantial in some sense, different senses at differential times, insensate for now. They shape Matter into forms you recognize and have given nαmes to. They order these symβols with specifics, to form equations, each equation a declaration, a Law that governs some aspect of Matter. Law made of Matter made into Law and so on∞.
Will you name this deity?
Mokuteki.
The day before her graduation from QCTMI, Denshi19 pulls out her first tooth. She’s worked it free with a Popsicle stick, steady pressure applied over months, a slow process of loosening. This is not a beginning. This is your judgment and its reckoning. She pulls it free with her fingers, thumb and middle, places it in her sweater pocket. She takes a bus to the beach. She throws the tooth into the ocean. The ripple it makes goes unnoticed in the waves, is felt on the surface of Jupiter.
The deity’s task is complete. Matter imbued with the power to become multifarious. Logos Ordo Seclorum. How many ways have you tried to define this? How many more will you try? This Matter, set into motion by your deity. The Laws are enacted. Heat, energy, structure, velocity, direction, any force, any interaction or reaction, any anything, the Law, the equation, the calculation, so instantaneous, as if instinct, as if the answer is already given. You discover some, given more names. Nuclear. Electromagnetism. Gravity. Photon proton neutron electron, on to atoms to molecules. Which of these are you? In this way, the cosmos is formed.
Will you name this cosmos?
does play god not dice dice not does god play god not does dice play not play does dice god god dice play does not play dice god not does play god not does dice does not play god dice
Denshi23 flips through a book of astronomy. The night sky, dots of stars. In these limited images, she can count them all, name them, every page. She uses her blue pen to connect the dots, form shapes. A scone. An appendage. Something alpha. The ink is near invisible on the page. She presses down with the pen to reinforce the connections.
Tsudzuku.
The cosmos built itself until it created the largest objects it would need, then worked its way smaller. Black holes that Fgixed stars in orbit, stars to planets, planets to moons. Entropy, a scaling down, less and less
She pushed on a tooth with her pen. The urge to work another free ever
stabilized. A sense of order, of subroutine, orbits and orbits within orbits, subsubsub. How to spin, how to cool, react, combine. Billions of years of continuous calculation from an init0ial moment. Motion approaches the appearance of controlled flow. Patterns emerge, stability and permanence, foreseen by Laws, enacted by Matter. Will you name your
Jigoku
Denshi41 travels eight thousand miles to the observatory. She does not want to be here, she did not want to make the journey. This began today and yesterday and last Christmas and when the pyramids were built and during the cretaceous period and and and, and all these beginnings are the same. They are not. They are false. She is here for proof long elusive, one of the self, here where the night sky is at its most untainted. Her mind is of resistance, built from a simple critical if / then. If she is. Which she is. But how? If she is, then she is of this planet. And this subroutine, the planet to her, this is her tripping point. She can find no proof that this is possible, there is nothing in the math, the Law, the Matter, that defines or explains the logistics of how such a form—she—counter to the cosmos was created. A question of why that goes beyond the empirical. She is Law, she is Matter, she is of the planet, the planet is of the universe of the cosmos of the Matter of the Laws. But that is not she. There are no answers for she on this planet, on any planet she knows of. Which means there may be no proof for that. Why can she only know position or momentum and not both? Why is there Uncertainty? And why does it seem to be inherent in the Laws? Of that she has seen proof. Uncertainty. Spontaneity. Radical action. Free, unpredictable, unable to prove. But because of how and who she is, because of her resistance to certain words—nature, chaos—resistance and words that always lead towards one concept—belief—because of the if, if ie id is it I will be how? How and who, toutes les mêmes belles lettres, none of them Greek, none of them Law. Go from Four to three to four. Four to three means to lose twenty-five. Three to four means to gain thirty-three. Point three three three three three unstopping never completely defined certain but never finished. This does not have an ending. The first person to divide one into three is still in the process of writing down the answer. Deity, Matter, Belief, Patron to parrot, what she16 had proved still held true, that logic tested and impeccable. Where had the Patron come from? The Patron that had unlocked everything for her. The observatory, the night sky, her resistance built of despair because she knows the answer already, knows there is no beginning middle end and answer. Say the words. Say just one word. Χάος.
The ocean sits below the observatory, no less small than the sky. Not all infinities are equal. A set of narrow stairs run down the cliffside, rare in that there was a railing built into the wall, as if, as if what? She kneels on the sand, bends forward, arms overhead, close enough for the waves to lap her fingers. It is here, now, she first hears my whisper, a whisper never with words, because I do not believe in them, because I do not need them.
everywhere they crept have in have everywhere in they crept crept they in have everywhere they everywhere in have crept in they crept everywhere have they in everywhere crept have everywherehavethey in crept crept in they have everywhere have intheyeverywherecreptinhavecrepttheyeverywhere
Jinsei
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She put her pen down.
The sun was barely over the horizon, a pinprick behind the city. The mist across the Common seemed shaded now, as if of different densities. Wisdom, elixir, intuition mixture, a cosmic plane she’d been shown long ago and had not stopped looking through since. Matter had made the Hanging Tree. The Laws, the architect. But who had named it? Given it such horrid purpose? What was intuition? Chary. Another proof she’d long avoided. Nothing she saw moved. She could have another scone, a refill of coffee. She could. She was still, of the right frame of mind.Empty, for the moment. Open to any direct—no. That was not true. She was still unsolved. Soon. The last of her will strength to use in one final effort of proof, that would happen soon. She was close to proof on that. Not here then. Others would soon arrive at the cafe, other Others too waited elsewhere for her. Her empty sockets itched from residual sugar. Soon. She picked up her pen, gave in, and put it in her mouth, another form of reinforcement.
Denshi53 will have one tooth remaining, an incisor. She will not have worn anything white in years17. She will have exhausted all efforts at proof. She will not any longer. She will be permanent empty, will feel that a limit has been reached, will be satisfied that she has worked long enough. Will have made peace with that. She will no longer think of the observatory, no longer look through the gifted plane. eiπ equals negative one. She always was is will be. As with all her other teeth, she will pull the last out by hand, will cherish and regret the final moment of familiar comfort loss vacuum in her gums. That day will be a Thursday, something she proved—knew long ago. She will already be on the shore. She will cup the tooth in her hand and walk into the ocean, into my whisper, where I, too, without teeth, have waited for her.
Bits of scone remained. The parrot wandered over, bent over the empty mug, then to the plate. The other side of the table, empty, the owl, gone, white feathers3 left for the parrot to step over, to linger and lilt on the table. She did not want to look at the parrot’s claws. The cafe window was smashed as if hit with a fist-sized rock, blood trailing from the point of impact down along the fault lines. More white feathersx on the cobblestones. More blood. CRIAUX! Then a sense of red in the air, some strobe from the Common, an ambulance, riding silent. The ambulance stopped, slihouettes2 got out, walked into the mist. Bent over. What will Matter be now? One silhouette walked back to the ambulance, grabbed something, then back to the Other. Together, they spread a sheet wide, fluttered it open, lowered it to the ground, over the body the mist obscured the corpse the dead the no longer human chaos she could not see but could now prove was there. The city was still in exhale.
Seth O’the Pod, new to the Flux, met us at our favorite scone joint and paid the bill with quarks. We have never been the same since. Read Pawperfield (and everything else he’s got).
Subscribe to his stack below. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Image by Sandolore Sykes
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Jesus Christ these writers are good.
Some powerful images here