FSaDPattSoFFiCG - A Math Story

Equipoise

The Autumn air brought with it a chill that seeped into the tiles and glass windows. Shadows crept up higher against the far walls of the cafe while, in isolated corners of the open floor, students retreated into their quiet little worlds, like ghostly tired sculptures basking in the dimming ribbons of the afternoon golden glow. The tapping of the waitress' heels was matched by the tapping of a pencil on a notebook, filled with scribbles and formulae that made no formal sense. The statues remained frozen in time while the world around them only vaguely seemed to progress. A stilted waitress laboured through a door and into the kitchen.

For the moment, the cafe was lifeless, and then the boy emerged from the same door the girl had withdrawn to.

Removing his apron revealed typically boyish attire, though his countenance and the poise with which he carried himself, the confident strides as he stalked closer, and his precise posture made him seem almost regal. Kairo did not miss the way the way his grey eyes seemed to glint in the thin strips of sunlight that still lingered, frozen in time like all the rest of the known universe.

In this scene, the predatory prince and he were suspended eternally. He would have considered this hell if he had made it awkward just then, as he was naturally predisposed to do. Kairo was a poet. A literature major. A musician. An artist with a brush and a pen. As such, hell was never too far from his conscious thoughts.

Ambrose, however, was a mathematical model - a muse Kairo often favoured as a font of inspiration for wistful writings, those hymnal Polymnian prosodies, those deeply amorous Eraton poetries and, though tragic to admit, his pernicious and agonising Melpomenean fantasies regularly accompanied by the religious guilt following onanism.

Ambrose acted as the only muse Kairo could ever need and, in that eternal aeon as they were, Kairo didn't mind too much at all.

He joined at the table, taking the bench across from Kairo and facing center, such that the vesper half-light bathed the left side of his face, forming a faded symmetry line which may have been - and likely was - mathematically and graphically perfect. While Kairo could admire the aesthetic charm, the sharp contrast between the shadowed and lucent halves instead immediately surfaced unease and apprehension, reminiscent of his first impression of Damien Hirst's Floating Skull.

Ambrose was a god, and if the mythos of the Greeks which hung on tapestries in the Art Hall were empirical premises, then Kairo was fated an ill end.

The divine boy dared to smile, curving his lips as if they were tugged by Cupid himself. 

Kairo knew that whatever end awaited him was worth it. The weighted cost of a tragic downfall against that empyrean grin was a massively unbalanced equation.

"Thanks for waiting," Ambrose said. He arched an eyebrow and glanced down at the notepad, covered in pencil marks and struck out equations. "Kept busy?"

Kairo followed his gaze to the page of long forgotten mathematical scriptures. "Yes. I believe I've managed to steadily disprove every conceivable scientific and mathematical theory which might provide any basis as to why you agreed to go on a date with me."

Ambrose nodded thoughtfully. "What was the initial hypothesis?"

"For any possible categorical class, there is an equipoise between the extensional properties we share."

"And the results?"

"Both of us are categorically matched to at least half the living population of the universe. Clearly I've done something obscenely wrong here."

"Interesting," Ambrose whispered, leaning in closer. "What's your conclusion?"

Kairo flipped the cover over his scrawlings and slid the notepad to the side. "I was very smart to take literature and not math."

"I think you were very smart to ask me out today, and I might have been very smart to say yes," Ambrose amended.

Kairo didn't plan on grinning the way he was. "Interesting hypothesis. Shall we put it to the test?"

For the moment, the cafe was lifeless, and then the waitress emerged from a door somewhere in a distant dream.

Impeccable sculptures slowly returned to life in isolated corners of the open floor as the last of the sun receded. The chatter of a waitress was matched by the soft laughter of two boys, filled with scribbles and formulae that made no formal sense, yet somehow still formed a floating equilibrium in a sphere of entropy and art.

The chill of the Autumn evening slipped into an ancient memory.