Laughing Icarus

1.
The puzzle of space (a wrong turn directing us mistakenly to Minotaur Universiteit) had upset our perception of time, the result flooding the stairs when we made it to the correct campus and building: shoe squeaks, rustling lecture notes being carefully juggled, the heavy heaves of light jogging through the outside hedges and layers of staircases. The pale grey stones stacked high and wide, the crest above the door plain as day with a compass, a square, and Lorentz Center inscribed in the crown. A velvet grey poster board in the hall, the bottom poster tucked under sports fliers had a small black and white photo in the top left corner (a younger picture of the lecturer), the letters curving around the small portrait. Among its contents a few other advertisements, torn in lack of resemblance being that mostly all of them said something about this club or that play, hardly noticed as we clamored up the stairs. Despite this, I did notice the poster wasn't quite right, it read one o'clock (or three minutes after rather, lectures are never delivered square on the nose). My watch hands were a few points away from intermingling over the double I Roman numerals.
Through the door, a left and two flights of stairs and wood walled chutes ending at the prescribed door, closed soundlessly. The door read 'Lorentz Center, Lecture Today at 1:00pm' as it cracked for probably the first time in nearly half an hour (the dull set of faces painting the desks inside with paper neatly set in front of each solemn stair, preoccupied with the much expected party). Our bumbling associate (I didn't know his name, a rather odd fellow with a queer habit of scratching his upper lip while speaking about his wife) laid down a thick folder on the podium up front, its contents bulging out on all sides save the folding crease that kept the thing together. "Yes, excuse the delay, the roads were bad as I suppose is quite typical at this point of the day, backed up several miles�let's get on with the lecture now shall we? You all know of Dr. �ystein Ore, I expect you should, his work as a set theorist especially now that mathematics, ladies and gentleman, is more open to the idea of irrational numbers has been revolutionary in both physics and philosophy. I hope all of you are familiar with the mathematician, famous for self-inventing set theory, the esteemed Georg Cantor�" The man's speech, haphazard and clumsy, brought the mad blue with streams of grey and red riveting through a gravitating abyss, how he could sufficiently teach physics was beyond all logic.
Rigidly watching the stifling colleague of his, my mentor, wearing his straight tan blazer and a poorly shaved beard with a terrible itch, observed how the man would pick at a spot behind his ear and stop continually mid sentence to offer a side note on his own wonderful paper published on representation theory (it had been given some bad criticism over the lack of reliable research and an embarrassing fallacy in his idea regarding Einstein's new theory of gravity). All through the babbling, the guest of honor never once scratched at his beard or so much as removed his gaze from his introduction in delivery, though one of his hands (it alternated) would occasionally prop themselves on his chest where he would look vaguely perplexed over a word or phrase his colleague had interpreted at his own accord. As the closing statements to precede �ystein's talk commenced, a blonde head of hair draped over the desk and lay on a white notebook, poking out from underneath its agitated and rather bored owner. The introduction took fifteen minutes, though in seven my own bag lay open next to my chair and I began reviewing the material. Midway rereading my notes on a paradox I had found involving larger and smaller infinities, there came the long stretch of Hebrew characters broken in conventional plutonian form; the soggy breathing somewhere in the third row (I didn't bother to turn and catch the napping perpetrator), and finally an end to a wildly pretentious introduction. Several students elevated their posture to meet the happy conclusion, and several others slouched further.
"Mathematics," �ystein began, raising a hand to scratch absent-mindedly at his beard. "The law of nature. It's self imposed dictatorship with its undermining conspirators trying to break it down for syntaxes. Patterns. Order in the behavioral structure of the world we live in. Pythagoras, Euclid, Galileo, Archimedes, Cantor, Freud, and then Einstein several decades ago have been the vices in this totalitarian state of nature�"
An hour and a half passed and most of the chairs facing the podium didn't slide back for weary scholars, though three that I remember did. The one most obvious being the blonde girl napping through most of the introduction and the rest of the talk. I recreated the formulas in my head as �ystein scratched them out, the dwindling piece of chalk left over from a lecture on qualitative analysis (or so a professor whispered in my ear as scratch following a harsh delta dug into the board). Midway through explaining the original set theory premises, a glaring brown mixed together from the play in the numbers harmony, a dirty disorder that opened an obvious error. The part of the equation created a paradox, a fallacy that unwound the intricate balance in Cantor's primary set equation that had since been revised to adhere to relativity. It instilled an intricate pathway that led the laws of physics pertaining to the Plank scale into a loop, a hole. The other parts of the equation were booming with color, vibrant reds, deep blues bathing in seductive yellows in a very selective copulation, then the forest green child that seemed to playfully string itself around its toy, Einstein's familiar brainchild. But this, this brown mess that offered no balance in the color, the chaotic asymmetry, the flaw of logic, warped all of the other colors into browns as the numbers followed through with themselves. It all came back to one pillar mistake, and quickly I could see that the equation was caught in a maze, a labyrinth that led it back to the basis of energy as a universal constant. The piece, as follows:

P * 1K! / -- = 8 --(Em^2)

was meant to define a set of infinites (Zeno's Paradox) but allowed for only one infinity (though an infinity can be divided and broken down infinitely, part of the basis for set theory). �ystein held his hand over Energy Mass squared, explaining the incorporation of such potential infinities. The color disoriented the entire equation, the cornerstone was splintered shale.
The closing and further remarks of one of the Deans cut the lecture off, without questions or much of an explanation of the practical value that the equation suggested in physics and philosophy, which was my principle interest. �ystein tightly pulled on each side of his tan blazer, swaying his shoulders for comfort as he worked his way back to a quiet seat, and the group of students ruffled their papers and notebooks to collectively hide them away in their bags and packs. One of the physics majors (they had asked for a show of hands in the beginning and his stuck out as being one of them), short trim hair with large rimmed glasses, rather without trepidation approached Dr. �ystein for a mutual shake of hands and asked a question about Cantor's theories with irrational numbers.
"Yes, well, it wasn't until Russel's paradox to which that error was revealed. It's interesting, but yes your question, um�"
�ystein stumbled over an answer (hand over his chest, the last three fingers digging slightly into the abdomen just a few inches north of his navel), going five or so minutes without some conclusion and embarrassingly never managing to find one. The neutral faced scholar, the ambitious young student taking each fragment of equation spilled out onto his little white flipbook, reeled out from the checkered white shirt in the left pocket. Black, green, and sickly red stripes dripping through a spiraling parabola (the equator, the equinox), all plain as day as they were written in such order. The maroon colored pen with gold chrome trim swiveling back and forth at the ends to puncture the patterns spelling out the equation; syntaxes. An order of numbers. Then the brown and black came out, leaked out of the pen like a misty haze into the balance, the other colors stained over. Through the thick framed glasses and between a little white capsule making its way from the professor's pocket to his mouth, the student began to say something relating to Minotaur Universiteit (across the river, the bridge out two miles and through to the other side of Leiden I believe) and the wrinkles scarring �ystein's face deepened. A small rattle, barely audible, traced itself to one of his pockets, his hands hiding in them, fidgeting with what I estimate to be a white plastic bottle. "Yes, old rivals, it's nothing, absolutely nothing at all."

2.
It was not until the evening, the scorched sun resting its torch on the horizon as seen through a hotel window in the lavatory, the two of us washing up before a light dinner (from what we were told we were being treated to stuffed grape leaves in a pita). So obsessed I was, my mind set: indefinitely preoccupied, the white walls became plastered with mental equators and a certain brown smudge pricked through the unheeded crack in the labyrinth, reminiscent of the flaw I saw. Everything became part of the equation: the white luster walls, the mirror reflecting each textile with the two of us in between, my hands digging deep into the pores of my skin trying to wart out the worming dust in my face. The professor stood by the towel rack, his face wet and dripping with a hand trying to distinguish his towel from the others laying crossed (without knowing the attendant delivered those while at Universiteit Leiden). I thought about the symbols on the chalkboard, the triangle, the vescica pisces, the eight on its side; then the potential factor, the ugly deforested brown.
Gazing dreamily into the mirror, looking deep into the fray reflection, the deep brown eyes that looked back into nothing, zero, the abyss, and smiling suddenly when a certain detail in my mirror image caught my eye as sharing a pigment with something of my synesthesia. The color of chaos. My left hand skimming back through the black hair combed over to the neck, the vertex, the tip. �ystein finally dried off his face, humming to himself an old Celtic tune. Another pattern. "Aleph, what did you think of the performance today, old sport? What a show, yes?" The tan blazer peeked out from behind the wall, the sleeves out as it worked its way to fitting onto �ystein with his suspenders still lining the bottoms of his shirt just before the buttons were done (bottom up). He sat down, a stool from the den I imagine, slipping on a leather shoe over a loose white sock while pulling hard on the laces. "Well old chap, what did you think?"
"�It, (a wrinkled hand began digging into the hair chin in the mirror) it seemed to go well. Anyways, I think it did."
The professor grinned smugly, standing up staring at his shoes. "Yes," he said. "I suppose there were a few trailing nappers, even the very best of us have to see a few of those in our lifetime."
The knocking of tread bottoms (those brown leather shoes) on the wood floor followed a hat �ystein had left in the other room when we came back to the hotel an hour ago. His cane, hand carved and given to him by a colleague in France, leaning against the door. I handed him the cane, a little battered, and it twirled on his fingers in a youthful frolic. Evadingly I spoke; distracting myself with chapped hands and a misplaced key to the room.
"Did you notice by chance, a problem in the wave function potentiality matrix?"
�ystein, looking rather intently around the room, focusing on the hamper and the cabinet as he distraughtly looked all about. "My handkerchief," he mumbled, digging his fingers into the pockets of his blazer.
"�ystein," I said, more obviously. "Have you noticed a problem, in the wave function potentiality matrix?"
"Have you seen my handkerchief? I know I left it somewhere in�" The towel on the floor leapt open as �ystein's foot dug into the side, twisting open the unexposed folds. The bottoms just offered a repeat of the same pattern, no difference, no change, no fold of foreign fabric. The skin between the professor's weary eyes folded up, deepening the crease and the intensity of his disgruntled scavenge. His cane poked and prodded at the white framed hamper, turning over a pair of grey trousers. "A problem? Oh, you mean in the Plank loop. That isn't a paradox, Aleph; if you sit and analyze it correctly it works out. I discovered that problem a few years ago, during my research on Beth numbers."
My hand (deep in my pockets, fiddling with a cold nickel) pulled a folded piece of paper out, yellow with light blue lines, deeply crinkled and worn with black ink. The three folds stammered out an equation and a proof, facing a lamp directly behind the cabinet. �ystein ignored the open scribbles in favor of the missing handkerchief, overturning the hamper with a knock from a stiffened leg. Mumbles ensued, biting at the antipresence of the missing article. The crease still indented between his eyes, his left hand produced a pair of thick, black framed glasses folded up in his pocket; flipping the arms open while turning to glance at the proof. "Hmm, you have the potential formula correct, the radial�"
He replaced his hand with mine over the right side (his left, covering a nasty tear from my pocket) and pulled the labyrinth closer to his face, inspecting it. "No," he mumbled, "no there's nothing there. This looks good Aleph, but it isn't right."
"�ystein, look, there is an error, it collapses the wave function. This isn't right, look at it."
"I am, your formula must not be copied right, I just gave a lecture on this god d****t. Your formula is wrong."
"You know the formula, look at it. It's right. I copied it from your notes. It's a flaw �ystein, there is a paradox."
The professor's hands hauled themselves down to his sides, the yellow paper crinkling in his left hand; the lines in his bare upper cheeks deepened.
"D****t Aleph, there is no paradox, you copied the wrong formula."
"I�"
"You copied the wrong god damned formula."
"Minotaur Universiteit published a�"
"I don't want to hear about god damn Minotaur, there is no god damn error."

3.
A ruffle in the left ear (what was, oh, there was a dream) and the last aching muscle cleaving to the REM state, beautiful conscious frolicking on the plank scale, coming back into two eyes cracking open, on the other side an overturned can of Pepsi, a compass, and a white army of paper. The yellow piece of paper sitting on the left side of the desk, a maroon pencil, and the eraser coming across a Hebrew symbol penciled out next to an equation. The paper, tattered and taped together, depressed with �ystein's fingerprints.
Two twin points (one of a dozen or so) followed by the shorter hand had been eclipsed, the passage door still closed with impending silence. No word since the old professor stormed, in firm calculated steps, his way through the door and down the hall to his appointment, a Greek dinner. The pattern in my notes was retraced multiple times, each shade of harlequin (not the clown, the color) and burnt orange came into this harmony of function joining a spectrum instead of a mud puddle. The upper left corner, familiar Hebrew symbols coaxing Einstein's mass/energy equation; several new functions that improvisation needed to fabricate the previous night. There was a large smudge, the one burnt out light above the desk with three other dying brothers, and the coat that I had been wearing as the Delta turned to a fish swimming in an inner city fashion museum was sticky where another Pepsi had fallen out of my right hand. The clock, in its steady rhythmical song, counted off the awkward stare burned into the unfinished dividend.
A book, lying edged over the corner of the desk with a yellow, coffee stained cover, page fifty-four dog eared and bookmarked at the same time. Mumbling as each concept comes alive as symbol, a maddening hand frantically seized a small stack of paper as the other wrote and flipped open the page, holding it open with two fingers for the author to quickly glance at a line or two and letting it fall shut; mumbling to myself awhile. "New piece of paper, need to finish this, get this down before it is gone, where is the rest of the paper? Eugh, the back, does the back have any room?"
My pen, creeping an ink ball tracking down the back (the rough draft of a paper that was rejected some months ago, something about a contradiction in quantum-set theory). The pen lent itself as a third bookmark in page fifty-four, several pieces of a larger formula being arranged. Smacked down on the desk, an unwritten manuscript and the pen fell out of the book to write out the simplification.
The trees outside wilted up as the sun rolled over. A tiny ant crawling on the floor with a hunting party, seizing a crumb of some aged saltines and hoisted it back to the colony in one of the floor boards.
The colors, starting with the potential and the following set, only classified as an infinite set, all played like a ballroom waltz in pairs and order; the letters all glowing white. The colors swimming in the balance of the equation, the lone cloud dripping off its lightning hair to comb, the harmonious star; this was the prism. A working equation of quantum reality, still conflicts with Einstein's equations.
The chair removed itself, a deep blue into the three inches needed to move further back and stand (paper in hand). Just then, the door opened and �ystein fell into the carpet through the unlatched solution (the door I mean); let down on the floor, his body erect on the support of his feet and one knee, and one hand was attached to a thumping sternum. I stood and turned in time to see the door disturbed, hanging out from its latch clutched in the fingers of the right hand and swaying open. Pale. And the air; I can hardly breathe you have it so stuffy. Turn the thermostat down." Watching from above in horror, �ystein fell and drowned, his wings completely saturated.