Mathematics

The equations of image.

Pizza + Fiance'= Winning! That equation served as a comment at the bottom of a picture of two people sitting over a greasy pizza who were smiling with greasy mouths in vapid and false caricature, as convincing as any presidential candidate. The comment had been made by a friend giving his approval of the nature of the relationship between two other friends, and of their choice of food.

Henry, the viewer, knew, with unexpected clarity then, that the human race was, as he stared from picture to comment: doomed. Up till now he had been forming the final theory but it had always been missing a crucial part; a closing equation. He also realized he no longer knew these people--perhaps had never known them, or what the word "friend" even meant, and he began questioning everything he had heretofore taken for granted.

The obsequious, detestable equation had reduced the entirety of known and unknown human knowledge and experience to two grinning, hollow forms whose imagination was so handicapped they considered monogamy an accomplishment of scientific order. Humans were the most needlessly complicated creatures on earth. Henry had known the commenter for sixteen of his thirty years, and it had taken this innocuous,oblivious equation for him to know how exceptionally, flagitiously representative it was of the nature of mass existence.