Imbroglio

by Andrew McEwan

The love apple believed in mathematics. He thought numbers could explain everything. Mathematics had nothing in common with reality. They were two separate shoes for two separate feet.

  At school it had all seemed so puzzling, arithmetic he could not comprehend as instructed by a teacher short and strict. He couldn’t remember her name, just her chalk as it scratched, figures across a blackboard that made little sense to the young Michael Tomatoes, whose attention was taken with less complicated equations. Boy girl. Boy nicotine. Girl party. Nicotine alcohol boy, and such like. Things in brackets made his head spin. They were separate and he failed to cope with the fact. The teacher would go through sums on the board and he’d be able to follow, multiplying and dividing at will, only his mind would go the moment the bell rang, leaving him clueless with homework.

  ‘The dog ate it, Miss.’

  ‘Stay back after class.’

  Unwritten, unspecified, the natural mathematics of space and time were far easier to grasp. There was an obvious relationship between matter and antimatter, for example, two sides of the same, endlessly spinning coin, obverse and reverse forever trying to catch each other up and cancel out. The direction the coin spun, or the velocity thereof, was of no concern, as these factors might be treated as either positive or negative, interchangeable and near perfect. Near, as nothing was ever wholly resolved; there was always more to discover, more to fathom. Day followed night when Michael was a boy. Summer came in the wake of spring, although seasons were less well defined than days, weeks or months. They might seep, bleed together and appear out of place, snow in June and sun in November, making a mockery of calendars and confusing tortoises whose owners had packed them up in straw and cardboard or only recently coaxed them out. But there was a balance, one he understood. Organic matter shifted. The more people there were, the fewer plants. Inorganic matter, the rocks and stuff of a planet in its gaseous envelope, stayed pretty much constant. Ergo: 1+1 = 2.

  (Go back in time a million years, weigh the planet. Same mass as now, give or take the odd meteor. Right?)

  Organic + inorganic = Earth.

  Simple enough.

  But what of the other worlds encroaching, feeding off this like grubs deposited by space-borne ants? Was that mass lost for good, or did it somehow flow back?

  It was the sort of question that kept him awake at night as a child, years rolling back and doubling numbers in his head…128, 256, 512, 1014, 2028…years themselves, past and future, one at least he hoped to see, others he could imagine…4056, and the Earth is no more, cut open and stretched flat so as to afford two sides, new continents underneath with names like Atlantis and Hades, lands created by man and machine, a whole other world where happened strange things to gravity…

  Colours swarmed behind his eyelids, myriad tiny dots composing a blackness not total, photons trapped and rebounding. Even in the dark they were everywhere; too weak to see by, offering only shades and outlines, yet sufficient for Michael to focus on the top corner of the room. He saw three right angles there and superimposed a circle over them, squeezing three dimensions into two. Then came a shadow at his door. Had it been a signal, his mental defiance of logic? Was this a door into another realm? Light from the hallway projected the shadow against a wall. It wore a broad-rimmed hat like Zorro.

  Thin in silhouette, it didn’t linger. Michael listened for a swish of cape or rasp of steel, but heard only a passing car; by the sound of it, a low resonating thump, a Volkswagen.

  Next thing he knew it was morning.

  The years rolled forward again.

  At school that day he had maths, the boring kind, the unimaginative. The teacher scratched her chalk and turned her neck, bringing her face into alignment like some meteor-raked planet. She asked a question, posed a problem, selected her victim when no coherent answer was forthcoming. Settling her gaze on Michael Tomatoes, she pointed with the chalk and spoke.

  Michael, though, had no idea what she said. His gaze was fixed upon a white breast, an entirely different body couched in its cotton restraint and glimpsed through a blouse gaping between buttons as its wearer slouched.

  It wasn’t his first mistake. Neither would it be his last. The rubber struck him above his right ear, clouding him in chalk dust, casting a veil over the milky vision that had him trapped.

  ‘Eh, fifty-six, Miss’ he said.

  ‘Stay back after class.’

  There were as many worlds as people, each unique, Earths it was possible to visit, even stay awhile. But to inhabit? Better to do some initial sightseeing, he reasoned: they weren’t all nice places to reside. Certainly his own had its faults. Distorted at the edges, sagging in the middle, liquid at the core. Others looked more attractive, surer underfoot and better defined. Such rigidity, however, led to tensions in the crust, to sudden outpourings of lava, tsunami and earthquakes that might reshape the whole. These were unpredictable worlds, given to pharmacological hungers and necessitating emergency repair. The grass always looked greener, but it was wise to import some first, run taste tests and await results, perhaps employ a third party to garner opinion on the various merits of outwardly attractive globes. No point in getting your fingers burned. Caution, Michael, people have been known not to survive. People have been known to invade, to usurp, to enforce change, to uproot entire civilizations and replant flags. Attacks might be brief and relevantly benign, easily repelled, or they might be longer lasting, violent in kind, actions not words, cruel and direct as opposed to offhand and vague, a rape as opposed to an insult, sorties characterized by a deliberate, destructive rage. Every country had its dangers, every alliance and federation its moral ambiguity, every nation its borders and every man, woman and child - on a cellular scale - his or her own selfish desires. All these things composed the Earth of an individual. Some were peaceful, others warring, internecine, political, cultural, religious factions whose conflicts were not always obvious to the casual observer; you had to watch that person’s news, and even then the pertinent information might be censored. So there really was no telling. It was an age old dilemma, where to spend your holidays.

  Aged fifteen he attempted his first manned landing. Hands (his) and tongues (his and hers) engaged in a tricky descent through clouds made perilous by alien weather systems. He had a pretty good idea of the topography, but couldn’t say for sure if the natives were friendly. It was an alliance he sought, an exchange of ideas and philosophies. He wanted to establish a dialogue and open an embassy. Cupping her breast after half an hour of snogging seemed like a good start. Albeit grounded he was vulnerable, the air tasted sweet and the view of her ear was pleasing. He gently squeezed and her breath rose in volume, her embrace became tighter. She was hugging him to her now. It was time to venture farther.

  He lay her back on the grass, moved his hand down and under her T-shirt. The flesh was blissfully warm, the feel of her breast through her bra more intimate. His thumb found the nipple, small and flat. He slipped his fingers under the wire and pushed the supporting apparatus toward her shoulder. Her tit moulded itself to his palm and he rolled it clockwise, kissing her faster…

  Contact. Michael had a hard-on but was nervous. How far could he go without offending local custom?

  He stopped kissing her in order to look at her face.

  Bad idea. She blinked once and moved his hand away, sat up and adjusted her clothing.

  Then she got up and walked away.

  It was new kind of pain he was experiencing, he realized. From here on nothing would be the same. Wounded emotionally, even by just this graze, he lay on the grass smoking, peering up at the stars. The descending night revealed them, countless suns about which orbited countless worlds, this girl’s but one of billions. He could only ever know a fraction. Life was too short. He appreciated that now. She’d shown him. Hers was a mathematics of quotas.

  But at least he had something to tell his mates about, though no doubt they’d deride him. They were all experts on the fair sex, of cou
rse, and could separate a girl from her knickers in no time, while he had still to get his fingers wet, let alone meet the object of his desires in its living room, a fire there and he the kindling.

  Watching the stars come out, Michael couldn’t decide whether he was relieved or disappointed.

  It was only the start of his problems.

  The Earth’s name was Susan.

  He wrote her name in the back of an old school book along with the date and outcome. It was a list he hoped to add to and elaborate on. Thinking of it in what was then the future, Michael lamented the loss of such a record. Although the list had never got very long, on names or detail, he would have viewed it with a kind of smiley nostalgia, recalling these few girls he’d explored as an eager, undamaged teenager and wondering what he might have done differently. Could he have been more successful? Was he too restrained? How would he have fared under different circumstances? There were worlds he wished he’d never encountered and worlds whose gravity he’d surfed but whose surfaces remained unknown, worlds he might have visited but was too scared, put off by attendant satellites, lesser moons in the shape of boyfriends, or necklaced with a minefield of social rings. There were worlds that had sent him invitations he’d failed to RSVP, worlds he’d collided with and been eclipsed by. Worlds, too, that had crushed his heart and set his lungs on fire. You took your chances with atmospheres. Wildlife, also. And there were viruses.

 

  Four: Ramch