Let X=X

Precisely, it was 08:30. Simon, punctual as usual, sat down at his desk in the Math Department of Civil Engineering Building Number Six, just as he had every morning for the last twelve years. The portrait of his idol, Sir Isaac Newton, taped to the wall, seemed to stare into the empty space directly above his head. Stacked on Simon’s desk were books of mathematical tables used in the calculation of equations sent down to the tiny room where he worked as a mathematician, from the engineering lab six stories above.

He checked the pneumatic tube for equations to be solved. Three canisters. The engineers upstairs must have started early. He opened the first tube and studied the problem. Someone needed him to calculate the volume of concrete needed for a conical monorail pylon of such and such dimensions. Simon smiled to himself. It would be a difficult equation. He liked them that way. The equation had been sent to him at 08:23, according to the time penciled in at the top of the page. Work could not resume without his solution. The pressure was on. He picked up his slide rule and went to work.

Two hours later, he had solved the three engineering problems, plus another that had come down from the accounting department. Simon took a break. He left his room and leaned against the wall in the long, silent corridor just outside his door. Behind identical doors on either side of the hall sat a human calculator, just like him, diligently creating a better world through mathematics.

Simon led a secluded life at work. Aside from visits from his boss, who was best avoided anyway, he would sometimes go for days without speaking to another soul in the building. But as the rule book sternly warned, this was a place of work, and socializing was allowed only at prescribed times. Infractions against this policy would be dealt with promptly.

As Simon gazed into his reflection in the polished tile floor, he thought about how fortunate he was. Since the Second Civil War, labor-saving technology had been outlawed to keep the nation’s burgeoning population employed. Years ago, he would have been made obsolete by an electronic calculator. But the government had made an edict that no man should be rendered obsolete by technology. Every able worker was given a place and a chance to work. Speed and efficiency had given way to purpose. Never again would the electronic gadget replace the human being. Just then, Simon heard the characteristic thunk from the pneumatic tube. He left the hallway and returned to his pencil and slide rule.

Simon solved several challenging equations that day, and, as on many days, his enthusiasm for his work caused him to miss lunch. The workday ended when the 17:00 klaxon sounded. He put the solution to the last problem in the tube and closed the books.

The bullet-shaped monorail train cruised at 200 km per hour on an elevated concrete rail. The city was as ugly as it was vast. Simon gazed out the tinted glass windows. There was not a tree in sight amidst the monotony of glass and concrete structures. He could scarcely believe that his city of Yosemite was once a national park densely filled with trees.

Once inside his apartment, Simon closed and locked the door behind him. Out of habit, he checked the electronic mail at the terminal by the front door. Nothing much today—just an advertisement for Chang’s Travel Agency. “Don’t be a prisoner of the city…escape to the newly reconstructed Tahiti!” the terminal beckoned. “Reasonable travel packages available. Couples go for the price of one on approved credit. Call now for details!” Below the text was a full-color, holograph snapshot of a white beach hemmed by a row of glass hotel towers. The snapshot gradually dissolved into that of an attractive man and woman embracing on the sand beneath the usual UV-protection umbrella. Simon reached out to press the PRINT button for a hard copy, but then envisioned himself standing unaccompanied on that beach and wandering alone through the lobbies of the fancy glass buildings. He pressed the REJECT button, and with a 1.2 second beep (he had timed it once), the lush paradise was gone.

Feeling better, Simon entered the kitchen and ate the macrobiotic surprise left over from a few nights back. Afterward, he retired to his antique La-Z-Boy recliner in the main living area. Sewage water gurgled through the large plastic pipe that bisected the ceiling of his room. The digital clock advanced to 18:00, and another hour slipped past like so many others. He recalled the nights when he would walk the damp streets of the city in solitude. He would gaze up at the tiny points of light in the towering glass and steel, where each point of light was an apartment, a warm, glowing room where companionship and human tenderness were exchanged. Everyone would be in his or her proper place with someone else. He was lost in the dark. Without his counterpart, his life was an inequality in a world of balanced equations. He thought he might as well be a doorknob, a piece of chalk, or a crumpled sheet of paper.

Simon awoke early the next morning. Since he had time, he spoiled himself with a four-liter shower (his daily allotment of water was five) and made himself a double-hypo-ham sandwich on the hydroponically grown wheat bread he had stumbled upon at the marketplace. Unfortunately, the bread was almost gone, and he would be forced back to the ersatz substitute bread made with the plentiful wood pulp taken from the landfill mines. Through the advancement of technology, yesteryear’s newspapers had become a daily source of fiber in the modern diet.

Since he was running early, he decided to break with routine and catch the 07:40 monorail. The train had just pulled away from the terminal when he noticed a lone woman standing by the aft doorway of the cabin. He did not recall seeing her on the subway before, but then again, he did not often take the early rail. She had delicately painted eyes and distinct cheekbones that lent her face a somewhat angular appearance (much to Simon’s delight) like an inverted triangle. Her lips were thin but painted brightly red, and her straight-brown hair was cut level with the collar of her coat. A black strap fell over her left shoulder.

Simon studied the woman, feeling increasingly intrigued by her as the city whizzed by. Her pensive, dreamy expression made her stand out from the crowd. He moved a little closer to the woman to have a better look, edging behind someone wearing an artificial rabbit fur overcoat. The slippery fur of the oversized collar brushed his cheek.

Up close, the woman looked frail. Her hands were small, her fingers slender and expressive. She was certainly not an assembler or a maintenance laborer. She held a black synthetic leather satchel protectively at her breast, its strap thrown over her left shoulder for good measure. Evidently, she had a desk job of some sort. Simon wondered what she carried in the satchel. Whatever it was, she made it seem important. He studied the woman’s eyes as she gazed into space. They were an exquisite shade of green, enhanced by striking iridescent eye shadow. She was squinting slightly as she looked out the window. Simon guessed she was nearsighted, perhaps caused by long hours of doing close-up work like his. He thought she could be a scientist, an engineer, or even a mathematician. Then, as if summoned to do so, she turned to him and met his gaze. Embarrassed, he looked away.

Through his peripheral vision, he noticed that the woman was now staring at him, scrutinizing him as he had done her. He cursed himself. For all he knew, the woman worked for the Social Stability Agency, and his peculiar behavior had piqued her interest. A nightmare scenario played through his mind of being taken into a small, dimly lit room for a brutal interrogation. His innocence would be of trivial importance; they would already have convinced themselves that he was scouting for new members for the illegal New Order of Freedom. He had heard many stories of law-abiding citizens like him being arrested without warning in the middle of the night, never to be seen or heard from again, because they had initiated a personal relationship without the pre-approval of the State. One could not be too careful these days.

He glanced at his watch. The monorail would be stopping shortly at E Street and Wong—the last exit before his. He was so mortified that he considered getting off the train at the next terminal and catching the next one that passed through. He lowered his eyes. The seconds ticked away. He dared not look up in case the woman was still watching. What monster had he unleashed upon his life?

The monorail slowed to a crawl as it entered the terminal. When she exited the train with the rest of the disembarking passengers, he breathed a sigh of relief. She moved slowly across the platform, head bowed as though she were consumed in thought. Simon watched until he lost sight of her in the crowd. He surmised that she was probably not an agent, and he was in no danger; she was only an ordinary citizen as he was.

Upon arriving in his tiny office, Simon found a canister waiting for him in the holding bin. He promptly decanted the document. The problem to be solved required a series of quadratic equations. Not particularly challenging, he thought. He picked up a pencil and studied the problem. The process was always the same: first assemble the equation, simplify it, and then solve for X. The woman on the monorail came to mind. In a sense, she was like X, for she was an unknown—an entity not yet defined. Simon brought the plastic pencil to his mouth and bit down on it. An idea occurred to him. He lowered the pencil to the paper. Let X = a woman, he wrote. He pondered that statement, then scribbled it out. That was too simple. There were other women on the monorail, but they were not like her. X had a certain undefined quality that made her X.

Simon spoke to the portrait of Newton with a mock English accent: “I assure you, good sir, that X equals far more than a mere pretty woman.” Simon did not have enough information to define her, either. For all he knew, she really did work for the SSA. He put down the pencil and poured some coffee-substitute from his thermos into his yellowed mug with the bold calligraphic X emblazoned on the side. This was the same mug he had drunk from every day for the last eight years and had not washed out in nearly that long. He put X out of his mind for the time being and had another look at the problem sent from the engineering department.

Simon felt uncharacteristically bone-weary and mentally spent by the time he made it back to his apartment that evening. For dinner, he warmed up some hypo-Chinese food left over from the weekend. When he had finished the meal, he sat at the table, thinking of the woman on the monorail. It was a shame he wouldn’t see her again, because normally he did not take the 07:40 train to work. It was a fluke that he had even encountered her in the first place. He stared at the grease-stained Chinese food carton. X was yet unknown. She could be any number of things. If she turned out to be a mathematician as he was, the result would be parity, and together they could form a bond based on mathematical truth and harmony!

Simon stopped himself in mid-thought. What was he saying? Why was he getting himself all worked up? He knew nothing about her. Having had enough fanciful thinking for the evening and feeling slight indigestion from the hypo-Chinese-food, he bypassed the usual game shows he enjoyed each evening and headed directly to bed.

That night, he dreamed he was drowning in an ocean of paper with only the letter “X” written exactly 686 times. Sheets kept flying out of the pneumatic tube faster than he could put them away. When he tried to leave the office, he couldn’t find the door. More sheets flew out of the pneumatic tube.

It was still dark outside when Simon awoke. He lay in bed for a long while, not quite awake and not quite able to get back to sleep. The emotional effect of the dream lingered, disturbing him greatly. He realized he would not be able to concentrate again until he solved the riddle of the woman’s nature and his strange attraction to her. He glanced at the clock by his bedside: 07:12. He had just enough time to catch the 07:40 train if he hurried.

Simon made it to the platform just as the monorail was loading up. He shoved his way into the same car he had taken the day before. At first, he did not see her, but then he spotted her near the front of the cab. While the crowd was still in a state of flux, he casually positioned himself near her. The doors closed, and the monorail glided out of the terminal. In nine minutes and forty-two seconds, the train would stop again, and she would get off.

Her features seemed softer and more inviting than the day before. She was reading an ad for Pandora’s Psycholytics on the opposite wall of the cabin. He concluded that she simply could not be an agent for the SSA, Morality Police, or any of the other insidious governmental organizations. Again, she carried a black satchel. He envisioned it full of solved mathematical equations. Perhaps she enjoyed her work so much that she took it home with her.

The monorail flew swiftly along with quiet efficiency. Simon looked at his watch. There were four minutes until the next stop. He wondered how he could set up a meeting with her. When he glanced back, she was looking at him. His immediate reaction was panic, but this dissipated when a faint, uncertain smile appeared on her lips. He returned her smile, and she shyly looked away.

In three minutes, the train would be pulling into the station. Simon gazed at the woman, but this time she seemed to ignore him. He wondered if she had smiled at him only out of politeness. Another minute passed. Simon gathered his courage. Slowly, he sidled over to her until they stood shoulder to shoulder. She continued staring into the car, impassive, cradling her satchel. The monorail rocked slightly, and their shoulders brushed. Simon thought he heard her take a deep breath.

The monorail began to slow as it approached the terminal. Commuters prepared to exit the cabin. Simon debated getting off at the terminal, but he feared being late for work if he were delayed there for some reason. The train came to a stop, and the doors slid open. The woman left his side and joined the crowd of disembarking commuters. Just before she passed through the doors, she turned to Simon.

“Sebring Square, 19:30 tonight?”

Simon nodded once. “I’ll be there.”

The woman smiled at him and quickly exited the cabin. Simon moved over to the window to look for her on the platform as commuters entered the car, but she had disappeared into the crowd. He remained looking out the window long after the train had left the station.

Simon could scarcely concentrate on his work. He would pause frequently in the midst of his calculations and simply close his eyes. There in the blackness, he would see the woman’s face with her eyes beckoning him closer.

Now, at 19:15, Simon stared across the city as the monorail whisked him toward his strange destination. The sun sat low on the horizon. It would be getting cold soon. He wondered what he would say to the woman. Could he tell her the way he felt about her? What could he reveal about himself?

It was nearly dark when he reached Sebring Square, a broad, cobblestone intersection with a circular fountain at its center. In the center of the fountain was an ugly, tarnished bronze, larger-than-life, statue of Sergeant Sebring with her arm extended in allegiance toward Colorado Springs, the capital of the USR. The fountain was dry, and the low water retainer that surrounded the statue was cracked. Evidently, the city beautification budget did not extend to repair of the fountain. Martyrdom did her a lot of good, Simon thought. Closed to the electric vehicles that traversed the city streets, the square was set aside for pedestrian and bicycle traffic. During the daytime, the square was a hubbub of commerce, beginning at sunrise, when merchants set up their kiosks. Lining the neighboring streets were the larger retailers that sold desirable, sophisticated items such as electric animals and psychedelic sense organs. But now the kiosks were closed for the evening, and the intersection was deserted except for a woman sitting at the fountain.

Simon walked toward her. She still carried her satchel. He assumed she had not gone home yet. Just before he reached her, she rose to her feet and walked away from him. Not knowing what else to do, he followed. She led him down deserted streets soaked with the dreary brown light of sodium halogen lamps. He studied her figure as she walked a few meters ahead of him. With the light jacket drawn tightly around her waist, she had an hourglass figure. Mentally, he drew two lines that extended diagonally from the top of each shoulder blade to the top of the opposite thigh. At her waist, the two lines intersected—X.

They entered a residential area. Each building was a prefabricated concrete duplicate of the previous one. The copy extended up the empty avenues as far as the eye could see. Simon followed the woman into one of the buildings. In the small, featureless lobby, she pulled out a magnetic-striped ID card and inserted it into the electronic lock. The reinforced steel entrance to the building opened with a click. Without looking back, the woman entered the doorway, not bothering to hold the door open for him. He caught it just before it slammed shut and followed her up a few flights of stairs sporadically lit by flickering fluorescent tubes. They reached a hallway whose red carpet was worn through to the concrete floor in places. The air in the hallway smelled strongly of mildew. The woman unlocked another door at the end of the hall, entered, and quickly closed it. Simon stopped and waited. A moment later, she opened the door and beckoned him in with a brisk wave of her hand.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Once he was inside the apartment, she flipped on an incandescent lamp. Her apartment was sparsely furnished and in semi-disrepair. Faded movie posters hung on the walls: Casablanca, From Here to Eternity, Ghost, Yours Forevermore, and Love and Remembrance. Simon vaguely remembered seeing a few of those syrupy, pre-Second Civil War movies long ago. Something about the posters made him uneasy.

The woman moved slowly, almost awkwardly, as though she were fearful of offending him in some way. Without an exchange of words, she slipped off her coat and helped him remove his. While she hung their coats on a coat rack by the door, he had a seat on a worn, burnt-orange sofa that dominated the tiny living room.

“Welcome to my humble home,” she said.

“Thank you for inviting me.”

“I hope you can forgive me for the cloak and dagger routine on the way over. They’ve just increased the penalties for making contacts outside one’s Associative Pool, and you can’t be too sure when you’re being watched these days.”

“Yes. It’s better to be careful.”

Simon thought her voice was smooth and sensual, like velvet. He had expected it to sound different, perhaps brassier and less intimate.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine.”

A fake wood coffee table piled with dog-eared magazines stood between them. Simon felt that by refusing her offers, he had somehow discouraged her. He noted a subdued expectancy in her eyes; she seemed to be searching for something in him.

Simon felt something brush against his calves. Then a black cat jumped up next to him on the couch. It stared at him with large, yellow eyes and mewed a few times as though pleading for affection. Simon recoiled slightly. He did not like cats; they were unpredictable.

The woman smiled. “Oh, that’s my cat. Her name is Midnight. Do you like cats?”

Simon did not want to offend the woman, so he merely smiled weakly. Perhaps sensing his dislike, the woman lifted the cat from the couch and put it on the floor. “Be a good kitty and go play.” The cat looked up at her. Then, with its tail high and roughly in the same shape as a question mark, it sauntered off to the kitchen.

The woman settled into the opposite end of the couch. She pulled up her knees and turned her body so that she faced him fully. “So, how are you employed?”

“I work in Civil Engineering Building Number Six. I’m a mathematician.”

“A mathematician? That’s a wonderful occupation!”

“Same job for the last twelve years,” he added proudly.

“Then how come I’d never seen you on the 07:40 before?”

“Usually, I take the 07:55, but I woke up early one morning and decided to take the early one.”

She smiled slightly. “Two days in a row?”

Simon shrugged. “Insomnia. I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Oh, I know exactly how you feel. I always have trouble sleeping.”

“You do?” Simon sat up.

“All the time. Have you ever walked the city streets late at night, all by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“And have you ever looked at the lights on the buildings and felt that everyone has a place in the world but you?”

“Yes!”

The woman wiped her eyes. “And have you ever felt so insignificant that you thought you might as well be some inanimate object?”

Simon felt too choked up to reply. A moment of thoughtful silence passed between them. They traded hopeful smiles.

“So, do you like math?” Simon asked.

“Well, I suppose it’s all right. I’m not very good at it.”

Simon’s smile waned into a frown.

“You’re not? Do you work with numbers?”

She shook her head. “No, not at all. I work for a meta-mail advertising firm. I write electronic ads.”

“Like ads for vacations?” Simon asked, remembering the annoying New Tahiti ad he received a few days back.

“Yes. I do vacations, too.”

Simon frowned—she was not a mathematician. Midnight reentered the room from the kitchen. Perversely, she gravitated again toward Simon.

The woman continued. “But my real love is reading. I love to read. I’ll read anything, but poetry is my favorite.”

“Poetry?” he quavered. Not only did he seldom read for pleasure, but he was sorely disappointed that this woman had fluff in her brain instead of mathematical formulas. Although some poetry was written with structure and meter, the meaning was always something of little practical value; one could not use a poem to determine the proper thickness of a bridge pylon or calculate the strength coefficient in the arc of a hydroelectric dam.

The woman readjusted her position on the couch. “Last night I read a poem by T.S. Eliot called ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ Have you read it?”

“Not that I remember,” Simon answered, loosening his collar. “What’s it about?”

“It’s a poem about yearning, a poem about loneliness, about exclusion, about powerlessness, about walking the streets late at night with no one to love, no place to go, and no one to share your innermost feelings.”

As she spoke, Midnight rubbed her head against his arm. Her downy fur was making him itch.

The woman’s eyes sparkled in the dim light of the apartment. “Good poetry is timeless. At its very best, it uses metaphor to tell us something about ourselves, to articulate those secret things in our hearts we have difficulty expressing otherwise. Let me show you.” She lifted her satchel onto her lap and pulled out a slim volume. “Prufrock is taking a lonely walk through the city,” she said, opening to a bookmarked page. “Listen and tell me what you think.” She cleared her throat and began reading:

“Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent…”

Simon began to perspire. The poem was not about Prufrock; it was about him. She seemed to know him well—almost too well. Now she was forcing the issue, jarring him out of his stable, precise world of mathematics and into the realm of pure feeling. He had hoped she could help him retreat from the constant yearning he felt inside, from his humanity, but this could never happen, for she possessed the same weakness he hated in himself. She continued reading.

“And indeed there will be time

To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’”

What’s more, she seemed to revel in her yearning and emotional distress. She looked for representations of misery in poetry so that she could relive the authors’ feelings more fully, more profoundly. To him, this was pure masochism.

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

“Enough!” Simon shouted.

She lowered the book. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t take it anymore, this—this empty set.”

A sad, sympathetic smile formed on her lips. “You feel as Prufrock does, don’t you? You feel as I do.”

His jaw trembled. He did not wish to admit this to her outright.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to meet someone like you?” she asked. “Do you have any idea?” She wiped her eyes. “How much do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

He stood up. “Don’t say that!”

“Why not?”

“Because—” He could scarcely find the words—or the equation—to express himself. “I detect a congruence between us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You are X, and if X equals zero, we have nothing—nothing at all.”

She stared at him, looking perplexed. Then her countenance brightened with understanding. “No! You’re wrong! X does not equal zero! And you are not zero, either.”

“The result of equations such as ours, in which all variables represent zero, must also result in zero,” he persisted.

“But our lives are not equations, and we are not numbers. We’re flesh and blood—we’re human beings.”

“If X is not zero, then it must be irrational.”

Her expression darkened. “Who are you calling irrational?”

He took a few steps backward toward the door.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“I have made an error by coming here. I apologize.” Quickly, he snatched his coat from the rack and bolted from the apartment. Later, as he walked home, it occurred to him that he’d never learned the woman’s name.

The next morning, after a dreamless sleep, Simon got up at his usual time, ate his usual breakfast, and made his usual lunch. Outside his window, a moody sky poured rain upon the city. Simon fought the rain to the monorail. Dripping wet as he entered the terminal, he scolded himself and made it a point never to miss the 07:55 again.

He entered the monorail and went to his usual place in the cabin. Familiar, yet comfortingly anonymous faces surrounded him. The train began to move. Then someone gently squeezed his arm. He turned. It was the woman from the 07:40. She looked haggard. Her eyes betrayed the probability that she had not slept all night.

“You left in a hurry last night.”

Simon did not reply. He tightened his lips.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

“We have nothing to say to each other.”

“Why does it have to be that way?” Her voice was barely audible above the low rumble of the monorail.

“Because we are strangers. Nothing more.”

She reached into her coat pocket and held up a sheet of paper folded in half. “I wrote a poem for you last night.”

He stared warily at the paper as though it were a switchblade.

“The other day, when you were looking at me, I thought you might be interested in knowing me. I was afraid at first, but then I wanted to know you too. And then we met, and you followed me home. It seemed that we have things in common. How could things have ended so badly so soon?”

Simon turned away from her. She moved around him, forcing him to face her again.

“Excuse me for acting this way,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s not like me at all, but it’s so hard to be anything else right now.” She paused. “I just wish I had someone to talk to once in a while, someone who would take the time to understand me, someone to discover all the beautiful things I have inside, and maybe to touch me.”

“We’re not right for each other.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Couldn’t we be friends?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Simon looked around them. Their exchange had captured the attention of the entire cabin; all eyes were fixed on them.

“Tell me. Why not?”

“Because we live in different worlds,” he replied.

“I don’t believe that. Not after the way you reacted when I read that poem.”

“The whole meeting was a disgrace; I’m ashamed of what happened.”

“You shouldn’t be ashamed. I was being too pushy, too needy. I’m sorry about that. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Friendship, maybe?”

“What makes you think I need a friend?”

“We both know you do. What do you say?”

Simon considered his answer. Any reason for refusing her would sound absurd. Perhaps there was no real reason except that he was afraid of revealing himself to her. Still, a voice deep inside him cried out to her. It cried out that he wanted her, too, and that he would open his heart and allow himself to trust her. He had the strong urge to take her into his arms and tell her he would gladly accept her friendship, maybe more. But they had nothing in common except negative world experiences. And what use was there for irrational poetry in his precise, logical world of mathematics? He narrowed his eyes at her.

“The sum of two negatives does not produce a positive,” he said.

“So it seems.” She held up the paper to him. “You should at least take this. Maybe you’ll understand me better.”

He made no motion to take the paper. X was not zero, but she was definitely irrational. He no longer felt the need to define her.

Slowly, as though her arm were withering, she withdrew the paper. Tears ran down her face. She spoke again. This time, her voice was tinged with anger. “I thought I saw something in you, but I guess I was wrong.” She stepped around him and made her way through the other passengers to the door. She stood at the window, staring out at the city.

When the train stopped, she exited. Simon moved over to the window to watch her. She walked away from the train without looking back. She crumpled up the poem, tossed it into the first litter basket she passed, and vanished into the crowd. Simon considered fishing the poem from the basket to see what it said, but by doing so, he risked being late for work if the train left without him. He was curious, though. Did she write some mockery of him, as the Prufrock poem turned out to be? Did she write a bitter, hurtful tirade on his hasty exit from her apartment? Then again, maybe she wanted to express to him that she truly sympathized with his plight and, though she understood his flaws, accepted him anyway. A convincing argument on her part would certainly change the equation. He wondered whether he had enough time to retrieve the poem, but before he could act, the doors shut, the train left the terminal, and the crumpled paper remained in the wastebasket.

Back in his office at the Civil Engineering building, Simon could not shake the woman from his thoughts. She was still a variable in many ways, but from what he knew of her, they were an inequality, so he did not care that she remained undefined. Still, the yearning for human companionship gnawed at his soul. He sighed; it was not easy to live as he did.

Pencil in hand, he stared down at the blank sheet of paper. A profound sense of isolation, terrifying yet strangely comforting, descended on him. Then his hand began to move, almost with a mind of its own. Let X=X, he wrote. And with that simple poetry behind him, he slipped the sheet into the solutions pile and began work on another equation.