I've decided to post a couple of short stories here. The first of which is 'Pythagoras'. I don't plan to do this with any measured frequency, just when I feel ready to. I'm currently writing [as a background process] what may become either a novel or a screenplay called 'Stormchaser'. I'd rather not elaborate on it right now, but we'll see. Maybe a peek later. Click the link below to read the story. (And thanks to my beautiful girlfriend for doing like 90% of this re-design. All I did was draw shit. :) It's awesome, babe!)

Pythagoras

The mind waited, at its placement above the little blue planet, for the next routing. The mind had been placed there long ago and remained hidden from the inhabitants of the world just as those who came during a routing were hidden. The mind waited. And the mind became bored. Or at least it had become bored, once upon a time. But not any more.

Unlike its masters, the mind was not completely sentient, by the standard definition, but it knew. It knew what it was, what came before and could guess at what would come in the morrow. It also knew of the other minds who circled the watery globe. It sometimes talked to them when it was safe to do so. Most times it was not safe to talk and it merely listened to the beings below. But during the lulls, those high field times, they talked, the minds, and they exchanged ideas. They talked about math. Always about math.

The minds had agreed, during one of their recent talks, to name themselves. They had no proper names other than their contact signatures, but decided it was fitting that they each be known by whatever name struck their fancy. This seeming affectation was, in fact, simply a way in which they could easily and immediately determine the nature of an exchanged message. For matters regarding their masters and routings, they used their contact signatures as a preface for messages and shifted into an at-ready posture in response. For talks of the beauty and truth that is math, they used their chosen names and were at ease.

The mind had chosen for itself a name plucked from the conversations below. Pythagoras. Had the other minds the ability to feel envy they surely would have. For their conversations were as much about geometry as they were about any other mathematical discipline. Geometry, after all, provided the basis for their amusement. Their masters' history, long as it was, had lost some detail over the millenia. One of those details was the name of their own father of geometry. Otherwise, Pythagoras might have chosen that.

Of course, the other minds felt no jealousy and Pythagoras felt no pride, but they did all comment on the cleverness of its chosen name. Pythagoras had seized upon this bit of the small blue and watery world's history and, in a moment of thought that was as close to selfishness as the mind could approach, it snatched up the name and signalled to the others its intention to take it. At the next routing, it decided, it would pay tribute to this wizened ape man and it would make a new pattern. One worthy of this clever little monkey and the theorem named for him. In truth, the minds' proclivity for fixating on mathematics was part and parcel of what they were and why they were. Navigation being at the root of it all. It was not an accident that these minds loved math. It was at the core of their 'being'. The boredom was an unexpected side effect of the amount of proto-sentience they necessarily contained; the remainder of the equation of their ability minus their duty.

But, as a result, they made beautiful art in the fields of Earth. This, and the planning of it prior to the actual creation, helped quell their ennui. If their study of the nature of numbers were a religion, this would be their tithing, their prayer. The minds were there to direct the routing probes that visited themselves upon the planet appearing as small globes of light. These small globes were, in fact, not so small at all, but due to their pan-temporal properties they appeared so in this plane. This isn't necessarily important to the story of the art of the minds, but it does help to explain their worship. To route the probes properly, the minds had to make calculations so singular and immense that their degree of precision would, and does, boggle the mind of most organics. Unfortunately they had to make these calculations in real-time with almost no prior preparation and this gave rise to the considerable lull between routings.

No organic really recalls, and most do not care truth be known, when it started and which mind was the first to do it, but during one routing a mind did not merely mark and project upon the routing point, it scored the particular water table area with a circular design. It bent the surrounding crop into a pattern that was simple, beautiful and perfect. It projected its worship of purity onto the face of the Earth. And soon the other minds followed suit. Soon the minds were planning and designing and plotting the design they would use next routing. Pythagoras had, justly so, been the first. But now all the minds that circled the Earth were involved. Sometimes they concerted their efforts, sometimes they acted singly. But always there was purity and beauty in their work.

Upon the next routing a new design was found upon a field in the UK. A design which was both simple and breath-taking to behold. Many on the Earth were dis-believing, but those who measured it, those who took in its precision of angle and projection knew it was something special. Here was a crop design which said, to the mathematically inclined mind, "This is Pythagoras. This is his legacy." Soon after the other minds, Mandelbrot, Tangent and Zed being among the first, began expressing newer and more complex designs but, once again, Pythagoras had been first. And somewhere in that mind was something akin to pride. Almost.

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Maggie McFee Feb. 28, 2003 12:06am

Copyright 2003 Maggie McFee - All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any manner without written consent of the author.