Speculative Fusion - Beware of Abstractions

Beware of Abstractions

by Kevin Gold

"I think the number twenty-five is following me," said Professor Daine. His hands gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled, and his eyes darted about the road.

Josh looked down at his copy of Elliptic Curves and Cryptography, noted the page number (252), and closed it. "Is that a bad thing?"

"I don't know yet," said Professor Daine.

He stomped on the brake just as a black van crossed the intersection ahead (license plate 2YBE325). The car lurched to a halt and settled back on its wheels.

"There used to be a stop sign there," the professor muttered. He looked left, right. He eased on the gas.

"I don't think I understand," Josh said. "You mean, you keep seeing the number twenty-five everywhere, right? Like the way you notice the number forty-two after you read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

"That's part of it," said Professor Daine. "But it's more than that."

Josh looked out the window. They were passing the old cemetery now, the grave markers and headstones laid out in neat five by five plots. (What were the chances...?)

"I think the number twenty-five is angry at me."

Josh blinked, and blinked again. "Angry?"

Professor Daine's eyes narrowed. "It's all because of that paper I wrote for Journal of Number Theory. I was working on bijective maps between ... well, never mind what I was working on. You didn't take Jaylor's seminar last semester, did you?"

"No."

"Right, then never mind. Essentially, I proved an interesting variation on the Sylow Theorems, for rings obeying certain conditions ... and it holds for every size of group except twenty-five."

Josh ran his thumb down his cheek. "So?"

"So don't you see?" Professor Daine took his eyes from the road. They were red-rimmed and bloodshot. "I found its dirty little secret."

Josh cleared his throat. "Green light."

Professor Daine turned. Slowly, he leaned back in his seat, and the car eased forward again.

"What kind of a mathematician are you?" he blurted.

Josh scratched his lip. "What?"

"You don't believe me," said Daine. "You don't think a number can have a life of its own."

"They are rather ... abstract."

"That doesn't make them less real." He glanced at me. "You know Tolkien?"

"Sure."

"He wrote an essay once. 'On Fairy-Stories.' Said that when man finds a commonality in nature, like red or happy or justice -- when he finds it and names it, he's extracted some raw essence from nature, and made something ethereal with it. In short, it's magic."

"Professor Daine, I believe that was a metaphor."

"It's not a metaphor, it's what we do. It's what mathematicians do. We breathe life into abstractions."

Josh took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Maybe you should try thinking of a different number."

Daine chewed his lip.

"Come on," Josh said. "What's your favorite number?"

Daine drummed his fingers. "Twenty-seven owes me one, I suppose. I called K27 an 'interesting case' in my Ramsey Theory paper last year."

"Good," Josh said. "Just think of that. Twenty-seven. Three cubed. Good old twenty-seven."

"But twenty-seven's not a protector," Daine said. He looked at Josh sideways, through narrowed eyes. "It's an avenger."

"Whatever," Josh said. "Just ... think of it anyway, all right?"

Professor Daine chewed his lip and said nothing.

They turned onto the tree-lined campus parkway, which ran straight up to the central Loop. Josh could see his dorm in the distance, a gray five-story cube that reminded him of a Borg ship, except for the windows.

"You can let me off here."

"I thought you were going back to the department."

"I feel like taking a walk first."

Daine frowned. "So you're abandoning me."

Josh sighed. "Professor Daine, I know you've been under a lot of stress ever since the department stuck you with Math 25A. Have you ever considered that maybe that's the reason you keep seeing twenty-five everywhere? That you subconsciously know that teaching that class is what's driving you crazy?"

The car slowed to a stop. Professor Daine, stone-faced, turned to glare at Josh.

"I am not crazy."

"I didn't say --"

"Get out."

"I'm just saying --"

"Go! Shoo! And see if I don't get attacked by twenty-five mountain lions, succumb to twenty-five diseases at once!"

Josh opened the door, stepped out. "Thanks for the ride."

"Traitor!"

Josh closed the door. Looking at the brown leather car seat through the window, he noticed that a quarter had fallen out of his pocket, and had wedged itself in the seat crack.

I'm leaving him alone with twenty-five cents, he thought in a daze. He was tempted to open the door and remove it, but he felt self-conscious, and did not; and Professor Daine drove away.

Professor Daine did not show up for class the next day. About half an hour in, the secretary of the Mathematics Department came in and stoically informed the class that the esteemed professor had died in a car accident that very morning, colliding with a bus. No, she did not know the bus number; and Josh got many puzzled looks for asking.

Twenty-seven students filed out of Math 272 that day, Josh among them; and in the hall, out in the quad, and in the street, he saw:

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