Criss

“Dr. Stuart, tell me what it was like making your discovery. “

“You read the paper?“

“I did. The counterfactual you employed of John Brown’s raid being a failure was so … whimsical. No one could honestly believe such a thing. Everyone knows its success was a foregone conclusion. I mean, if it had failed, the results would have been catastrophic, a civil war probably, totally unacceptable.“

He’s dressed really low-key expensive for my impression of a journalist. A bowler with a blue jay feather stuck in the band. Trying a bit hard to be mofty. Boro-boro blazer. Milan I think, for the slacks. I know the designer, I think, but I’d need to check the label at the seam to be sure if he’d let me. The shoes, though, look like something he picked up from Hefty. Don’t ask me why I keep up with men’s fashion. I’m in my usual black cargoes and v-neck. The bracelet from the commune adds my touch of color. It might show up if I put that hand to my chin when pondering an answer. 

“You agree. I see you agree,”

I fucking hate this smile and be nice shit. But that’s what Southern girls do. 

“but tell me what it was like when it dawned on you.”

The board fills with marks. Conversation with a great cloud of witnesses. Some older than the dirt – call it chalk – making the marks. This is new. Oh god seriously where would you start without signifiers. A game. How a child uses a twig for doll for being knight queen honey princess horse teacup. Foolish that the marks move the world when one swipe of palm can say no more not now start over. Elohim, in their clamor, want fresh making. And do. I don’t understand says a young soul in the back can you go over it again. Are you sure about the psi term. Let me look. I may have missed something. Start over. Fail again. No, it’s right and here’s why. 

He’s waiting for me to respond. People tell me it’s a problem when I don’t respond. When they’re expectant and I’m in my own world. We’ve been at this for two hours already and I’m tired. I’d walked him around the offices, him teaming with his crew on where pops most. Shooting some stock footage. After setting up lights. And sound checks. I’d never known how complicated the infrastructure is for a ten-minute segment. You watch it on TV and you think it’s all just there, made the same as saying yes at the coffee shop, I’ll have that cookie, no the other one, with sprinkles. Or a sunset. Served up by god’s hand. Ready for the taking. He’s thinking I pulled it out of the ether of god’s ass. Divine golden turd, exquisite in its completeness, in its epistemological solidity, rather than gas. 

“As you can imagine, I’ve hammered at this for years. Lots of coffee. You’ve heard the expression that math is an engine that runs on coffee. Preferably from the Fouta Djallon Highlands.”

“I’d heard you’d grown up there.”

“Yes briefly. Was little when I left. Keep in touch though. One toe dug into the African soil.”

He laughs. Not sure if it’s a joke. People laugh at the strangest things don’t they. The social conventions of primates in domination rituals just boggles. I don’t take the bait. I rattles him. My not taking the bait. I don’t mean to rattle. But I’d rather be alone in my office. Or at the pool to burn off some of this, what’s it called? Surely there’s a word for feral recoil.

“But obviously it’s also about collaboration. Obviously I’ve fielded the shards with peers. And they’ve poked at where the paint bubbled from the wall. Conferences. And beer. But writing the paper afterwards to see where it could’ve gone wrong. But didn’t. I was genuinely surprised it didn’t.”

I’m not sure how much of that I actually said. I’m looking away when I probably say it. I don’t see his probable response.

Don’t think all my tribe resembles me. Most function perfectly well as parents, in team sports, directing meetings, teaching Sunday school. I’m slower. It’s taken me time to know who I am. 

“I understand you were quite ill as a child. Yes. A quite severe form of cerebral malaria. You spoke in tongues as I understand, is that it, it sounds horrible and scary.”

“I was five. Don’t we all speak in tongues at that age?”

He laughs again. Shit, it really does seem he thinks that was a joke. I don’t belong in this world, but then, who does?

“Nonetheless, do you think maybe it’s that ability to pull something out of the ineffable, that both wasn’t there and has always been there, that drew you to maths in the first place?”

Fuck if I know.

No, don’t say that. Did I? No, I don’t believe I did because he’s still smiling a vacuous smile when I look. I don’t generally like people. I get that from my father. Fuck sakes.

“I enjoyed the challenge.”

He seems satisfied if I’m to understand his making a note in the notebook on his lap. High end. Heavy stock. I don’t recognize that brand of pen. You realize this is being filmed don’t you? Unlike my blackboard. You can go back to this later. 

“Your next challenge? You’ve formed your own company. Tell us about that.”

“Oh, it’s all very new, but my cofounder, an old acquaintance, and I want to turn the abstract, theoretical, concept into a real-world mechanism. He’s much more applied than me, way more patient with the code, you have to be. There may be application to logistics immuno-response fin-tech. Anything with a Hilbert space.” He makes another note. “Freely available and for social good. But I want to stay at the institute as much as possible. It’s quiet. Family. Friends being the family you choose. But yes, the company is part of my life now and we’ve been approached even at this nascent stage by VC.”

“Speaking of which. Family. Your father’s writing has come under lots of scrutiny. Once lauded as critic of the Crofter regime in that Africa you’ve a toe in, there’s been some real reappraisal. Maybe a closet apologist.”

Okay, there’s the barb. The reason for the setup.

“I haven’t spoken to my father in years.”

“But”

“I can’t say I’d have reason.”

 

1. Story statement. 

A mathematician struggles to do the right thing in an alternative world that only wants to use her work for profit and exploitation.
(This is an alternative history in which John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry was successful. The majority of the story takes place in the alternative present.)

2. Antagonist:

The antagonist, Eber, is a predatory venture capitalist who seeks through charm and artifice to co-opt the protagonist's (Em's) business partner(s) into exploiting for profit the protagonist's mathematical discovery. Protagonist, antagonist, and business partner(s) all have a shared inter-generational history going back to John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry. The behavioral drivers for their ancestors also drive them. The antagonist's father was a cult leader in a biodiversity commune in Western Africa in which the protagonist's father (a technologist turned Faulkneresque/Cootzeesque curmudgeon) and mother (a tropical diseases doctor) participated. Em never really understood that the cult leader was evil and responsible for her parents' split and her mother's death; she understands him as having been good, even heroic, and that his son, Eber, must similarly be in her corner.

3. Title:

Prophit  [a mashup of "profit" and "prophet"]
God Only Knows and So Can You [playing up the discovery of perfect predictability]
Mirror Symmetry [playing on the symmetry between alternative past and alternative present]

4. Comparables and genre:

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Agency by William Gibson
A friend suggested some adjacency to the work of Jeff VanderMeer, but I haven't read any and don't know.

genre: alternative history / weird fiction  / Southern Gothic / Southern weird

5. Hook line and core wound: 

The protagonist, Em, believes that as a young child she failed to take a simple action that would have saved her mother's life. This underlying sense of guilt is what drives her moral/ethical struggle as stated in the first assignment. However, this shame/guilt is hidden or disavowed until the end of the story.

6. Conflict:

Being in the messy world outside of academia is painful for Em. She has to confront the messiness of commerce and business, estrangement from her father, exploitation by her partners, and the sins of her ancestors.

7.  Setting:

Harpers Ferry during John Brown's raid
Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, an ivory tower where Em would prefer stay rather than the "real" world
Rural North Carolina around Mount Airy and East Bend: the ancestoral homes for  Em's family
A biodiversity commune in the Fouta Djallon Highlands, Guinea