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Believe me when I tell you: The story of Icarus is not a story of the limitations of humanity, but one of the limitations of wax as an adhesive…
Maximilian Cohen was no longer a mathematician, nor so much as a numerologist. Yet, without all he cared for, he was not very much else, either (Perhaps the DIY trepannation had not helped his aptitude). Every part of what was once Euclid had been disposed of, except for a lone hard drive… no Ming-Mecca. Where could it have gone? Simple… it never existed in the first place.
Max did live in the same apartment. All of his old notes were stuffed almost frantically in a box, deep in his closet. He couldn’t read most of them, regardless. Mathematical notations, and… something in Hebrew. Why? He couldn’t remember, but it seemed like it must have been important.
Sol was gone, but that was for the best. Sol would have never cared for the Cohen of today- the only thing worse than a numerologist is an ex- mathematician. Then there was that girl, who’d been asking him questions… Jenna…? The look of disappointment on her face when he didn’t know the answers was painful. He never knew the answers anymore, so she stopped coming by- that settled the matter of whether he’d been more than a curiosity, and left only him. At least he knew he was alone, and wasn’t just imagining things- wait, had that ever been a concern of his? It sounded more concerning to him than he would have expected for an almost flippant comment.
Not that he’d ever minded being alone, to begin with.
748/238 equals to…
Why bother?
Because it was the last question he’d received from a stupid little girl? Or the last one he remembered clearly? What did that have to do with anything? Jenna still existed, and would do best to forget him. So forget that stupid quotient. He looked at it a little longer. Considered doing out the division, or even entering it into a calculator. But he couldn’t think of a single reason to care. He tossed the slip of paper aside, as he had for all his greater ambitions. Mathematics had no allure, and was too difficult to be worth contemplating. Hadn’t there been joy in solving problems? …no, he remembered only suffering from that time.
Another notebook. He must have missed it.
Absent-mindedly, Max flipped to a random page.
“The world has chosen me. I must complete this mission, no matter what.” Then more numbers. He didn’t bother reading them. “Why won’t it compute- why won’t it compute- WHY IS NOTHING WORKING”... He pitied this shadow of himself, chasing delusion, only to find there was no truth.
Oh.
Mathematicians sought truth, regardless of whether it pleased them. Mathematicians did not convince themselves that they were right, when there seemed very little evidence to corroborate it. Mathematicians proved their findings. Max scanned the numbers on a few pages- they didn’t mean anything. He didn’t know what they were, but they were certainly not proof.
Then, “Maximilian Cohen” had never been a mathematician to begin with.
What a self-assured fool. Caught up in a fantasy world, seeking that which never existed. There was no number. There was no true name of God. There was probably no God at all. No one had chosen him, he’d chosen himself. The man who stared at these notebooks was not that person. So why did these thoughts hurt him so much? Why did he want to scream upon realizing what he truly was? His narrative went that he had been a mathematician, driven to madness by an eternal search for truth. That, at least, would have been honorable (minus the ending). That would have been noble. But no. Max Cohen was a self-obsessed zealot playing at mathematical rigor, nothing more, nothing less. Had Sol even been real? No, no, of course he was real, he had to be. At least him. He may have been a quitter, now nobody. At the very least he had the illusion he’d ever been somebody. There was no proof of that.
But he wasn’t a mathematician anymore! So why-
Why did he resist? Why did he hate the notion of his mathematical illegitimacy so damn much?
Why was he crying?
He slammed the notebook shut and stuffed it into the box. Never again. This was his happy ending. He could finally have peace. He wasn’t about to get ungrateful and… try something foolish. Some things are not meant to be looked at for too long. Not if one wants to see anything else.
…Max should really get out of the house more. Meet people, or… whatever was done, outside. To his credit, he did go outside for utilitarian purposes… but he hadn’t had anyone to visit in a while, so what did it matter? The sunlight was too bright anyways. He flicked absently through TV channels, but nothing caught his interest. Most of the books he owned were on mathematics… no, no, no, absolutely not, never. Not even a peek. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t you want to live, you fool? Don’t you want to be happy?
But if Max hadn’t been happy before… he wasn’t happy now, either. There was no eternal dread, but nor was there the euphoria of being chosen, the feeling that all problems had solutions. Didn’t he used to believe that? Something about everything being numerical, too. Premises, premises from which he’d derived insanity as inference led him. Faulty premises, leading to contradiction, and invalidating proof itself- no. He wasn’t going to think about why his premises failed. He wasn’t going to think about the goddamn Principle of Explosion! That wasn’t him anymore.
If that wasn’t him, then who was? This question threatened to break him once again. When he had been the chosen one, that at the very least had been a reason to keep living.
A reason to keep suffering.
The light shining through all the agony.
Max Cohen gazed out the window of his apartment and saw no such agony.
Nor did he see any such light.
He should really get out more often. Go for a walk, or something. Whatever regular humans did when they wanted to not be stuck alone with their thoughts. Even if that meant dealing with people, ugh. Fine, he’d convinced himself.
The outdoors was… bright, but thankfully not hot or cold. He recalled his past self hadn’t liked the light… it made the headaches worse, of course. Right. The primary reason he no longer wanted that man’s life. It might have been worth the utter lunacy, but the pain… that settled his mind firmly against it.
It was a sunny day.
When I was six… I stared into the Sun.
Why hadn’t he stopped quickly? Why had he been so stupid? He could have lived an ordinary life, why did he feel the need to toss it all aside for a mere rebellious curiosity?! He picked a small twig off of a tree. It had a few leaves still attached, rustling ever so slightly.
The board is a microcosm of the universe… microcosm… microcosm…
Out of more compulsion than curiosity- no, he’d never go back - he held the twig up to the tree, from a distance. The two were very similar, as if the tree was growing tiny copies of itself. The fraction he obtained could have easily been a sprout or a tree of its own. Probably just because trees were random. They didn’t have patterns.
Patterns exist everywhere in the universe.
Unless- that was the pattern-! Fractals, coastlines, nature- geometry of nature- the golden spir-
And there, his thoughts simply disappeared. His excitement vanished, and he stared down at his empty hands, with an empty mind. What was he, if not a mathematician? Had the Max Cohen of the past ever felt joy? Had he known that person? He missed them so much… A mad genius is a genius nonetheless. At least a genius knows why they’re alive, even if he is wrong. At least… a mad genius still… cares enough to keep trying, cares enough to suffer. The present Max Cohen did not suffer, but… he did not care about anything, either.
With that thought, the present Max Cohen stepped out of the shade of the tree, sat down on the grass, and tilted his head calmly upward.
When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So again, when I was thirty-six, I did, until I couldn’t see it any longer. I didn’t fear the darkness anymore. My only trepidation was the agony that was sure to return.
6…
36…
216.