What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky(31)

On the way to the school, Nneoma finished off two apples and a roll and flipped through her notes. She had done many such presentations, which were less about presenting and more about identifying potential Mathematicians, who had a way of feeling each other out. She ran a finger along the Formula, still mesmerized by it after all this time. She’d brought fifty-seven lines of it, though she would only need a few to test the students.

When things began to fall apart, the world cracked open by earthquakes and long-dormant volcanoes stretched, yawned, and bellowed, the churches (mosques, temples) fell—not just the physical buildings shaken to dust by tremors, but the institutions as well. Into the vacuum stepped Francisco Furcal, a Chilean mathematician who discovered a formula that explained the universe. It, like the universe, was infinite, and the idea that the formula had no end and, perhaps, by extension, humanity had no end was exactly what the world needed.

Over decades, people began to experiment with this infinite formula and, in the process, discovered equations that coincided with the anatomy of the human body, making work like hers possible. A computer at the Center ran the Formula 24/7, testing its infiniteness. There were thousands and thousands of lines. People used to be able to tour the South African branch and watch the endless symbols race ticker-style across a screen. Then the Center closed to the public, and the rumors started that Furcal’s Formula was wrong, that the logic of it faltered millions and millions of permutations down the line, past anything a human could calculate in her lifetime. That it was not infinite.

They were just that, rumors, but then a man fell from the sky.

As they neared the school, they could see a few protesters with gleaming electronic placards. The angry red of angry men. Amadi slowed.

“Madam?”

“Keep going, there are only ten.”

But the number could triple by the time she was ready to leave. How did they always know where she’d be?

The car was waved through the school’s outer gate, then the inner gate, where Amadi’s ID was checked, then double-checked. When the guard decided that Amadi wasn’t credentialed enough to wait within the inner gate, Nneoma stepped in. Her driver, her rules. The guard conceded as she’d known he would, and Amadi parked the car under a covered spot out of the sun. Nneoma was greeted by Nkem Ozechi, the headmaster, a small, neat woman whose hands reminded her of Kioni’s. She had a smug air about her and walked with a gait that was entirely too pleased with itself. She spoke to Nneoma as though they’d known each other for years. On a different day, Nneoma might have been charmed, interested, but today she just wanted the session to be over with so she could go home.

The class was filled with bored faces, most around thirteen or fourteen (had she ever looked so young?), few caring or understanding what she did, too untouched by tragedy to understand her necessity. But schools like these, which gathered the best and brightest that several nations had to offer (according to Nkem Ozechi), paid the Center handsomely to have people like her speak, and it was the easiest money she earned.

“How many of you can look at someone and know that they are sad?”

The whole class raised their hands.

“How many of you can tell if someone is sad even if they are not crying?”

Most hands stayed up.

“How many of you can look at a person who is sad, know why they are sad, and fix it?”

All hands lowered. She had their attention now.

The talk lasted fifteen minutes before she brought it to a close.

“Some Mathematicians remove pain, some of us deal in negative emotions, but we all fix the equation of a person. The bravest”—she winked—“have tried their head at using the Formula to make the human body defy gravity, for physical endeavors like flight.”

The class giggled, the fallen man fresh in their minds.

“Furcal’s Formula means that one day the smartest people can access the very fabric of the universe.” For many the Formula was God, misunderstood for so long. They believed that it was only a matter of time before someone discovered the formula to create life, rather than to just manipulate it. But this was beyond the concerns of the teenagers, who applauded politely.

The headmaster stepped from the corner to moderate questions. The first were predictable and stupid. “Can you make people fall in love?” No. “Can you make someone become invisible?” No. Nkem Ozechi might have been embarrassed to know that their questions were no different from those posed by students in the lower schools. Then (again predictably) someone posed a nonquestion.

“What you are doing is wrong.” From a reed-thin boy with large teeth. Despite his thinness there was a softness to him, a pampered look.

Nneoma put her hand up to stop Nkem Ozechi from interrupting. She could handle this. “Explain.”

“Well, my dad says what you people do is wrong, that you shouldn’t be stopping a person from feeling natural hardships. That’s what it means to be human.”

Someone in the back started to clap until Nneoma again raised her hand for silence. She studied the boy. He was close enough for her to note his father’s occupation on his wrist (lawyer) and his class (first). She’d argued down many a person like his father, people who’d lived easy lives, who’d had moderate but manageable difficulties, then dared to compare their meager hardship with unfathomable woes.

“Your father and those people protesting outside have no concept of what real pain is. As far as I’m concerned, their feelings on this matter are invalid. I would never ask a person who hasn’t tasted a dish whether it needs more salt.”