I Ate'nt Dead

[odditycollector]

Gah. <-being a summary of all other complaints.

But no, I have a purpose for updating!

A while ago, lacorneille, you gave me a very strange pairing to write. (Not as strange as Katy's, but still...)

Oh well, I suppose all things get done eventually.


If you’re going to have a relationship, you might do well to learn about the other partner.

Mel knows this to be good advice, but as she reads through a book outlining the history of science, she feels vaguely guilty, like she’s going through a diary, or maybe one of those address books. A miniature one, painted black.

There is a whole section on Aristotle, as the first of science’s paramours, or near enough to. Although wrong in many respects, says the textbook, there is much one may learn from him.

But what it teaches, she already knows: That science is a fickle lover, unfaithful and cruelly amused, and it holds its secrets close.

It’s a lot like romancing a woman, in some ways.


Science speaks to her of quarks and waveforms, infinity and black holes. Einstein and Schrodinger and Hawking, and no sense in being jealous. Newton and Galileo and Aristotle.

“They loved you,” Mel says. “They loved you and you lied to them.”

There is a silence after she speaks, and something in it seems to say, So?

“So.” She sighs. “How do I know anything you’re telling me is real.”

There’s something like laughter. Even I was young once and foolish, and mistaken. Perhaps it merely took me a time to find myself.

Time. And photons and gravity wells and triceratops bones. The million banal Truths that science would let her touch, but never keep for her own.

She closes her eyes and whispers. “I need you.”

I know.

“And?”

I will give you the world. It’s a nice enough promise, but Mel wonders what she was really asking.

Through me, you’ll see the universe.

And maybe it’s even worth it, for that.