The Girl Who Speaks With Algebra

30: Tempus Fugit

My first thought was the likely hypothesis that I'd had a really intense dream. Given my sleeping issues, it wouldn't be the first time I'd fallen unconscious at work. Noticing what was on the floor next to me kind of torpedoed that theory though – there was Sine's device, Paige's sheet on fractals, and that bag of Julia's mystical pills.

My second thought was, if I was forced to relive the next 28 days, and yet couldn't come up with a better argument for Statistics, he'd punch me back here into the past again; I was trapped in a time loop. Like a Bill Murray "Groundhog Day" affair. But would my future knowledge fade within hours? Or would it simply serve to completely screw me over, perhaps making me TOO weird for Paige to date this time? Damn it, I'd have to take my midterms again too.

This was HELL. I looked to the ceiling. "Dormammu, I've come to bargain."

My third thought must have bounced around my prefrontal cortex for a bit, before at last igniting. It burned so hot that those other thoughts were reduced to cinders. It was an interesting alternative. Obviously, I seized it.

I scooped up the items I'd dropped on the floor, grabbed a pen from a nearby desk, and bolted for the math section of the library. I slipped the sheet of paper into the proper book, making sure to draw an inverted triangle down in the corner, so that I'd be able to distinguish it from the version Paige hadn't written yet.

While there, I also looked up isometry, in case it was important for keeping our outfits. Apparently it meant a transformation that preserved congruence. So all that told me was that Seiko's transformation sequences hadn't included any dilations, which was good, as it seemed like those would hurt.

Next, I ran for the bottle of pills I'd stupidly forgotten in the library after first getting the prescription filled. I emptied them all out onto the closest desk, opened Julia's bag, and dumped her pills into the container instead. Fortunately (inevitably?) they looked the same. I penned in another triangle onto the label, so that if I got flung out here again, I'd know this had already happened. Then I swept the old, normal prescription pills into the bag.

Only one issue remained. If I activated Sine's device here, would it work? If it did, would it hook my real body into the mathematical void? Because it was kind of important that only my unconscious self go.

After all, Sine's co-ordinates were set for 28 days in the future, relative to our world. My body vanishing for that long would be a problem, largely because it would wipe out the most important part of my history. Whereas it seemed likely that my present day consciousness could return here, once my future consciousness had left again.

"Just have to fall asleep at work again," I mumbled. "No problem, right? Damn, Rose, you look like heck."

I'd chanced to look at my reflection in one of the windows. My hair was stringy, there were bags under my eyes, I'd apparently given up on makeup, my "Give it a rest" T-shirt was rumpled and only partly tucked in, and my attempt to smile looked more like a grimace. Had I really emerged from this state in four short weeks? Gradual changes, they're harder to spot long term.

I spun the pen in my fingers, and in a fit of pique, grabbed a sheet of paper and scrawled on it, 'Rose, It Gets Better.' Only to recall how I would spend an hour crying my eyes out in a washroom, wondering if I had a reason to live. I added the word, 'Eventually.'

I folded the sheet, placing it with the container of pills. Then I removed one, and returned to where I'd been when I'd woken up, next to the cart of books. With Sine's device in one hand, and the bag of my old prescription pills in the other, I worked up enough saliva to down what I knew now was the first of Julia's pills.