Post Ulate

Mass is a measure of concentrated matter in a given area.

Weight is the force of gravity on an object.

And matters, important matters, have weight, and situations have gravity and matter with mass can't occupy a spot simultaneously, so there's a quota of important matters that can be weighty or have gravity in a given area…I think I remember.

I made up.

Something like that.

Density equals mass over volume.

So take an office twenty meters by ten meters by twenty eight meters and the responsibility of saving humanity and determine whether futility will be tangible, that is, denser than air. It's not, but my calculations say otherwise (science doesn't fit reality as neatly as we say it can.)

What color is fear? Qualitative observation.

How many windows hold things mirrors forget? Quantitative observation.

Google plex.

There's nothing I can say- what words? – how many?

When you stand in the doorway you can watch him without being seen and hold your mouth shut and your eyes open because he couldn't hear you anyway, if there were sounds and tones.

Vibrations.

When he has to breathe it shakes his shoulders and ink smears.

Chromatography.

When he has to breathe it shakes his chest and the door quakes.

Waves.

Sometimes there are bruises on the sides of his hands or dents in his palms.

Force.

Sometimes he makes phone calls instead of taking them.

Titrations.

Is there something I can do? 185 cm of me versus 5,600 cubic meters of solitude? If he wanted to he could see me, I'm at hand; if he needed a service he'd ask me, he's not shy; if he couldn't miss my company he'd call me in, he's not a stupid man.

There's a bird cage he knocked over when he found it empty and trembling fingers that lack their rightful feathers to stroke. There's a moon who's calendar even one of his race can't decipher; there always seems to be a new moon, a blank sky. There's a butterfly he's grown ten years of flowers for without a single showing.

The world's problems aside, he has a sister who defies gravity, the laws of physics.

His problems aside, he has the world's problems. He has a war by the tip of his fingers and it's less and less a tug-of-war and more and more a free fall.

Friction.

When you stand in the doorway you can watch him and think you're not seen.

"Reever?"

Optics.

When he wants to breathe he takes his glasses off without facing you.

"Come in."

Viscosity.

He never asks because only one of us knows how long I've been here, and if it was me there'd be a lot more to my theory that he's the crazy one and a lot less to my postulate that it's probably me. "Did you need something?"

Fear is silver. "Hmm?"

Just two, the right lens and the left one. "Reever?"

"What are you going to do after the war?"

No air, no matter, no oxygen, just quiet.

Vacuum.

He can't see anything with his glasses off, but he likes to look out the windows.

"I-…hm."

Evaporation.

Can't he see nothing with his glasses off? "I'm going to sleep…"

Biology.

We forget sometimes, scientists, what that means.

He makes a tired attempt to carry on the conversation that starts in Britain and ends in Beijing and I nod even though I couldn't hear a word he said because I couldn't do any better right now so I leave with what I didn't know I'd come for.

I'm the one who's crazy but I do a decent job of coming off sane and it turns out my calculations were right all along; hopelessness is only eight centimeters taller than me and I see it everyday. But if despair has hope I damn well ought to too.

When the war's over I want to bring him a pillow.