Trip the Math Fantastic

By Todd A Walls

In Trip the Math Fantastic, you will journey into the hearts of people who yearn to define, predict, and perhaps understand the universe, yet struggle with anxiety, shame, loneliness, and a driving desire to do the right thing.

These are the heroes of Trip the Math Fantastic:

Evelyn—a retired astronaut and mathematician&mda

• Language: English
• Publisher: Todd A Walls
• Release date: Aug 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781945632518

Todd A Walls

Todd A. Walls is a writer as the result of a truce. The stories that keep clamoring for attention will calmly await their turn, as long as Todd keeps writing them down. Stories can be quite stubborn. With the calm and quiet of Colorado's eastern plains outside-and the majestic Rocky Mountains marking the horizon-Todd's characters speak to him of their dreams and accomplishments, along with their failures and shame. Todd's imagination is a conduit to the end of time, riding the many failures of humanity to their inevitable outcomes, and embracing the heroic efforts of those who refuse such a fate. Todd is the Vice President of the Colorado Springs Fiction Writer's Group, and first became a member in 2000. He has professional technical certifications as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and as a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). He currently works as an Information Security Consultant in the finance industry.

Book preview

Trip the Math Fantastic

Trip the

Math

Fantastic

Todd A Walls

It’s time to celebrate the contributions of those whose heroism knows no bounds, who go to extraordinary lengths to solve problems through the application of logic and science, and who dance nimbly where others cannot go, those are the mathematicians of Trip the Math Fantastic!

In This Collection

Arc of Humanity

Outside the facility, the sun shone indifferently on an Earth granted a reprieve from the pressures of a human species. No one knew for sure who had engineered the virus, but it was elegant in its fierce dedication to the extinction of those who had dared to conceive of its birth.

The Last Mark of Civilization

Out on the ocean seemed like a much better life, but it was too fragile. Nina’s home had been destroyed twice in her lifetime. It would be destroyed countless more times in the great storms before the land came back. All they could do was rebuild every time with whatever was left floating.

Veracitic Scrupulosity

Funny thing about being a theoretical physicist with a theory that no one believes in; nobody wants to hire you.

I’m a theoretical physicist, and my real passion is math. I was trying to develop an unbreakable encryption device. The patent would have been groundbreaking. Instead, the device that I created destroyed my credibility, my career, and communicates with parallel universes. Not what I was expecting at all.

Element 173

I can’t resist looking through the telescope. The sight is shocking. The moon’s surface is scarred with deep canyons, thousands of dots moving across the surface, flashes of light, and piles of debris. At that moment, a particularly bright flash appears, after which a cube of moon rock that must be dozens of cubic kilometers in size rises up and flies out of the field of view.

Our moon is injured. It’s being tortured, disfigured, murdered right before my eyes.

Trip the Math Fantastic (Poem)

Math is a science of pattern and order.

It can see smaller than any microscope,

And farther than any telescope.

Even things that cannot be seen,

and are not things at all.

Math is a lifestyle.

We live it without knowing.

We evaluate our pasts,

solve our presents,

and predict our futures.

Math is a philosophy of grace and balance.

Mathematicians are people

bursting with the spirit of inquiry,

who appreciate the elegance of a leaf,

and the frolicking waltz of an electron.

Math is a belief system.

It is a lens

to the mysteries of life,

where faith charts our course

beyond the equal sign.

Every great act of science

begins in the heart.

~

Copyright © 2016, Todd A. Walls

Arc of Humanity

The door was gray, steel, and thick. The solidity of it had always been comforting, in a wistful kind of way, but that no longer mattered. Now, it filled Evelyn with dread. She stood, contemplating the thick frost that gave the metal door a solid quality, immovable, permanent. There was no option but to plunge ahead, though it seemed a sin to break the seal. She pulled the lever. The bolts retracted around the edges with a thunk that echoed back down the hallway of the launch facility. Uncertain death ahead was less daunting when there was nothing but certain death behind.

Considering it had been unused for years, the mechanism moved smoothly. The next room was the size and appearance of a small bedroom and contained the chemical smell of old disinfectant. The air in the quarantine room condensed in a thick whoosh of mist with each breath.

For a moment, she studied the effect, not having seen it for ages. Childhood memories of beautiful Colorado winters made her smile. Pursing her lips, she blew a spray of condensation, imagining she was a fire-breathing dragon preparing to vanquish all puny enemies. But, there were no enemies left to vanquish, except for the one that had defied the greatest minds of humanity. Just one, and it could not be fought.

Evelyn locked the inner door and walked across to the outer one. To her left and right stood empty racks where environmental suits hung in the early days. Engineers, scientists, and defectors had long since depleted the suits on various ill-advised attempts at survival. They learned early that the virus survived conditions that would have destroyed most other life forms. Once it covered an area, such as the neighborhood around the control center, decontamination had proven to be nearly impossible.

If I can’t find anything to eat, then what am I going to do? Become a farmer? But that was no option. She hadn’t eaten in almost a week. The hollow ache of slow starvation had become an endless torment. The days when hunger did not define her existence were hard to remember. No. Spring was a lifetime away. More than her lifetime.

She placed her palm flat against the frosted steel of the outer door. It was an act of procrastination, and the action consumed the warmth from her fingers, Death’s tongue licking, sucking at her spirit. Indeterminate risks from beyond this bastion of sterility, this perimeter defense, awaited the pleasure of her undoing. Beyond this door lay the world of Evelyn’s birth, and it would be the world of her death.

Midwinter reigned outside. She was ready with layers of clothing. Evelyn’s only hope was that harsh winters and a lack of living hosts would suppress the virus’ proliferation, would restrict the microorganism to a limited reservoir of survival, one that she could avoid. Rubbing the melted frost from her hand across the front of a thick, warm, winter coat, she put on a pair of latex gloves, and then a pair of leather work gloves. They might not help but they made her feel better about having to touch anything out there.

Evelyn’s hand print, dark against the surrounding frost, was already beginning to refreeze. An icon between Purgatory and Hell, it was a demarcation point that had the capacity to transform her entire world. Once Pandora’s box opened, there was no closing it again, regardless of the outcome. The last time this door had been used, fifty-six of Evelyn’s closest friends had stepped outside to their doom so that she would not have to. They did it to protect her, but now doom loomed within as much as without.

Her choice had not been a decision of life-or-death, but in