User:Zadimortis/The Lobster Rises/1

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 * Case 2-1: The Rise and Fall of David Lobster Wallace (But Mostly The Fall)

All logic is backsolved from truth. Therefore, no matter what conclusion one comes to, it is always logical, so long as it starts (that is to say, ends) in truth. It is through this line of reasoning that the esteemed mathematician Blaise Pascal came to realize that he was sitting across from a lobster in a Parisian cafe on a warm summer morning. He also knew that the lobster’s name was David Lobster Wallace, because that’s how it was. A cup of coffee, now cold, sat centimeters from the arthropod’s right cutter claw, in contrast to Blaise’s empty cup next to a distinctly human hand.

The mathematician stared pensively at the lobster. He stroked his chin in an effort to enhance his thoughtfulness, to let passers-by on the street corner that he was not just thinking, but thinking, less a functional pastime and more of a mental flexing on the beaches that were the streets of Paris. The lobster stared back with his eye stalks, though to an outside viewer it wasn’t clear if he was staring at Blaise, or through him into a realm only lobster vision could access.

“Well, old friend, this is quite the tricky bit of business.” He reached below the table and pulled out a small notebook, scribbled on which was a series of equations wholly unintelliglbe and entirely useless to lobsterkind.

“See, that damned German mathematician Jacobi thinks he’s solved Kepler’s orbital problem with his so-called ‘elliptical equations’.” Blaise flipped over the first page of his journal, revealing a myriad of lopsided, hastily-drawn circles with arrows and lines of figures branching off them. “It’s just a bunch of silly language used to stun the publishers into printing your work. Why, my very own ‘oval equations’ accomplish the same thing his do, and I came up with them in my dreams just last night! Why, I bet that man could barely write a circular equation worth half a pint, let alone an elliptical one.” The dreams, of course, were brought about by the fact that Blaise Pascal had read Carl Gustav Jacobi’s paper on Kepler’s orbital problem the night before. But mere trifles such as causality had not stopped the brilliant mathematician before, and they were not about to now.

“The trick now is figuring out how to simultaneously discredit his ideas while proving that mine are better.” While normally a trivial task for the genius mathematician, this particular instance was made difficult by the fact that Pascal’s and Jacobi’s equations were, fundamentally, exactly the same. He pulled out his copy of Jacobi’s paper, dappled with small cuts and stains from being used as a cutting board for his dinner the evening before.

“I must start with a slogan, the way all great men sell their ideas. ‘Ellipse? More like ellipassé!’ No, too intellectual. Oval, oval… ovation? Hm…” Blaise muttered to himself while scribbling concentric ovals in his journal, clearly satisfied with his superior artistic prowess.

But David Lobster Wallace did not focus on this endeavor. For David’s lobster vision was indeed staring through Blaise Pascal, despite the mathematician’s rather poignant attempt at opacity, and had spotted something.

A crack, between the pages. Between the pages of what? David found himself at a threshold: the threshold of lobster thoughts and other, supra-lobster thoughts that existed in a cognitive realm he dare not step foot in. And yet, what was this urge? Was it the raw intellectual genius of this French mathematician before him that encouraged the arthropod to breach new frontiers and take a dive between the realms of this and that? The enigmatic “over there”, a place outside this one. To stay in the warm, smelly comfort of Paris, or jump claw-first into the unknown?

“My dearest crustacean, you appear perplexed,” Blaise said, not actually sure if David looked perplexed, but assumed that the lack of praise or reverent applause was simply due to a deficiency of understanding, as it most commonly was. “Here, let me show you my work of last night. Surely you, of all upstanding men, will be convinced!” Blaise opened his journal to a two-page spread of ovals, some of which possessed facial features.

David jumped.

“Now, this is a lot to take in, but- David?” Blaise started, suddenly noting the wholesale absence of his lobster companion. Rather than assume that David had fled, Blaise realized that David Lobster Wallace likely had to excuse himself mid-sentence to acquire his reading glasses, and realizing that it might come across as rude to show a lack of scholarly preparedness, had simply left in stealth, in the hopes he would not be noticed. Blaise, in his superior perception, did notice - but rather than acknowledge the slight, he felt he owed it to his crustacean companion to simply pretend he didn’t notice, such that when he did make his stealthy return, he would not feel as though he slighted the great mathematician.

“You see here, compared to Jacobi, these ovals are much more aesthetically appealing to the eye, and thus the natural solution to Kepler’s orbital problem - everyone knows that natural laws always opt for vanity when logic cannot suffice,” Blaise continued, talking to the empty chair in front of him, intentionally throwing his gaze off so as to make his obliviousness to David Lobster Wallace’s absence more plausible. While doing so, he occasionally threw glances to the street, so his fellow Parisians would understand the social plight he was in, and appreciate his efforts. Perhaps one of them might walk past and he could enter a conversation, both to improve the plausibility of his façade and to sell his oval equations to another passer-by.

But David was long since gone, tumbling through the pages.

Like most things in his life, he was beginning to realize that this might have been a terrible idea.