Chapter twelve
Stephanie had always been a
mathematical person. Where most introverts used their reclusive periods to
embolden their sense of solidarity with their common human kind or their
environment, Stephanie had, since childhood, sought only to maintain a view of
the Universe that was entirely logical and, to a thankful degree, predictable.
She remembered an episode from
extreme childhood. It had been approximately half an hour after the schoolday.
She could still remember her peers rushing past her, with needless nerves and
exhiliration (the which of the two she could not tell), through the hallways.
She had walked slowly. She observed
the formality of keeping her books on her desktop until the bell rang. She did
not mind others' habits, naturally, but she was prompt to reprimand the boy who
occupied the desk to her left. Ms Spehar was always reprimanding him for
keeping his books on the floor and for beginning to stow the cargo four
minutes, on average, prior to the bell.
'You should not keep your books in
the aisle,' Stephanie told the boy.
He looked at her with a completely
random, pigfaced look. He hated her.
She never knew why.
She had just tried to help.
That had been early in the second
grade. Back then, time was not an Entity: Only a system. Conventions were
manipulable. It was the lack of emphasis put by elders and superiors upon the
significance of keeping appointments and meeting deadlines that allotted her a
liberty she missed almost with, she had to admit, a grudge.
She would keep books on physics.
Her library was in her father's office. Her room had seven clocks in it.
The world outside worked like her
clocks.
The Sun would rise between 6:00 am
and 6:30 am, with variation with the alternation of the year.
Her mother was perturbed by
Stephanie's obsession with clocks. Her father did not share her impulsive
prejudice. He loved her more. She still remembered one night, at seven o'clock
and some fraction she could not remember, that her father set foot in her room.
A green light lit the room from a lamp that was placed always atop an old
bookshelf.
Her father stood between her and
the light for a few indeterminate seconds as she sat on the edge of her bed.
The event was like watching a Solar
eclipse.
He was smiling. Something in the
way that his wrinkles were illumined by the light from behind made her all of a
sudden terrified. She could never understand why she had been scared for that
brief moment. Years were inconsequential.
He stepped out from behind the
light. It flooded the room like the genuineness of seeing the Sun towards the
end of midday from under the surface of an Ocean.
He chuckled. She felt slight relief
at the sound of his humour, but she still felt that the irrational fear, on
another level, was not truly assuaged.
He had a certain authority over the
bedroom, and her as well, for that uncalculated moment.
'You really love to measure things,
Steph.'
She smiled. An entirely capricious
joy replaced the terror. He left within a few seconds. Once he had closed the
door behind himself, she reclined in her bed.
The green light seemed accompanied
by another light, closer to white in hue, like a shadow of the light.
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