RSL I am the Ocean ; To them I ’ m a Lake
The laptop wouldn ’ t shut up , it never did . Zoom calls , meetings , student emails – all of them buzzed through without so much as a second break . Dr Lauren Alderson couldn ’ t even parse them . A bunch of symbols mislabelled as words . Was it lunch time ? Nah . 15:49 . It would never be lunch – not until tomorrow , and she ’ d be damned if tomorrow even arrived . Same old January , that first day back of term , the whole year ahead standing like a mountain top .
Lauren was ready to fall dead on the floor , staring at her mirror-image in the window , where only early-night remained outside . Janos Bolyai was on her mind today , his strange universes and new boundaries ; were mirrors part of that world , that little distortion of face , of hair ? It felt like minutes ago that she was an undergrad conceptualizing it for the first time – trying to make sense of the real universe . Not of straightlines and logic , but of curves and freedom . After all , Lauren wasn ’ t just a scientist , of course – she was an artist . The two of them were mutually bound : The Whitmanian ‘ Do I contradict myself ’, for ‘ I contain multitudes ’ had always stuck in her mind as a presaging of that quantum revolution but fifty years later . A person was only the measurements people made of them , after all . No more , no less .
When her door creaked open , she swivelled in a surprise that lasted only seconds . Her four o ’ clock standing sheepishly in the room . Dr Alderson ? Sorry , I – I didn ’ t know if this was the right door . No , no , come in , she replied as she pulled up a chair . How are you ? Did you have a nice holiday period …? Fuck . She forgot his name .
The lad seemed to know – and answered that space with the openness of a person who has had to remind many people many times what his name was . Laurence , he said . Me mum wanted a girl named Laura and , well , you know . He placed his bag between his legs , trailed off , that anxiety of controlling a stage too long . Lauren nodded . You ’ re here about a potential supervisor , right ? Yeah , yeah . I – I wanna do , like , four-dimensional stuff . Well , you ’ re at the right place . He looked down at his thin arms . I loved your work on the Necker cube , he replied . She smiled – long nights at the library during her PhD . That was fun for a while , she said . The idea that the Necker cube could transform us spatially . To comprehend an image in fourth dimensionality and to be able to imagine it in its chiral form .
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