212 — The Day I Was Allowed to Divide by Zero

Space-time ripples ebb and flow, riding gravitational waves. Right angles egress momenta at the speed of light, deviating without losing energy. But not all right angles are congruent. They're simply right-angled to their original trajectory.

They can cross.

Where they cross are nexi where possibility and impossiblility meet in uncomfortable alliances of tentative détente. They're windows for those who know how to look through them.

If you're lucky, such a once-in-a-lifetime event will be in your own lifetime. You can smell it. It's a sparkly, colorful smell of synesthesia. It makes a noise you can see. It, briefly, is a living thing.

Have your pencil and paper ready when it happens! You can't use a calculator--unless you bought it from an imaginary friend who calculates in imaginary numbers.

I was ready. I've lived my life ready.

The operation was a success.

I smelled the colorful sparkles. I saw its thunder and heard its lightning. I tasted its lush impossibility. A rogue wave of confluent contadictions crested over me. I was awash. I was drenched. I was inundated.

Pencil firmly in my non-dominant hand, for that is the only way to the math, I drew the obelus divisor bar.

I placed the divisor: zero.

As dividend, I awaited the quotient. (It had been waiting for me since time immemorial.)

I vomited iambic pentameter; I shat rainbows; I cried contrapuntal fugues. I sweat orgasm bullets. I numerated my denominator. I turned around and saw myself. I relived my nativity. I chose my conception. I turned to my right and righted my wrongs; I turned to my left and left everything behind. I saw the doable and did the undoable. I had a feeling of feeling. I counted my blessings in Base 2, arriving at a repeating square root of a negative number that could shame π. I knew the secret recipe for peace, from the quantum level to the macro world to the theoretical limits of universal entropy.

For the first time in my life I was truly happy. And amazed.

And welcome.

My "quotient": our falling in love. And now I realize it happens much more often than I thought. You just have to do the math.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Tuesday, July 30, Day 212 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N or PS)

Title-accompaniment photo was AI-generated but the repeating decimal was not.

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THIS CHALLENGE GRINDS ON, 366 WORDS AT A TIME...

There are currently three surviving Vocal writers still participating in the insane 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer, challenge originator

• Rachel Deeming (a broad, currently abroad)

• Gerard DiLeo (some other guy)

Read them. Support them. And remember that 22/7 ic close enough for government work, not to mention, rational.