3/15/05
This all began as a joke, actually. Jay and I were talking about one of the other grad students in the program. This guy, let’s call him Subject A, was constantly breaking up with his girlfriend. It was damn near comedic how often they got into fights and made up. On 2/18, Subject A came into the lab swearing up and down that he would never, ever get back together with that “rotten, controlling bitch” again. After Subject A left the room to realign the laser down the hall, I turned to Jay and bet him five bucks that they would be back together within three days. “You’re on,” he said.
Three days later, on 2/21, I was analyzing data from our spectrometer when Jay walks into the room and slaps down a crisp five-dollar bill on the table. I smiled at him and asked what happened.
“The bastard came in bragging about how good their makeup sex was. Hot and sweaty, neighbors calling the cops good.” Jay pantomimed a periodic thrusting with his groin. “I mean, I could have guessed they’d get back together, but how did you know it was going to be in three days.”
“I don’t know. It just felt like that was the period of their relationship. About three days.” Jay laughed and said, “Yeah, they’re almost like a pair of yo-yos, swinging up and down. We could probably model their relationship as some sort of mass bouncing on a spring.” Jay seemed to be joking, but I thought about for a second and said, “I’ll bet we could.”
“Are you serious?” He looked incredulous. I said, “Well, we model everything else on a mass vibrating on a spring, oscillating back and forth. Maybe we could model relationships as some sort of periodic function. . .” Jay looked at me like I was insane, so I laughed it off. “I’m just fucking with you, dude.”
But I wasn’t, actually. I began to think about it. I had somehow intuited that it would be exactly three days before Subject A and his girlfriend, now called Subject B, reconciled. Perhaps, I had tapped into some underlying structure of relationships. Not some sort of psychological bullshit, either. An equation to describe relationships. So I, on 2/22, I began to gather data. I assigned numbers from –1 to 1 to describe each attitude or posture Subject A presented. Epic makeup sex was assigned the value of 1. An argument during which the cops were called (Subject A has a mean streak) was assigned –1. I have all my data collected in another notebook, in case the work really pans out. The important thing, anyway, was that after almost a month of collecting data, I plotted out the performance of the relationship.
Figure 1: Look at it! There appears to be a clear periodicity in the function that is the relationship. Although I haven’t managed to determine the full period of it, it looks as though some sort of summation of sines and cosines could describe these data. I scaled the data to better facilitate analysis. While I like the idea of a relationship scaling between –1 and 1, it appears that such a description is too simplistic. I’m not sure what the disturbing behavior at time T ≈ 2.8 indicates, but the very fact that the a function may exist means I have to look into this further.
I’m going to go back to the lab tomorrow and try to determine what happened 2.8 days into my study.
3/16/05
Subject A was only too willing to tell me what happened. He informed me that, on the heels of some rather “bone-rattling sex” (Subject does have a way with words), Subject B informed him that she had cheated on him. It’s wonderful! At that point, their relationship underwent such a dramatic transformation from 1 to –1 in such a short period that my function became discontinuous. That makes perfect sense. People are naturally erratic. Why should they be governed by a function that’s well behaved?
I have to collect more data. There has to be an underlying order.
3/21/05
I think I’ve got it. I’ve been collecting a lot more data, although Subject A seems to be more wary of talking to me now. We were in a bar last night, and I was pumping him for information over a gin and tonic when I started making notes on my cocktail napkin. Subject A became agitated and said, “Why are you always writing things down about me? Christ, man, you’re like some sort of obsessive freak.” He stormed off, but I had already gotten the information I needed.
So, I think that a person can be represented as a vector space, a collection of functions governing their behavior. When two people are in a relationship we look at the cross products of their vector spaces as in Equation 1:
YA x YB == a* Sin[et + d] + b* Cos[et + d] (1)
Where all of the constants listed above are determined by data. I can determine the outcome of a relationship without knowing the specific components of a given Y, that is to say, without knowing the formula that governs the entirety of a person.
If this works, it will be a very powerful formula for predicting future events within a relationship… or maybe ever beyond that.
3/24/05
The function has died out! So far everything has gone according to my predictions, at least from Jay has told me. Subject A won’t come anywhere near me now because he spotted me watching his apartment from the street. I didn’t even bother trying to explain. Jay wouldn’t talk to me for a while either, especially because I only asked about Subject A, but eventually he let it go as one of my “many quirks.” He’s a good guy. I wonder what his Y would look like…
Anyway, back to the important matter at hand, the function, in my most recent analysis for the next few days, has died out. What could this possibly mean? There’s this strange decay factor that’s cropping up into my functions. I need to figure out what that means. Are they breaking up permanently?
3/27/05
He killed her. Subject A killed Subject B. Goddamn, why didn’t I see that? Of course the decay factor is death! Now I just need to . . . wait, maybe I should point out that Subject A killed Subject B accidentally. But that’s not really accounted for in my function. I need to expand the data set. Obviously Subject A has left our research group. I tried to mention in passing to Jay that I saw this coming. He shook his head in disgust and walked away.
4/1/05
I told my thesis advisor about my work today, and he tried to tell me to get psychological help. Apparently, everyone is dealing with the tragedy of Subject A, and I should seek counseling. I don’t care about Subject A, now, though. I’m applying my theorem to new Ys.
4/16/05
Fired today. Jay seemed very concerned for me, but I’ve never felt more excited. Now I have so much more time to work on my theory. I learned that when you take the dot product of a Y with a certain function D(x), you recover the decay data. That is to say, you can determine exactly when a Y will die out.
4/20/05
YJay • D(x) = 378 (2)
He only has a year left. I don’t know what to do.
5/1/05
I haven’t left my room in days. I blacked out the windows. I’ve calculated the decay time for every Y I know. I can’t do anything. No, I won’t do anything. I have to observe. God, I don’t know anymore.
This is all for science.
5/5/05
I covered all of my mirrors. I don’t want to see myself. I know if I see myself, I’ll become nothing more than another Y. I’ll calculate my time left, and I know it isn’t much. Oh no, there’s an inherent instability in my function. That’s why I could never work it out with any other girl. Cross product and then collapse and decay. My parents have been leaving worried messages on my answering machine. I know when they’ll die. I know when they conceived me. I know when they’ll have sex next. Is there an operation to determine birth? No. Stop that. No more. Stop. Stop.Stop.
5/23/05
=1. That’s my time left. According to all of this. Please, no. Don’t let it be true. I want to call Jay or my parents, but I can’t. That isn’t allowed by my equations.
If only it weren’t true. Maybe it isn’t.
It has to be true. It’s all so perfect. It’s as though I can see the hand of God in each line of action. Every crystalline thought appears as a function of these equations. It has to be true. If it is true, then there is an order. There is an order, and there is beauty.
It has to be true.