12.09.2012

Alphus

This is part of serialized short story. I posted the beginning on 11.03.2012, and if you click on the label, “The Adventure of Alphus Gibb,” you can see all the available pieces together. I’ll be posting new segments on Sundays. I hope you like it.
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6/13

            “Let me just talk this out with you: The starfish cycles of birth and death that I have tabulated and the overall population ODE can be modeled by a Fourier series meaning the total number of starfish base on time, t, of course, is loosely based on an exponential function dependent on the initial population, but here’s what interesting: the birth rates that I have recorded can be modeled by a triangle wave, which is where the Fourier comes in. It appears that the number of births per unit time rises until a point, the end of a period, where the rate drops to zero and then eventually rises again. The wave is half rectified, of course. Oh ho! We can’t have a negative birth rate, now can we? No, starfish crawling back into their genetic lineage is not allowed. At least, I’ve yet to see it. Don’t you think it’s fascinating?”

            Alphus gazed into her eyes, or he tried to at least. Gauss Anne was so excited that she kept gesturing very close to his face and tracing invisible numbers and symbols onto the table. When he wasn’t flinching, Alphus made prolonged eye contact with the tops of her eyebrows.

            Gauss Anne Worlby had not let a lack of school get in the way of her education. In fact, school would probably have hindered her learning experience. She had no patience for the distraction of her peers or for the dull hours spent sitting in a classroom. Like Alphus, Gauss Anne was immensely preoccupied, but her interest in animals and rocks stemmed from their potential as subjects of study and not at all as companions. She would not enter their world as a follower waiting to be initiated but as a Bazaov with notebook in hand. She wanted to get at nature’s secrets, and the only relationships she was interested in were ones like the speed of light’s relation to the medium through which it traveled or a movement’s relationship to the electrical impulse coming from the brain. 

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