Why do the chalkboards write equations that solve themselves? What makes the ancient texts glow with forbidden knowledge? How do the shadows form geometric proofs on the walls? Why do the typewriters type messages from unknown authors? What causes the library books to open to pages no one has written?
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Oxford is very pretty, but I don’t like to be dead.
― T.S. Eliot
Dr. Cornelius Thorne had always prided himself on rational thought, but the Mathematics Department’s newest acquisition challenged everything he believed about reality. The leather-bound manuscript, donated anonymously, contained equations that seemed to writhe on the page when viewed peripherally.
His colleague, Professor Whitmore, had been the first to attempt translation of the strange symbols interwoven with the mathematical formulae. For three weeks, Whitmore worked feverishly, filling blackboard after blackboard with calculations that hurt to look at directly. Then he simply stopped coming to work.
Thorne found him in his office one morning, sitting motionless at his desk, staring at a final equation he’d written in what appeared to be his own blood. Whitmore’s eyes had turned completely white, and when he spoke, his voice carried harmonics that made Thorne’s teeth ache.
“The numbers,” Whitmore whispered, “they’re not describing reality. They’re rewriting it.”
Against his better judgment, Thorne examined the manuscript himself. The equations began to make terrible sense---they weren’t mathematical proofs but incantations, formulas for reshaping space and time. As understanding dawned, he realized the university hadn’t acquired the book by chance.
The building itself was changing, hallways extending into impossible geometries, classrooms containing angles that shouldn’t exist. Students and faculty continued their routines, seemingly unaware that their world was becoming something else entirely. Only Thorne could see the truth: they were all trapped inside a living equation, and someone---or something---was still calculating.
