Even Mathematics Cares

The bedroom air has a slight wintery chill, like it's been out all night. I work up the nerve to uncover a warm toasty foot to the cold workaday air. Gradually, the memory of the dream I passed through moments before returns to me.

A pink angel-fairy woman about the length of a baby hovers, Tinkerbell style. Her gentle but sure voice explains any number of truths to me, now forgotten. All but one—a memory of a memory echoes deep in my ear. It is the last thing she said before I awoke to warm cozy green flannel sheets. "Even mathematics cares," she says. "The whole world, it cares for you. It loves and it waits and there will come a day when humanity discovers that even mathematics cares."

Eyes looking up to a painted white ceiling, I let the three words swirl within me. "Even mathematics cares," I whisper again and again, nourished by two promises. The first, that infinite numbers, tall quiet pine trees, books, even weapons care for us. And the second, that some day this will be commonly known by all persons.

I look down at my two feet and find myself, standing, in my familiar bedroom, now warmed by one beating heart.

Photo from National Science Foundation.

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