When it starts out, life is an equation which consists almost solely of the unknown. Inherent in it: unlimited options and infinite promise.
This is why at least for a while it is enjoyable, it's interesting. The unknown and the unforeseen make it exciting, all the first times and the new discoveries, the adventures and the surprising elements that are immanent in the unfamiliar. However, Aaron Curbler dreaded things that he was not familiar with. He despised surprises, which was why to him the unknown was far from desirable. As a consequence the first half of the equation that was his own life, with all its unknown factors, left him agitated.
He had always done brilliantly when it came to solving equations mathematically, but for as long as he could remember he had been struggling to figure out the one that was his living. In Mathematics, it was rather simple. Unknown parameters, resembled by substitutes, represented infinite options. Solving an equation meant determining the particular number out of an infinite amount that made sense to the elements around it. There was only ever one, an only and solely option that would fit. Didn´t this put your mind at ease?
It did, Aaron´s, which was why no matter how agitated he was on a regular day, solving mathematical equations would never fail to soothe him. Day after day he would do it in the evenings, so he could relax and fall asleep. He would replace each unknown element in the equation in front of him by a constant - a number that was known to him. There was nothing that Aaron enjoyed more, because he loved the definite and despised the grey zones. Whenever the unknown would be eliminated entirely, an equation would be solved, and he would feel okay again, even if a day had thrown him off guard. On most of his days this would be the case, because generally speaking Aaron wasn't dealing well with the unanswered questions that his life presented to him. Overwhelmed by them, he would seek shelter in the definite answers that could only be found in mathematics.
Only as he grew older, and this is the case for every person, the unknown elements in the equation that was his life slowly started reducing. First times became rare, new discoveries - seldom, and unlimited options were bit by bit replaced by the single ones that he had decided on. In contrast to most other people Aaron wasn't bored by it. Instead he felt relieved when he reached his mid 40s and noticed that in his life´s equation there weren't many unknown elements left. Perhaps apart from what was one of the biggest: the unknown that was death.
Realizing it, the scientist that Aaron was couldn´t stop thinking about it. He just had to figure out what the last unknown parameter would be and see the equation that was his living solved while he was still living. Which, eventually, he did.
For the last ten years before his death Aaron saw it coming. For about eight of them he woke up every morning with the premonition that it was approaching. You could argue that it is always like this, for everyone, because each minute that passes pushes living things further towards it, and as soon as a person consciously notices it, they are on the brink of a midlife-crisis. However, the way that Aaron felt wasn´t just a messenger of crisis. He didn't just become aware of the fact that along the line he would have to die. It was like Aaron could foresee that he was going to get killed.
People who had cancer once might feel something similar. They might be in remission, but what nearly killed them can always return and most likely will, it is only a matter of time. For Aaron, however, it wasn't a fatal disease that made him feel like this. It was something else, something bigger, he would claim.
As self-centered as it sounded, he had always ruled out that he would die like the ordinary guy, of a heart attack after eating too much fat, of a neurological disease after too much aspirin, or of a growing tumor in his spleen. Not only would he have ruled it out, he would have hated it. He would have felt insulted by a death like this.
An ordinary end to a mind as extraordinary as his? That would have been disappointing, it would have been degrading, it wouldn't have been good enough for him.
This was the reason why he had told himself for half his life that he would end it himself if he were to fall fatally sick. However, as he would insist, it wouldn´t be a suicide that he would committ. He´d claim that it would be a means to an end. A necessary step in order to prevent an all too ordinary death from taking away the extraordinary meaning that his brilliant mind had tried to give to the equation that was his life.
Growing up, he used to think that death necessarily meant drowning, falling down a cliff, burning in a fire, crashing in a car, or being cut in two by a saw. He used to believe that it was only ever external forces that could end a person. That you could also die of internal forces - of sickness or old age - he only learned on his way to school one day. It was a rainy summer morning, chilly enough for the season, and one of his peers mourned the death of his granddad who, at the age of 96, had reached his natural expiry date.
"Is the house okay?" Aaron asked, agitated, as he was walking beside his classmates. "Could the fire brigade save it?"
"Huh?" Bewilderment spread around him. "What do you mean? His heart stopped, why would the house not be ok? And what would the fire brigade do about his death?"
As much as his peers thought that he was joking, Aaron was in fact struggling to understand what they meant.
"Did he not… go up in flames?" He asked hesitantly, as a column of his world began to shake and with what he said next he was hoping to balance it again. "Isn't that how death usually goes? People catch fire, no?"
Maybe it was that day that made Aaron an outcast, and eventually a genius. Without a social element to your school career, what could you possibly do other than filling the emptiness in a mind that's been deprived of everything with formulas and knowledge?
That the two peers he walked with that day looked at him weird after his statement would not have covered the situation. They left him there. In an instant they fled to the opposite side of the street, and this kind of behavior turned out to be infectious. Soon after the event everyone in his grade did it like this when they encountered him. It was almost like they were scared of him. Thank God, he would have said. He was convinced that this was what prevented them from beating him, despite his outstanding contributions in class and his nerdy character trades. They never touched him, but neither did they ever sit next to him, choose him to play on their team, or talk to him in the yard. Never mind! None of it bothered Aaron much, so he would have claimed. It was good for him, he thought when he signed up for college, which he was sent on to attend earlier than anyone from his school had ever been. If he hadn't been deprived of the affection that only other human beings could give, then he would probably never have fed his mind what it needed to make him outstanding at what he eventually chose to do.
With a story like this Aaron decided early on that a mind as extraordinary as his deserved an unusual death, and maybe his decision was inspired by what he used to think about external forces being the only things that could end a person. Aaron had never determined which external force exactly it would be to end his: an accident, a natural disaster, a knife, a bullet, fire, or water.
Only when he couldn´t stop thinking about solving his life´s equation while he was still alive did he begin to wonder what it could mean.
Just like he would have done with a variable in a mathematical equation he thought about the infinite options represented by the unknown element, ruled out those that didn't make sense in the context and compared the probabilities of what was left. In the process he became fairly sure that someone would be the engineer of his last big unknown factor.
In the first five years that he came to think this it frightened him until he went to make his peace with it. Eventually he even started appreciating it, because there was some irony in it if a special type of engineer as he was of profession died a death that someone else had engineered.
For a long time Aaron kept it to himself. But then, a few months before his passing would take place, a storm caused a blackout in the towns that bordered his estate. Even though it is normally present in over 80 percent of the world - up high, in the sky, a veil to disguise it - the blackout caused by the wind reduced the light pollution in Aaron´s area, so the night was full of stars again. Under a clear and starry sky he woke up in cold sweat after one of many nightmares he´d had. As he shot up from the pillows next to Mara, he was gasping, and when he glanced out the window above his bed, the sky was clear. Whether it were the stars that he saw through the ceiling built of glass that inspired him, or something else entirely: In that very moment he made the decision to share the premonitions about his last unknown with his wife, who too had woken by his nightmare. While he was gasping for air, she sat next to him in bed and gently tried to pet him back to sleep, one hand on his chest and the other one, massaging his neck.
"Sooner or later, rabbit," he growled, "I'm going to be taken out by someone. Soon enough, I can feel it, and I hope that you won't be there to see it."
She pulled her hands back. In the darkness she couldn't make out if he was serious or not, and at first she held onto silence, like a child - to their favorite blanket. Then suddenly she shook her head as if her hair were on fire, before she turned her back on him, pulled her blanket up and cuddled up into her pillow, closing her eyes.
"Oh, will you stop, Mr. Center of the Universe!" She scoffed. "I´m sorry, but that's ridiculous! Who but yourself would consider you important enough to take you out?" A yawn, like she was bored by the thought, and amidst it she added: "Just go back to sleep."
No, Aaron did not. Resentfully he stared at her back for a while. How dare she talk to him like that? He was infuriated and could unfortunately not just leave it at that.
"I was…" He wanted to yell at her, fight with her, tell her that she had hurt him, but as soon as he moved on he lost the courage and only added, "... just joking, rabbit."
He brushed it off, like he would do with everything that could somehow make him feel something, because it was his own feelings that he didn't know how to deal with.
To make it easier on Mara he petted her head thereafter and said: "You should try laughing sometime. I like you best when you smile."
Despite the starry night, the brightness of the sky, and his reconciling words, his blood was boiling next to her. She had hurt him badly and didn't deserve any favors, so he refused to do what she had asked him. In spite of her he didn't sleep at all that night, but kept on staring at her neck. How fragile and easy to break! Until the morning dawned, he tried to think of ways to get her back for what she had said, and for the months to come he would resent her every day for the incident under a clear and starry sky.
He wasn't a person of emotion, and the one time he had tried to be open she had kicked him in the teeth.
Why did he marry her again?
From then on he would be wondering about it. Every morning he would sit in the kitchen and observe her with disgusted eyes, as she would make coffee. After intense observation he would have to admit that she was still attractive. But she wasn't even good in bed, he would try to pick her apart in his thoughts. Her blowjobs, however, had made her a keeper, when they had started going out. Not that she had given him any in the past years, but even the memory of the many before had kept him hanging on to her, without ever questioning his marriage.
The reason why he was still with her, wasn't only her blowjobs, though, there was more. However, in his anger he refused to admit the truth, which was that he genuinely loved her. He loved everything about her, even the sides that annoyed him sometimes, the little things just as much as the many big things.
Her clumsiness and her high pitched voice. Her stubbornness, and the way she put her head back when she smiled. The softness in her gestures, and that whenever she'd get car sick she would look into the light, convinced that it was helping. What Aaron loved about her most, however, was the strength that she had to have for never hiding what she felt. The integrity that she was oozing by unapologetically being herself, and that she took loyalty just as much as seriously as honesty.
She complimented him, but he was upset in the months before his death and did not want to admit it. Instead he would sit on his chair every evening, looking for reasons to leave her. He would observe her all through dinner until she would turn to him, and then he would tear his eyes away again and force them on his plate, so she wouldn't notice that he had ever looked.
It would only make her feel important, he thought, and since she clearly didn't consider him important, at least not enough to get killed by anyone, why then should he want to make her feel relevant?
Thinking about it, she really wasn't. According to his calculations, her relevance in fact equaled zero. In the bigger scheme of things she was disposable. A dog groomer who was nice to everyone and liked watching game shows, but even after years of watching them she struggled to guess the right answers. Not that Aaron would have called her stupid. She was smarter than he would ever be when it came to living things or anything to do with them. She just didn't care about formulas or anything else that, as she would say, some dead fart with the urge to feel important had put into a book and declared a universal knowledge.
"Who came up with the weekdays, anyway?" She had asked him one day. "Let's just stop time, let's make today Maraaronday, a day that is all about us. Then we wouldn't have to go to work and could just stay in bed together."
She would make it sound as if it were up for discussion whether it was Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. As if anyone could just add one, or two, or 90 million to the seven days that a week necessarily contained.
"The Babylonians invented the weekdays, rabbit," Aaron had smirked. "And invent isn't really the right word in this case. They are based on the lunar circle and that will never change. It is a system that this world is built on, and whether or not they consciously know, every living thing on earth is living by it."
It wasn't like she didn't understand the laws of nature or the principles that the world was built on. She understood them, alright, but she didn't want to accept them, so she denied them whenever she saw appropriate. How it would upset him sometimes!
She thought that booksmart meant ignorant, and what would ignorance be if not the highest form of stupidity? Thinking about it, Aaron would sometimes be wondering if she only saw the booksmart in him.
Did she think that he was ignorant? He'd think to himself. Did his own wife consider him stupid?
After the clear sky on a starry night, thoughts like these reinforced the doubts he had. He wasn't only booksmart, but just as well a scientist and for them ignorant thinking is the end to everything.
Perhaps this was why she had brushed his premunitions off in the starry night.
The longer he thought about it, the more convinced he became. If she thought him to be ignorant, then she didn´t consider him a legitimate scientist. Which, of course, would mean that nobody at all could ever want to see him killed, because what could an ignorant scientist ever do or discover that might be a threat to someone else?
Aaron had long ago made science the purpose of his life´s equation. How could his wife - out of all people! - empty out the meaning of this purpose, by denying him validity at what he used to think he was doing best?
His doubts didn´t end with this question, no, it was only the start. If booksmart was ignorant and equalled something that had no raison d'être, what about booksmart people then? What about people like him, who had learned about the world mostly through what books had told him? Eventually Aaron came to wonder if Mara maybe thought that he had no reason to exist at all.
Did she not love him?
He used to think she did. In fact he used to be convinced of it. But if she hated everything booksmart, why then would she not despise him just as well?
Day after day he would be wondering in the months that led up to his passing. Every morning he would sit in the kitchen, pondering, and most of their mornings were the same. It all started on a sunny day in spring. Outside it was painfully bright, and Aaron hid his eyes under his coffee cup, so she wouldn't see that he was looking, when his doubts about his marriage grew into a planet.
Did she care? Did she care about him, or was it a pretense? And no matter if she cared or not: What were the reasons for it?
It is a flaw of human nature, he went on thinking, that every person needs someone. At a time when Mara had craved somebody, he might just have happened to be around, and upon meeting him she had perhaps just decided to go the easiest way and along with it. Along with him, whereas it could have just as well been anybody else.
Thinking about it, Aaron wouldn't have blamed her if choosing him had only been a spur of the moment right-time-and-place-situation, instead of a spark that had been lit. In his eyes right-time-and-place, not really another person her- or himself, was the reason why people got married, and he was no exception for it either.
When he had really craved somebody to care about, he had met Mara and decided to love her, because she had fulfilled a need. Temporarily, at least. Had he met her at a different time, would he still have loved her?
No, probably not.
If he had met somebody else, no matter who, before her, would he have walked past her to go with them instead, and would he have loved them just the same?
Yes, so Aaron would have guessed. Because, in his eyes, this was what love was: not an action, and neither was it a feeling that you could accidentally fall into and drown in. To him love was the consuming craving that you want to give it , and the firm decision to answer it. The pressing urge to connect with somebody else, no matter with whom, at a particular time, and for the years to come, or so he thought, you go the easy way. You try to persuade yourself that the ones you´ve chosen once will meet your wish to love until the end of time. What a shock to you it will be when you realise that they will not, and just think about it, how could they?
With thoughts like these Aaron was taking love apart at the kitchen table, as he was giving his wife the eyes, because he had to admit that she failed to fulfill his most recent needs. She couldn't fulfill them any longer, because his need to love someone had grown into something else. Into the need for someone to love him back.
She didn´t. She couldn´t, he was fairly sure, and the longer he observed her, the more confident he grew.
She got up, wiped the kitchen table and took her keys off the counter.
"Have a good day, I love you," she said, like it was an empty phrase, as she was walking out, and the moment when she said it Aaron crossed his arms, because he started wondering. Wondering how serious she was.
Did she actually? Love him? Did she love him and would she be able to care in the way that he needed it at this very moment?
Doubts overlaid his vision. What she had said to him when he had tried to tell her about the way he would die indicated that there was no way, no way at all that she had ever loved him or cared about him in a way that counted.
With a sigh he stared into his coffee cup as if it were an oracle that could tell the future.
He didn't really want to leave her, and this was a bit, but not only due to her talent for blowjobs. However, at this moment he didn't really want to stay with her either.
Maybe she could care, but he had reasonable doubt. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, between a blowjob and perhaps a better place at a time when he felt like the clock was ticking. His time was running out and decisions had to be made.
If not now, then never.