The Mariposa Equation: A Proof That One Divided by Infinity Equals Everything You've Ever Lost and Will Never Lose Again
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The first time Mara stepped between seconds, she was reaching for a dropped teacup. It was porcelain, painted with tiny blue flowers that matched nothing else in her kitchen. She saw it falling, saw the inevitable shatter written in its trajectory, and then—without quite knowing how—she slipped sideways into the pause between the cup leaving her fingers and meeting the floor.
Time wasn't frozen there, exactly. It was more like water so still it had forgotten how to move. She could see the dust motes suspended in the shaft of sunlight, each one caught in its own private stasis. She could see the steam from her abandoned tea curling upward in perfect, unmoving spirals. She could see herself—two of herself now—one still seated at the table with her hand extended, the other standing here in the impossible gap.
What surprised her most wasn't that she could breathe, or move, or think. What surprised her was that she wasn't alone in the silence between things breaking. There was a voice, surprised and quavering, a voice floating faintly from just out of sight.
This is fascinating…
Mara wanted to smile, but time had suspended all emotion except curious wonder.
This is… intriguing… it's almost conceivable that this could be how it feels to…
The voice trailed off a little bit, and when it returned it was tentative.
Mara? Can you hear me?
Two voices, faintly echoing in timelessness; and each one resolved through her mind in the shape of a woman in a white lab coat, eyes huge and anxious.
Of course. Can you see me?
There was a long moment of silence.
Mara, I don't think- OH. Oh. Now there are two of you.
Mara cocked her head at the voice. It was hard to tell which one was Mary, which was Mariposa. She could never resist a test, and it seemed pointless to deviate from her customary thought processes now. After all, if she was here…
Wait. There's- there's one of me, but I can't see myself… but you can.
This was a much longer, somewhat distracted silence.
Of course I can. If I couldn't, I wouldn't be here. But I can't make head-or-tail of what else is going on. Can you?
You and I… there aren't two of us. Because of time. The pause between things. There's an openspace. I was reaching for a teacup, and in my reach was a stretch I wanted, and I measured it, and I went for it, without quite realizing what I was doing, and there was a hole, like a space no one should be in. But I am. There's… I don't know. There aren't complicated times, timelines, knots, dimensions, coils… It's just this space. It stretches. But I don't need it to stretch. It just does.
There it is, the inflection point. It sparks in cold tendrils of proto-energy, simmering just out of sight like a field of charged electrons at the moment a thunderstorm breaks.
Here's the thing. You're the Mariposa.
And she is the Mariposa, Mara realizes deceptively simply. There is no clairvoyance, no revelation to it at all. She can feel it within her body, a language too simple to be read at once. The space in-between spaces opens because there is more than one Mariposa girl.
Are you sure I'm not insane? said Mary/Mariposa, and Mara shook her head.
Inside the nascent echo-verse was an experiment, a place Mara had inhabited without realizing it because she was used to inhabiting something very similar every day.
No. Don't worry. I'm not insane. I think there just aren't enough numbers for all of us the way there are people.
Mariposa/Mary laughed, and Mara could feel it as an echo in her mind. Mary cleared her throat, rubbing the bridge of her nose as if she had a dull headache to deal with in the space of possibility between them.
That… makes sense. I can't see you, so I guess I couldn't see the others.
Probably not. Mara shrugged. There are experiments.
I guess if all of us really are from the same part of reality, then maybe there aren't any others. If you know what I mean.
Mind-blowing! The pause was incredible! Where you could just…
There was a shift, in energy and in Mara's perception. The still-ness pulsed and expanded, expanding energy all around them, and Mara's awareness shifted down into her own mind; suddenly, there wasn't time for Mara to think long enough to warm up to herself.
Here was- here was the potential. Here was the idea, the experiment, the tangent, the incandescence, the Oneohtwo, the three-to-tango, the step from do do re mis to an emotional epiphany, and when the heartfelt clarity came, Mara was there with herself.
Mary/Mariposa was holding her breath and the world was still outside of them. Mara reached out and felt a ribcage shudder just at first contact. This was one body, these two selves: an explosive overlap that sent their shadows out diagonally in the fragrance of a potassium flame, in the ricochet of lost equals before the equals become a full equation. It can lean on bars with a pen in its pocket and be invincible, bending spacetime itself in two, earth-sprung and shiny.
How many manipulations of quantity would be unmarked territory? How many waves could there be before the water ran out? If Mara knocked off her trademark eyeglasses, swallowed a toaster, and jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would Mary /Mariposa do the same, or only consider it?
You want me?
Fuck yes, I'm so close to insanity already!
The space between them quivered like the moment before a ribbon snaps, and the pair of Maras took Mara's hands in unison. She recognized what she felt in herself—she could feel what part of herself was Mary, and what was Mariposa—as if she were being incarnated into her own truth. It was like being offered a room of beds that each fit exactly. She sank down into Mary's simple unfolding, and folded out into Mariposa's spare becoming, and there it was: that urge to spill, to is, to everything, to one plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one, to swirl in an overflow of self, to be the oldest question of all known realities…
"What do you want to do?"
It was a loaded question, and both women gave it the same pause it deserved. There was Mara's resolve, standing in the air between Mary and Mariposa,Mariposa and Mary, Mara in two parts, with two minds but one soul, on a knife's edge between two isnesses.
"What do you want to do," Mariposa said, through Mara. "Not Mara. Mara is me."
And the Mara gathered herself together for an answer to the question that had brought her here.
"I want a day," she said, meeting Mary's eye. Neither had said anything of what they already had, possessed of time and space. "I want a day that ends but doesn't end in anything but itself. I want it to have flow, not moments or measurements, or categories or categories or nets or notes or categories or qualities or quantifiers or qualities or habits or measurements or memories. I want a day that doesn't do anything. Does that make sense?"
It made sense in ways more beautiful than Mara expected, as Mariposa answered in three voices.
A day that just… is.
A day with soft edges and—
Wasn't a day already by definition finite.
No. I'm talking about the wrong kind of time.
We have time.
Not the same kind. Time is always reaching for inevitability. This is something more than that. A kind that is at once before, simultaneous, and after, all at once. A day that I fade into existence, and don't ever end."
"Creature?"
Nothing. Creature. A creature that exists without a specific time-bound existence. A day that doesn't go. Isn't finished with its time yet…
She paused. The slow, widening birth of a new time including them both was more than she had ever seen or touched before. She knew you could get to This before the Last, but she had never walked beyond the concept of before and after. She was walking in a place that —" was a paradox, yes, but, paradox or intuition aside, wasn't. It just was.
Mara watched her, still holding one anti-symmetrically patient hand. It rippled like water and Mara saw faces in the colors, faces of Mary and Mariposa before she even knew it was possible.
Mara, spokeswoman for the equivalence of instant magnanimity. Mara O◆ About the ending
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