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Pear Shaped

By Daniel R. Robichaud

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Nigel Roegerg was a mathematician with a specialty in nonlinear equations. He taught classes in some of the basic Chaos theories, such as the Butterfly Effect, May’s bifurcations and the Mandlebrot set (those featuring aesthetically intriguing computer graphics with which to dazzle Norton College’s predominantly anti-intellectual student body).

Imagine his surprise when he awoke Saturday morning, on the couch in his living room, with a splitting hangover, and raised a hand to his head only to discover that instead of responding properly, the limb slithered from the edge of the couch and draped across his chest in a wholly unnatural manner.

At the heart of all mathematics lie formulae. At the heart of any formula lies form. Structure. So it is with mathematicians. They dwell so closely with form that it becomes ingrained into their very beings. Even specialists in nonlinearity deal with limit cycles and numerically based models, which are the lingua franca of constraining awkwardly unpredictable systems inside comprehensible boundaries.

That his body should break form so startled him, Nigel actually cursed in a manner he hadn't considered for the last thirty four years, since he'd been a boy of seven: “What the flux?”

Nigel tried to raise the arm straight up. At first, it would not move, and panic set in. Then, as though thoughts had become the charge through a fluorescent light bulb necessitating a moment before heating the filament enough to illuminate, the fingers bent backwards until they were perpendicular to his palm. There, they remained wobbling like especially sturdy blades of grass in a gentle breeze. Then, the palm bent, rolling backward until it was perpendicular to his wrist. Then, the wrist wrapped round. The components did not disturb one another, did not bend those that moved before into a spiral or loop. Instead, his whole arm was slowly folding at right angles to itself until every component pointed toward the ceiling. Thus, his limb crept into an upright position, where it remained for nearly a minute, a sapling whipped back and forth by hurricane winds, and then promptly drooped over the edge of the couch to hang like limp, wet laundry.

Strangest of all, through this whole unusual affair Nigel experienced no pain, merely a tingling in his arm and a terribly potent case of nauseating horror in his head, gut and soul.

The mirror beside the entertainment center revealed a terrible truth:

The condition was not contained to a single limb. All the skin of his body bulged curiously over the lumps of muscle, fat and cartilage or lay in wrinkled valleys flat against the couch’s cushions.

Nigel had no bones.

None in his arms. None in his legs. None in his torso. None in his head. Not a single bone anywhere in his body.

They’d all vanished during the night.

He sucked in breath. Amazingly, he felt everything working properly. The diaphragm shifted in his formless blob of a belly, filled his lungs with air that theoretically underwent the normal biological process to oxygenate the blood, which still moved through his arteries and veins. He knew this last process was occurring, because his heart was pounding faster than a rock-‘n-roll drummer.

 I’m alive, he thought, but I shouldn’t be. A person doesn’t lose all his bones without losing his life, too.

 What happened? Where did they go?

 They were certainly not present. Not even fragments. He’d feel if there were wouldn’t he? Tiny pellets rubbing against one another as his muscles flexed?

 Why aren’t I cut to pieces?

 It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that bones couldn’t be freed from flesh without cutting through the skin.

 Had they dissolved? Was calcium rich goop now inside him? He hoped not, but there was no way to know for sure.

 Suddenly, dread hit him: how can I go to work?

 This was immediately followed by a case of self-loathing. My body has undergone a major alteration and work is the only thing I can think of?

 When he recalled that this was the first day of a long, holiday weekend, the point became moot.

 He spent several minutes worrying over the question of what had happened, before he realized that with the lack of available data, that question was insoluble.

 He momentarily wondered how his limbs could move at all. Wasn't movement a result of ligaments or muscles bound between bones tensing and relaxing? Weren't bones required for most of this stuff? 

 I should have paid more attention to biology...

 Nigel recalled the mathematical model for generating numerical values for the viscoelastic properties of striated muscle tissue—a paper he'd written with Physiologist Peter Grease almost twenty years ago—but this did little good for him, now.

 Can I sit up?

 He found that with difficulty he actually could, in a manner of speaking.

 Instead of bending at the waist, scissor-like, his head, neck and chest followed his arm’s example. They rolled forward over top of his torso—his body had become a living, tank tread—until they’d reached his waist where they stretched up, pushing his face toward the ceiling, as though he were a flower straining for the sun. There he sat.

 Huh...

 Can I stand?

 Again, yes. Sort of. With difficulty.

 It took several exhausting minutes for his body to approximate a stance. Sheer will held him up.

 Huh, again.

 When his concentration slipped, his muscles relaxed and he collapsed. The sound of him hitting the hardwood floor was comparable to a sealed Ziploc bag filled with yogurt dropped on linoleum. The pain was similar to the world’s worst belly flop.

 That fall jarred loose memories from last night.

 He’d gone to a pub’s grand opening with colleagues. What was the place called? Ah, yes... Barbonies.

 After an hour, his faculty friends had gone home to wives and families. Because his house was empty of those fetters, Nigel remained to close the place.

 He wasn’t alone long.

 A trio of young ladies eager to explore Daddy fixations chatted him up. Nothing sexual, pure flirtation. One of them revealed that she’d been a student in his class but hadn’t passed muster to remain a math major.

 “Mathematics requires dedication,” Nigel explained. “You have to eat, sleep, screw and live it.” He chuckled. “You could say it’s in my bones.”

 Just a tossed off comment. One of those things a person says and almost instantly forgets, until events conspire to grant the comment retroactive ironic importance. Events such as making an off the cuff remark about your bones and then waking up to discover those bones were missing. 

 Were those three girls responsible?

 He almost laughed at the foolishness of this notion. How could a trio of lackluster college undergrads pull off a feat like absconding with someone’s skeleton but leaving the victim otherwise unharmed? If they could manage that then why should they fail multi-dimension calculus exams, as they’d mentioned doing? As complex as integration over several variables may be, it paled in comparison to complete bone extraction...

 What about Linda? His ex-wife had called him “spineless” on plenty of occasions. If she could only see him now...

 An equally foolish line of thinking. Linda had no bad feelings, now. Leaving him was the best thing she could have done, or so she’d communicated through her lawyer. He could only imagine the bliss her life had since become.

 Had someone else been listening in? Something else, perhaps?

 Monsters or aliens or mad scientists who just happened to be tuned to one of a million watering holes in any one of a couple hundred-thousand college towns where nothing truly exciting ever happens, at the instant one insignificant mathematics professor had spoken that single, damning phrase?

 Smacked more of coincidence than design.

 Nigel puzzled over the situation for several minutes before again concluding there was little point in the effort. Though the dangling questions of who, why and how nagged him as they would anyone, there existed too little initial information.

 The problem was insoluble.

 The real question he needed to consider was: what would he do next?

 This seemed straightforward enough.

 Sit. Stand. Walk.

 Contract the muscles enough to restore some semblance of order. This way he could call for help.

 Would hospitals and doctors be able to do anything? Unknown. Bone could be transplanted, but what about whole skeletons? Unknown. Could... So many unknowns!

 What did it matter if he could walk?

 How could he get on with life as though nothing was different? Everything was different! It’d all gone pear shaped.

 Nigel was pear shaped.

 He blubbered. His limbs flailed like noodles against the floorboards. It was nothing short of a tantrum. It lasted nearly twenty minutes.

 In the hollow left by that emotional outpouring, when he felt there were no more options available, Nigel's mind echoed his two-word work ethic. Never Submit.

 A simple maxim, perhaps, but it had seen him through much.

 When the uncertainties of life's future and his role in it had struck during his undergraduate days, he had not buckled beneath them. When his graduate research advisor had claimed every one of Nigel's ideas for his own, he had not quit. When his wife of fourteen years left to explore her (until then unrevealed) polyamory, he hadn’t given up. When the grant money dried up and lean times became emaciated ones, well he’d almost surrendered, but that simple maxim work ethic nurtured a grain of strength and saw him through.

 So, he was now merely a pile of meat, cartilage and liquid. He was still alive, still aware.

 Still Nigel Roegerg.

 Lying there in the moist remnants of his own misery, he had a new thought. When a model shifted beyond paradigmatic limits and entered a regime originally thought impossible, it was time to change the established limits or change equations.

 Maybe someone could help with this boneless problem, maybe not, but the only way to find out was to achieve a baseline to work from.

 Sit, stand and walk. That seemed like the best starting point.

 Bones or no, if he could do those things, he could still call himself an animal. Not really a man, anymore: he was an invertebrate, after all. There would be time enough to discover details of exactly what he had become once the foundation was set.

 Sit. Check.

 Stand. Not well and not for long.

 Walk?

 Maybe, by weekend's end, he’d have enough control to call someone. Tuesday, at the outside.

 What if I get hungry? Thirsty? Have to pee or go number two?

 Motivation for expediency.

 What if this was not affecting one, insignificant mathematics professor in a small, midwestern college town? What if the entire world had gone pear shaped?

 For the moment, that didn’t matter. A question like that was beyond the scope of his current data.

 Sit. Stand—

 Dammit.

 Maybe next time.

 Or not.

Hopefully, soon.

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