turing ayres [capitol] ~fin

Shooting stars all break up
And even though it seems like half the world away

I press my fingers against my rib cage and listen for the sound of cogs and clockwork.

"What do you want for your birthday, son?"

Stuttering, shaking my head.

Nothing

is

coming

out.

"Do you want that action figure we saw?"

Seven year old boy, fiddling with my thumbs and staring at the ground. I shake my head because I was never the vocal one. Too afraid to talk in case they were hiding in the shadows, waiting for another tongue twister to get me. To repeat the n one too many times. I was so interested in drawing eight's, I was too prone to leaving my t's uncrossed and my i's undotted. They laughed at me for that too; one minute they're calling me a nerd and the next they're calling me stupid. What if they're watching.

"What about the monster truck, I saw the neighbor's boy with one yester-"

I shake my head again, looking up with wide blue eyes and my teeth sunken into my lip. I'm afraid to turn eight. Every child's eyes on me as they sing the same repetitive song, striking the same harmonic as they spit judgement into my eyes and venom into my veins when they corner me by themselves. She looks confused, almost frustrated as she rolls her eyes and sighs.

"Well then, what would you like sweetie?"

An escape.

Some respect.

To be left alone.

"A-a-a-a-a-" she stares at me with expectant eyes and the shadows themselves spit judgement into my eyes. "N-n-newt..." trailing, stammering; new, newt, newton--

"I would l-l-l-i-"

nothing comes out.

"Newton's cr-r-r-a"

cradle me tight.

"Newton's cradle."

---

Fifteen years old and I'm not comfortable in skin the burns red so it can be consumed by the wildfire of my insecurities. I tread school halls like I would thin ice, a second spent too long in one place and I find myself pinned against another wall that day. Fifteen years spent the base of this mountain and I had no desire to see the top; I would've rather held a book to my chest than a woman and solve puzzles about velocities rather than test the possibility by climbing summits. I would not fall for the illogical thrill of excitement; one second spent too long treading thing ice and I found myself drowning.

I could never hide, being one of the more taller ones -at fifteen standing at 5'10- I naturally stood out. My glasses were always thick and round, my hair was blonde and ragged as I ran my hand through it giving a nervous glance to my left and another one to my right. I always kept a book to my side, holding it under my arm or to my chest with my backpack slung over my shoulder. My awkward stature remained amplified to ten times its original magnitude, it was too obvious I did not belong. Monochrome skin and a black and white view of the world did not belong in a school where everyone represented one shade of color or the other.

A fumble in my step, a stutter in my speech; they were always conspicuous to the wildfire trapped beneath my skin.

Never one to spend a second too long on thin ice, I quickly found myself buried within books in the library. I called it sanctuary, the only place where ice didn't threaten to crack beneath my feet and I would not be judged to climbing summits only so I could fall. They never looked for me in the library; I could be knowledgeable in silence.

I never considered myself to be an attractive boy, I could never truly see myself in the mirror behind the wildfire threatening to consume me from the inside out. My nose was too long, my clothes were never up to the standards set by the magazines and I didn't possess the muscles of the careers with bronze skin and chiseled chins seen on the television. 5'10, tall, thin, slouched and awkward.

Monochrome in a world of variety; I was an incomplete canvas from fifteen.

---

"I-I will not st-stutter."

I press my finger against the mirror, sighing once again. Not good enough.

I tell myself I'm a better man, correcting my awkward slouch. Asking my father to buy me countless books; the first step to escaping the confines of your tongue is confidence. I read those laminated pages cover to cover in two days and then once again in less than twenty four hours. It's been an hour, practicing in front of the mirror how to speak, how to stand and how to smile. I can be comfortable in my skin if I really try; skin that's warming beneath the pressure of a wildfire and that threatens to blister whenever someone cares what's below the surface.

Wildfire; it lights up even the most monochrome existence.

Standing at over six foot with a straight back and hair I finally combed to the side and kept from getting scruffy. I'm not a fashionable man, but my clothes fit. They do not drape over my wrists and jackets do not hang to my knees. Shoes aren't splitting and my sinew no longer threatens to tear because I no longer find myself stuffed inside another locker. Sharp jawline, pale skin and cleanly shaven -- perhaps there was potential within that shell I called my body. Potential within my mind and a plethora possibilities and open doors at my fingertips.

I'm on the cusp of manhood and college is on the horizon. I always wanted a degree in mathematics and once I'd solved enough mathematical puzzles and drawn enough graphs, any place would take me. It only became a matter of watching white wings sprout from my back so I could soar from the confines of this monochrome reality of mine.

I promised myself I would remain as me, just a better version of me. I still have my quirks; needing to keep my pencils separated from my pens and always needing to dot my i's just before crossing my ts. My fours need to be bent at an angle or they're not right and I can't help but correct people whenever they state a fact wrong. Call me a prick, I know.

"I will not..."

My voice trails and I press against the mirror harder, as I stare into the reflective pane, a pair of blue eyes stare back; numbers and all engraved behind them.

"I will not stutter."

The second step to escaping the confines of your tongue is determination, I suppose.

---

Twenty three years old and my mother has three graduation pictures upon our shelf. I left that house after a year of work, finally saving enough to rent out my own apartment. My father called it standing on my own two feet, I suppose there is a certain pride to be found in sovereignty. It's been two months since I left home, a year since I've been working. Working in the technological research industry has it's benefits, decent pay and all. I tell myself it's only temporary though. Always discovering new technologies and the boss tends to take credit; he tells me I just crunch the numbers.

Winter nips at my skin as I sip my coffee, these days I need caffeine to function. Rings line my eyes and my skin's turned paler than it was back in my childhood, hell I've even started getting stubble. I tell myself it's worth it. I'm tired and fading but it's oh-so worth it. There's so much to discover and so much to find, I need this damn it.

Second turning to minutes in the winter's afternoon and I feel just about ready to head back inside.

And then she catches my eye.

---

"Is this your first girlfriend, son?"

My father hands me the coffee and sits next to me on the bench. Twenty three, verging on twenty four even, and I think this is the first time I've seen my father proud of something I've done that isn't winning a golden medal in a mathematical competition or getting my degrees. I take a sip and nod my head. "Yeah, my first proper one." Kids being kids and falling into each other's arms in college doesn't count. I never even felt anything.

No, this is fallen petals and midnight meet-ups. Fireworks going off in this empty chest of mine and a heartbeat I never knew existed for twenty four years. I swear, the only time my heart can accelerate is when her hands are in my hair and her lips are against mine and we embrace and...

"How do you feel about her?"

"Who?" I ask, absent minded.

"Astrid." He answers, laughing at shaking his head. He knows I've never been one to let my attention waver from details.

I shrug my shoulders as I take another sip.

"Y'know, I've only seen you like this when you graduated college."

I raise an eyebrow, obviously confused. I shake my head because I cannot compute such a fact. When I graduated college, it was proudest moment of my life. Graduating with a first and top of my class; proving to everyone -and myself- that I was better man than I was when I was fifteen. "That doesn't make sense, I haven't achieved anything here." These aren't comparable things; Astrid and my achievements. Because she's more complicated than any parametric graph I've ever drawn.

He looks perplexed at the son he could never see eye-to-eye with. "Not achieved anything? Son, do you know how lucky you are to have someone in your life who makes you feel this way?"

Can't compute.

"I dunno, I don't see how this is really anything." I say simply, taking another sip.

"Did I ever tell you how me and your mother met?"

I nod my head, plenty of times.

"You accidentally bumped into her and asked her to work on a coffee date." I repeat the story like it's scripture, knowing it like the back of my hand. Engraved into the back of my brain like a cheat sheet.

"Yes, and we dated for three years before I asked her to marry me," how nice for him, I suppose. "Turing, the day she agreed to marry me was a greater moment than any award or promotion I could ever get."

I find it strange, how he seemed to have gained so much from spending on an extravagant wedding and having children. The cost and benefit analysis says it wasn't worth it. What did he gain from marrying Mother? I never thought to ask, I barely understood the rationale of others anyway.

"Treat her right son, else you'll hate yourself when you've lost her."

What does a broken heart feel like, I wonder?

---

There's a hole in my chest.

I press my fingers against my rib cage.

I wonder.

"F-f-fuck th-th...this..."

Why the hell am I stuttering again? At twenty four years old.

I lost two extensions of myself today.

Astrid. Job.

I never should've expected her to stay.

("My name's Turing. And you?"

"Astrid.")

I never stuttered then.

("You're really pretty, you know.")

Or then.

("I love you,"

"I care about you.")

I wonder if she ever wanted to tear my chest open to see what turned within. Perhaps she expected to see turning cogs and clockwork in place of organs and a biological system. Perhaps she grew suspicious by the shortness of my answers, and my constant need for silence so my brain could work at light speed. The need to be at work longer than she wanted and my interests in opening books more than opening up. Perhaps it was my quirks, the need to have my pens on the left and my pencils on the right. Whenever we watched the games, I needed to be sitting on the left because I was left handed and one of us needed to hold the remote in our right hand; an erratic man who was more machine.

I never should've expected her to stay.

While I was once driven my logic, impulsiveness was my downfall. It was stupid of me to sleep with my boss' intern daughter two days after she told me she wanted to end things. Even stupider for me to shrug my shoulders and walk out when he fired me rather than apologize and promise it would never happen again -- what the fuck?

Not just stupid, but illogical.

Can't compute.

I shut my eyes and breathe.

"I will not stutter."

Ignore her.

Burn her picture.

Tear it edge from edge.

"I will not stutter."

Never a man to break; the second step to escaping the confines of your speech is confidence.

There were no tears.

I press my thumb against my empty rib cage and wait for the sound of cogs and clockwork.

---

"We are more than happy to offer you this position of Hunger Games Analyst, welcome to All-Caps,"

I shake his hand, firmly like my parents taught me when I put myself back together again at eighteen. I didn't find myself unemployed for any longer than two weeks. I almost didn't apply for the job -reminded me of the days we would watch the games curled up within a shared blanket, she knew everything about that show- but I saw the numbers and decided it was worth rubbing flesh my wound raw for.

It's simple what they want me to do, compile data, analyse the stats and present it to the people at the top to see if they can make an interesting segment for the podcast. Spotting correlations and causation in trends is easy, forming equations and finding the logic behind the madness of a Gamemaker's chaos is something than can only be down to numbers. I tell myself it's easy, looking at spreadsheets and forming differential and integral equations from data. Finding correlation coefficients and modelling trends with regression.

I started work that Monday, working through numbers at light speed. I never really thought to think if the boss Duchane noticed. I never really cared, I just did my job because I enjoyed it. I report directly to her, not Lucky.

Day in, day out. I'm working. An everyday robot, tapping at his desk, biting his pens on the left and his pencils on the right.

---

A year passes and I'm twenty five, pulling enough strings and showing enough talent to be landed an opportunity. "How would you like to be part of the team on air?"

I will not stutter. I will not stutter. I will not stutter.

Step one; confidence.

Step two; determination.

I never made it past step two.

I smile and nod my head eagerly. "Of course!" To be on air, presenting facts and figures at the snap of my fingers; indisputable. Father would be proud, he'd have that look in his eye he got when I won my first award and I graduated college top of my class. The money's excellent too. Enough to move out of that apartment that's just too small and get something bigger for myself. I can take a palace of paper and turn it into a palace of diamonds.

"Thank you for this opportunity, trust me. I will not let you down."

And I mean it, I was the best in high school, I was the best in college and I damn well will be the best in the spotlight. Greatness is in my nature after all.

I never needed anything past step two anyway.

"Here's your team," he begins reading out names. Some of them already here and they all drift into a cloud of irrelevancy. "And your partner on air will be Astrid Dèmander."

I blink, and my eyes widen.

"Who?"

He looks down at the clipboard then up at me.

"Astrid Dèmander."

He turns the clipboard and there it is. Name crystal clear on white paper, spelling identical and accent over the è.

I press my fingers against my rib cage and listen for the sound of cogs and clockwork.

[zoe]