Hypatia Pickens
Irrational Number*
Joey.Is.
A mechanical.
Boy. We cannot.
Rationalize his dysfunction. Autism makes.
Him a machine that rationalizes his erased self.
Did you know that Hippasus, Pythagorus' student drowned by divine decree when he
Confirmed the existence of irrational numbers? Most cannot.
Understand how something cannot be.
Reduced to ratio.
Joey isn't.
A.
Boy.
*Bruno Bettelheim, "Joey: A Mechanical Boy."
Scientific American, 200, March 1959: 117-126.
Bio
"Hypatia Pickens" is a Professor of English at a university in Upstate New York, writes and publishes poetry and fiction and offers a weekly open mic in Second Life called "Strange and Sudden Literature." She has a penchant for the formal in poetry and the magical in fiction, and she has published (under other virtual names) in HazMat, Bathhouse, Centrifugal Eye, Blue Angel Landing, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Terra Incognita, and she has written teleplays and story ideas for Star Trek: The Next Generation. She is busy perfecting her building and art work to go with her writing, and has plans for a medieval studies educational sim.