Formula
There was rarely time for him to discuss the events of the day with his friends or family. He was kept busy from dawn to dusk, or at least that’s how it felt. He was always rushing from one job to the next, never quite satisfying that urge to move, to accomplish something unseen yet felt deeply in the inner workings of his soul
Maybe this time would be different, he thought, as he clambered the stairs wearily. There had been some progress lately, he knew he hadn’t felt quite as tired and during the days he had felt glimpses of peace, that rare moment when he stopped anxiously looking forwards or back but simply existed in the present. He even forgot what it was he was supposed to be thinking about occasionally. He liked those moments but they felt odd to him, as if he had nothing to grasp and hold onto.
“What’s your latest project?” Annabel asked him, calling through the doorway to his study as she saw him frantically shifting papers on his desk, creating space.
“Oh, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while” he called back, non-committally and she knew better than to press him on this
“Okay darling, well don’t forget we’re having dinner with the Jones’s at eight”
“Umm sure” he replied absentmindedly “eight was it? Okay yep..”
She wasn’t totally convinced that his mind had processed the information but she was used to that. Inevitably she would have to remind him later, probably several times. She loved him but she understood his ways and had long ago given up hoping for him to be as aware of times and appointments as she was. She was the one who organised everything, who kept the house and their lives running in a somewhat efficient manner. If left to him, she knew the place would be a shambles and nothing would ever get done on time- bills wouldn’t be paid and their friends would have given up on trying to arrange social events with them. She sighed briefly as she wandered back downstairs
“Where is it?” he mumbled to himself as he rifled through mounds of paper on his desk. He had written the formula somewhere, was it this year or last? and then he’d discarded it as useless, completely wrong, until earlier today he had suddenly realised all it needed was one missing piece. The formula was fundamentally correct, it required a little extra, that’s all, like seasoning in his soup
“Ah, here it is!” he pulled a piece of paper from a pile, on which was scrawled an indecipherable stream of letters, numbers and symbols
