Difficult

She is being difficult.

She has been difficult before.

Back then, there was a small solid sphere of certainty at the center of her mind that she could balance on when the doctors said Really, Ms Toin, you are being unreasonable.

How do you expect to live up to your potential without treatment?

There had been no words for her to explain, not then, but she had kept her balance and refused to sign the consent forms, until after a month, two months, six, when her research papers were being passed around not just her faculty but some of the highest levels of Ishukone R&D, the doctors had stopped asking.

But Nolikka has nothing to balance on any more.

Dr Toin, these anxieties are understandable, but they are irrational. Part of the symptoms we want to treat.

She folds her hands together, wrapping her fingers tightly around the silk taupe ribbon of the fourteenth cosin pi function in the last repeating sequence of Ititeola’s theorem, and tries to find words. They don’t understand how her mind works. She doesn’t understand how her mind works. How can they be so sure that their wires and chemicals will do exactly and only what they say?

Maybe she will get better by herself. She wasn’t this bad before the shuttle docked at her new home station and she walked off into a wall of senseless noise and smells and strangers. Hasn’t she earned the chance to try and get better by herself?

The words stop in her throat, lodge hard and painful just below her larynx, caught on the edge of the collar that is no longer there.

Your colleagues deserve your best, don’t they, Dr Toin? And to be able to work without disruption?

And your neighbors? There are young children in your residential complex.

Your counselor thinks, and we agree, that you would benefit from a course of anti-anxiety medication. These are Zainou Biotech’s latest line. They’ll help you through this.

There is only one right answer to that.

Yes, sir.

She takes the pills every morning and every evening.

The doctors are right. The chemicals smooth down the jagged edges of the noise of the station, dull the random leaps and stabs of her pulse at an unexpected noise behind her.

And the doctors are wrong. The chemicals smooth down the delicate complexity of the numbers streaming through her mind as well, leaving her with nothing but anodyne loops and swirls.

She stops taking the pills.

A week later she is back in the room.

You have to take your meds, Dr Toin, for them to work.

This is what we call clinical non-adherence. It’s a symptom of your condition.

Your counselor thinks, and we agree, that you would benefit from closer supervision of your treatment.

There is only one right answer to that.

Yes, sir.

The AIMED will test her blood every morning and evening, they tell her, will monitor the chemicals in her blood. If she stops taking the pills again, they will know.

We have a responsibility to you, Dr Toin. The corporation has always been your legal guardian in the case of incapacity.

We’re adjusting your medication regime.

Your counselor thinks, and we agree, that you’re not competent to decide your own interest at the moment.

Continued non-adherence will leave us with no choice but to get a corporate order for more aggressive treatment of this disorder.

There is only one right answer to that.

Yes, sir.

Back at the laboratory, Nolikka rests her hands on the touchpad and waits for the glorious rainbow of spinning equations to spring to life.

And waits.

Ititeola’s theorem slips through her fingers like smoke and is gone.

A week later she is back in the room.

Your section head says you haven’t made any progress on your current project. How are you sleeping? Any changes in appetite?

Your counselor thinks, and we agree, that you would benefit from a course of anti-depressants. These are Zainou Biotech’s latest line. They’ll help you through this.

There is only one right answer to that.

Yes, sir.

The new meds don’t bring back the numbers dancing behind her eyelids and coiling through her fingers like Hara’s long braid once did, but they dull the sharp edges of the starless void she lives in. They let her sleep, sleep too long, sometimes. They let her eat, if she remembers to.

A week later she is back in the room.

There is no shame, they tell her, in needing to take a step back for a while.

You’ve been through a lot.

There is only one right answer to that.

Yes, sir.

There are many jobs on a station that need mathematics. Nolikka is given one of them, in maintenance, tracking and calculating the replacement timetables for the hydrocylers.

The numbers lie inert beneath her fingers as she adds, subtracts, multiplies. They have their secrets, she knows.

These days they keep them.

A scientific paper causing a minor academic stir is published. Her name is there as one of the contributors. She gets a courtesy copy in hard-text.

The tinny voice of the text-aide on her wrist sounds out the equations and the formulae.

Even on her fifth re-reading, she cannot understand it.

For a week, it lies on the bench in her one-room residence, until one day, for no reason she can remember, she picks it up and wraps a courier-band around it. The text-aide stencils the words she wants in the addressee field.

Captain Night, Utopian Ideal, via Re-Awakened Technologies, Gulfonodi, Fittakan, Molden Health, Minmatar Republic.

She leaves the rest blank.