The Human Constant Equation

Short Story by Renley Chu | Speculative Literary Fiction

First, some boring housekeeping

• You are in the Fiction Section of Notes from the Town Hermit. Just like in my main publication, these stories centre on themes of identity and what it means to be human. Main genres are literary and slipstream fiction and fantasy written with a lyrical and poetic writing style.

• Reminder for patrons that all fiction I publish here is available in EPUB format as membership gifts. If you’re not a patron and would like these on your e-reader, almost all short stories are on Kindle Unlimited. Click here to see all my available ebooks.

• If you’re looking for more to read this weekend, take a look at this smorgasbord of short stories by various authors. Maybe you’ll find a new favourite writer among them. You might even see Yours Truly somewhere in there for a free EPUB download.

Now that that’s all out of the way, please enjoy today’s story.

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AI-generated with Midjourney

I often wander off and think about the precise nature that defines us as humans. Not the nature that defines us and differentiates us; rather, the sole similarity that makes us who we are as a species.

They said it’s our need for validation. Standing here now, heart thrumming against my ribs, I wonder if it’s simpler than that. Maybe what makes us human is how we keep coming back to locked doors, bearing gifts, and apologies, even when we know we’ve mutated too far from who we used to be.

Some of them said, it’s this inevitable need to know anything and everything. Some people, I’m certain, wish to forget all the things they have encountered. Fixation on knowledge is limited to what is and not what one wants to perceive. All perseverance is different. Another spectrum. No constant.

Considering what makes us human, it might be a matter of mind and heart, and how the two dominate each other to create a specific person’s ratio. I, for one, thought it didn’t bode well to let the ratio become a fixture of who a person was. Perhaps it was because fluctuation and spontaneity existed.

Five years since I’d left, chasing the promise of transformation. A decade since humanity split into those who sprouted wings and those who remained earthbound. And here I was, somewhere in between, neither soaring nor rooted, standing outside a house, long since the place I called home, with a cake.

The house wasn’t in its pristine condition, the way I imagined from reminiscing on old childhood memories; the door’s polishing was scraping off near the hinges, and the smooth metal doorknob seemed rusting and unwelcoming.

I had made a call beforehand to announce an impromptu visit, to see if there had been a change in the people who lived inside. Maybe plant a change in their perspective toward me.

My family remains ignorant of the new beginning humankind had embarked on a decade prior to my visit.

I heard sounds of shuffling and a yell or two from the inside. The door opened, and my sister stood to greet me, her hands resting on a now polished and well-kept knob.

“You’re here.” She spoke, her voice deeper than I remembered from five years ago. “They let you come, the medical center, I mean.” She seemed relieved.

“I’m not one to make false calls, Janice. May I come in?” If my tone was bitter, it was right to be.

Evolution came with differences. A divide between the winged and the rooted.

“Oh, of course, come in.” She stood aside to let me in. The hallway was now carpeted and as I took my coat off and hung it, my eyes swept over the peeling paint near the baseboard.

Janice had walked away in a hurry, alerting the others, followed by the whole family coming to greet me.

I joined my mum, dad, sister, and brother for dinner, eyes looking back to see no paint scraping off near the baseboard. Swallowing, I paid no mind, looking in front of me and smiling as the family conversed and greeted me.

They arranged themselves around the table like careful constellations, maintaining precise distances. Mom’s chair scraped back an extra inch when I reached for the salt. Dad’s shoulders stiffened each time I shifted.

“How’s work been?” Dad asked, his eyes watching me as I sat opposite him on the 12-seater table. His fingers drummed against its surface, making the legs wobble. I watched the edge nearest me dip and rise, as if the whole structure was breathing.

Mom passed a plate of food to Dad. The table movement stopped. Dad passed a plate of food to me, his fingers careful not to brush against mine. I wondered if I’d see the hairs rising on his arm if I looked closely enough. Better not test the waters.

The food smelled rotten. Rotten and sweet. The room’s temperature seemed so cold, I regretted not keeping my coat on.

“It’s going good,” I answered, taking a bite of the browning mash and disgustingly sweet meat. “How’s school going for you, Matt? I heard Janice quit skating.”

Matt didn’t bother answering, his eyes trained on his food as he kept eating, ignoring my existence. Looking back, I remember feeling content with that.

Existing was just me jumping from possibility to possibility after having tarnished previous dreams. It was better to be forgotten than to leave with endless conclusions as to who I was and why. Not even I had bothered finding that.

Flashes of a childhood whirred through my mind: a new, polished dining table, a mother’s gentle warning from the drawing room as Matt and I leaped onto it with tree branches as makeshift swords, Janice hopping from her place on the ground, eager but still too small to join in. Before Matt’s “sword” scraped a long scratch along the wooden veneer. Before dad’s furious lecture, Matt saying I had done it, and Janice nodding along.

Like the yearning to fit in here, and with “my” people, only to find out I belonged to no one. ‘Cause not everyone sprouted wings that flew; some wings were broken.

This crumbling, appealing facade hides broken patterns within.

Janice cast a nervous look at Matt, as if trying to decide which brother she should choose.

“Never mind.” I took another fork-full of rotting vegetables.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Matt’s eyes fixed on mine with confidence, envy now gone, and I remember feeling proud of him. “Thought you weren’t coming back.”

“No, I did not,” I said. As much as this felt it needed to be said with remorse, I had answered with amusement, challenging Matt to feel satisfied with the answer.

Will was a fickle concept; today, it seemed to be a manipulation of morals, goals, and nature.

I remember Mum casting a nervous glance towards Dad, who seemed just as curious as Matt. Her hands played with the tablecloth, and it appeared threads were coming off of the fraying material.

“Or perhaps I did,” I continued. “I did, and then I lost it again.” Looked back at the tablecloth, this time seeming new and intact.

Matt rolled his eyes and then let out a chuckle at the futility of expecting a normal answer.

Raising a brow at him, I shook my head, looking at my plate and then put the corroding utensils down on the table.

“Dinner was nice,” I said, getting up. My eyes landed on the barely eaten plate at my spot, now fine and not off in the slightest.

The dichotomy was driving me crazy, as if my own brain was rotting from the inside as my life’s string stretched and stretched, holding on by a few stubborn threads. I swayed with dizziness. The scene blurred for an instant before my eyes. My time away had made me too knowledgeable about what these signs meant. Deterioration of the senses, of the mind—I had little time left to set things right.

Mom had looked up at me with an inexplicable expression. “Done already?” she asked, eyeing my plate.

“Yes, not so hungry.” I remember my smile faltering and my heart quenching as she turned away to finish her food, and I walked to the living room.

My stay had a purpose. I was supposed to say goodbye this one final time. Not before I could give all I wanted to these people. Not before I could tell them I wasn’t who they thought. I wasn’t in the wrong.

I needed them to know, and I hoped it would be enough.

“When?”

I turned around in surprise to see Mum wiping her hands on a cloth.

Looking up for a second, I thought her skin was all wrinkled and deathly white, her eyes open and glazed, hair gray.

I took in a shuddering breath and shrugged the image away from the forefront of my mind. “What?”

I picked up a set of night clothes from my bag and stared around my old room, which smelled like death. All the boyish trinkets felt haunted. The Styrofoam planets that hung near my table felt like they’d fallen and were rolling towards my feet.

“When do you go?” She asked her question with a sadness, which for a second made me want to leave altogether and let it be.

The bed creaked as I picked the bag, and the dresser shuddered as I placed it on top.

“Soon.” My voice was careless, a bit of a tell showing that something was wrong to all those who cared enough.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, my mum was one of them.

“How?” She stood right in front of me now. Her eyes were on my hands—my fingers looking blue and yellow.

Unlike everything else, these were actually blue and yellow. Below my shirt, you’d see more patches of blotched-up deteriorating skin.

She stood too close. Although I wasn’t contagious, I would have rather seemed fine from afar—figurative, and literally.

“I’m not one of them, Mum.” I moved my hands into pockets, hiding the sickly sight away from her.

“You’re not one of us either,” she said. I swallowed, looking up at her face again, glad that it didn’t look like a corpse.

“I know,” I said, “I know.”

“But you still love us,” she went on, “and even if it doesn’t feel like it, we love you, too.”

Despite being shorter, she ran a hand through my hair, much thinner than it had once been. I flinched. At that moment I wish I had stayed, that I had remained hidden five years ago instead of being so eager to be another idiot in a new breed of sheep.

I wanted to say the words back. Make sure she knew it without doubt. My eyes went to hers and then the navy walls of my room. It looked like it was snowing. Flakes falling slowly and collecting near the ground, dampening it.

Soon after, she said goodnight. I hugged her close before telling her the same.

I had a little more time, I thought. Tomorrow I would talk to them—apologize. I would tell Janice I shouldn’t have left her behind. She alone had known of my first symptoms and realized what I’d done. She begged me to stay, anyway. I wouldn’t apologize to Dad for not being the son he craved, but maybe I could sympathize with his need for control when the world became one he no longer recognized. Matt will never forgive me for leaving without explanation. He had a lot to carry with me gone. I should apologize for that.

I changed. In my mind, I moved the nonexistent snow away from my bed, and played down staring at snow falling, snow piling on top of me until I fell asleep, of the weight growing heavier and heavier on top of me, thinking of having a talk like this with the rest of the family as well. To fix this before I went.

I wanted to wake, to push the snow off. The heaviness only grew.

I didn’t think life would fail me before I could set things right, didn’t think I wouldn’t wake up.

The human constant is a dynamic of the flaws we have, the flaw circumstance has, and the flaw that mortality introduces.

Together, they make it so that we might never be able to tie our stories with a neat bow like all those novels we write. How even though we’d like to go light and free of all the misconceptions that might float around our existence, that’s impossible.

We aren’t book characters who will receive the heroic end at the last page of our books. Instead, we might die heavy with sin and no redemption; or, we may go light with no remorse.

But we’ll still be flawed, and we’ll still love despite those.

No matter how alien the concept seems. We’re flawed and we’re loved and we’re hated. And that’s the constant in us.

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The Story Behind the Story

Ren gifted me two stories for my 31st birthday. This was one of them. The other was Born, Bound, Blind. He had intended to expand this one into a full novel, and had created spreadsheets where he’d plotted the story and details for world-building, down to things like currency and economy. I still have these documents, but I don’t think I have the heart to complete it for him.

In the beginning stages of talking about writing an anthology together, we had both been working on our respective novels: his The Human Constant Equation and my Canticle of the Turning. As we lamented the struggle to complete a full novel, we decided to turn our efforts to short stories, and compile them into a single collection. Since both our books had sprung from short stories, we agreed to include their original forms in the anthology as well.

So, you’ll notice these two stories don’t share any connecting threads with the others in the collection. Unlike the other stories, these aren’t set in the same world.

While The Human Constant Equation was, of course, included in the original edition, I went back and forth for a while on whether or not to include it in the new one. Part of the reason is because I’m unsure whether or not I will come back to Ren’s book in the future and try to finish his work. Leaving this story in the collection would give away some spoilers, if that is the case.

I had the same reasoning for leaving out Canticle of the Turning, since I do intend to complete that book (that excerpt is also just really long..).

In the end, I’ve decided to publish this story separately, with the intention of returning to it in the future.

For revisions, as always, I kept as much of Ren’s original words as possible. I enhanced some parts by adding sensory or other meaningful details. I also polished his wording a bit so his meaning is clearer.