† Max Zorn was a famous Modernist-era Mathematician who lived and worked into something like the early 21st century to the delight of absolutely everyone.

‡ Once, before the Modernist era, the State Senate of Indiana enacted a law requiring that π = 22/7. This is why the Statehouse in Indianapolis, designed to be round, has no discernible shape whatsoever.

§ Topologists study things like cowlicks and how to count the number of holes in a things like whiffle balls, as well as the possibility of meaning with respect cowlicks or the number of holes in whiffle balls. They say stuff like “You can’t comb the hairy ball” with a straight face. By the way, if you have noticed Every Single Little Boy In the World Has a Cowlick, it’s because of the “You Can’t Comb the Hairy Ball Theorem” from Topology. I swear I am not making this up.

**Analysts study a special kind of box where you drop stuff in through a chute on one side of the box, and something or other comes flying out of the other side. Watch out for bats.

†† Clearly this story might have been an early-new-millennium piece. At that time, it was well-known that the permanent voting members in the UN Security Council had these exact rights. That particular UN Security Council, whose permanent voting members we shall not name, gave rise to an inconceivable insecurity in the world, particularly for those who pay attention to that kind of thing. We pretend not to know any people like that.

‡‡ Either one of The Fruits of the Knowledge of Good or Evil.

§§ Mathematicians are notoriously bad with numbers. Time? Time is a number of things.

ß All self-respecting Math departments have Afternoon Tea at 3:30 every day, for cookies, conversation, collegiality, and the New York Times crossword. There is a large sum budgeted by the department for excellent cookies, so Tea is simply not to be missed.

A Definition: An axiom is a law one accepts as true in order to get on with one’s Creation. Another example of an axiom is the axiom of Free Willμ which God accepted for us at the beginning of Creation. An axiom is that kind of law. All the other rules for any world are derived from its axioms.

μPlease note however that ten seconds after God had decided yes to the Axiom of Free Will, Adam and Eve had already committed two acts of extraordinarily bad judgement; two counts of refusal to take responsibility for anything; and one count of man blaming God for man's own shortcomingsh (Gen. 3:12). The first joke was also told h:

h “The woman whom You gave to be beside me, she gave me from the tree and so I ate.”

***The Axiom of Choice says that no matter how many trees you have in a Garden, you can pick a piece of fruit from every single tree. Finite, infinite, doesn’t matter. The presence or absence of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil here is irrelevant.[a][b]

[a] Genesis once contained several verses right after Adam names the animals, in which God says to Adam: You must decide whether to accept[a] or reject[b] the Axiom of Choice**** in the beginning of Your Creation/Discovery of My Mathematics.

[a] God continued: Accepting the Axiom of Choice will lead to a rich and beautiful field of study. And baskets of fruit.

[b] Further, God said: rejecting The Axiom of Choice*** is likely, though I can’t be sure, to lead to questions like, “What if there were no mathematics?” These questions are simply not to be asked.

[b] Since even God did not know for sure what rejecting the Axiom of Choice***, [b] would lead to, the Axiom of Choice***,[a] is generally accepted. SO, you may indeed ***,[a] pick a piece of fruit from every single tree in the Garden. Eating any given piece though is entirely up to you.

††† Logicians say things like “Schrödinger’s bat is either alive or dead but not both.” They think this only applies to Schrödinger’s bat.

‡‡‡ Algebraists say things like, Let’s suppose we have a group of three bats, and the three bats have to live by only these three simple rules: a) Each bat must sleep hanging upside down from a branch like a piece of fruit; and b) That’s right, bat. Bat the animal. c) No-one is to leave the Statehouse grounds for any reason whatsoever. Now, let’s see who dresses up as what for Halloween!

§§§ Induction says that if something starts out being true, and keeps on being true, then it’s true, for Christ’s SAKE.

**** No-one is exactly sure what Transfinite Induction is, though there is the possibility that it involves picking pieces of fruit from many, many, oh-so-many trees, and one of those fruits may be a bat, so.

†††† The Hahn-Banach Theorem is the only theorem in the world powerful enough to get all the mathematicians described in this paper and any other to tea every afternoon at the same time. For this reason, Hahn-Banach simply cannot fail.

‡‡‡‡ Functional Analysis is a branch of mathematics that could conceivably be tied to any other, though only an analyst would ever think such a thing, while knowing it is true, besides.

§§§§ While hanging out with e.e. cummings one Modernist-type evening, Max Zorn proved that his very own amazing Zorn’s Lemma[i] was just as cool[ii] as cool as cummings’ as is the sea marvelous[iii].

[i] Zorn’s lemma has to do with fruitf choice, cookief varieties, and whether or not you can choose a favorite, if you can manage to put the fruit or is it the cookies in some kind of order.

[ii] Because, after all, Zorn’s Lemma is equivalent& to the Axiom of Choice***!

(That is, if one is true, so is the other, which turns out to be really handy, believe it or not[a].)

[iii] Depending, of course, on the presence or absence of lovers.

(Why both cookies and fruit, you may ask? Because it is important that no-one ever eats the cookies with the cherry goop in them. Toddler rules! They must never touch! Are the fruit and the cookies touching here?***)

***** For an example of a Set Theory question, I will ask you to name a set which is not contained in the set of all sets. You will look at me with a righteous rage saying, Just fuck me! I will say, No, fuck you! And we will laugh our heads off because we love that old joke.

††††† Since I am writing this for writers and other readers, I don’t even want to get into the whole Just fuck me thing again.

‡‡‡‡‡ No fruit appears in this story, or any other.

§§§§§ Before the galoshes incident, Professor Russell was a fine mathematician of some type.

THE ANTHROPOLOGY

(SEE FIELD NOTES ABOVE)

Max Zorn† was still doing mathematics at Indiana University when I started grad school there. The Eternal Ad-Hoc Committee for Democratic Mathematics‡ mysteriously appeared in the minutes of a departmental meeting soon thereafter, along with rules giving all the topologists§ and all the analysts** permanent voting rights with veto powers.†† I could pass for either one‡‡, so I was happy. Professor Zorn could pass for anything, because he had proven seven wonderful theorems before logic or mathematics were even invented, and he was always happy.

The first 3:00 meeting was called to order promptly at 3:17§§. A motion was made and seconded, by Professor Zorn himself, that we accept the Axiom of Choice***,[a][b] without further ado so that we could adjourn in time to get to Afternoon Teaß before the logicians††† and algebraists‡‡‡ ate all the damn cookies.

During the ensuing ado, it was noted that Transfinite Induction§§§,****, is reason enough to reject the Axiom of Choice***. A permanent member pointed out that without the Axiom of Choice , there IS no Hahn-Banach Theorem††††, which means there IS no functional analysis‡‡‡‡, in which case every single one of us might as well just call it a day[b].

We were all for calling it a day[b], but we voted unanimously to accept the Axiom of Choice anyway

because it had already been proven that Max Zorn is equivalent to the Axiom of Choice,§§§§ and there was no denying that even though he was at least 114 years old, Max Zorn was standing right there, leaning on his cane, saying he wanted cookies. And he wanted a choice! A choice from an infinite variety of cookies! OK, he didn’t really say that, but of course I knew what he meant.

In new business, a motion was made and seconded that we continue to live in Abject Denial of All Paradoxes Arising from the Modernist-era Mathematics the logicians called Set Theory,***** and the analysts called Language Poetry.††††† Since the permanent members were required to veto anything that did not exist, a motion was made, seconded, and passed unanimously that no vote be taken.

The meeting adjourned, at which time the Committee took its Abject Denial to Tea, without, finally, any further ado.

Surprisingly, everyone was able to choose at least one cookie at tea, though they were completely out-of-order, and no-one could be sure he or she had gotten the best cookie from any given plate‡‡‡‡‡. No matter how many cookies we ate, there were still infinitely many left to choose from, but that was only because all the logicians and algebraists were trapped in a subset of themselves, located somewhere in either one of Bertrand Russell's§§§§§ abandoned galoshes.

Jennifer Woodworth studied creative writing at Old Dominion University.  She is the author of the chapbook, How I Kiss Her Turning Head, published by Monkey Puzzle Press. Her stories and poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Gone Lawn, The Citron Review, Bending Genres Journal, The Eastern Iowa Review, *82 Review, and The Inflectionist Review, among others. She's also a nominee for a 2020 Micro Fiction. She knows how lucky she is anytime she gets to write.