Proof by Induction by José Pablo Iriarte (Uncanny #40, May-June 2021)1 opens with Paulie arriving at the hospital to discover his father has died. Standing next to his father’s wife is the chaplain, who offers Paulie the chance to enter his father’s “Coda”, a computer simulacrum of his father’s consciousness made just before his death:
Gone was the endotracheal tube. The room was eerily silent, with none of the sounds he’d associated with the hospital from his visits over the past week.
He met his father’s eyes. “Hey.”
His father smiled ruefully. “Hey.”
“Are you—”
“Dead?” His father gestured toward the inactive monitors.
“Apparently so.”
“Does it hurt?” Are you afraid, he wanted to ask, but he knew better than to talk to his father about emotions.
“Nothing hurts,” he said, picking at a scab on his leg. “I guess they have a way of turning that off.”
“Did the doctors mess up? Should I ask for an autopsy?”
His father shook his head. “Nah. I’m seventy-one, diabetic, and with a bad heart. You’re not going to win any lawsuits here.”
It occurred to Paulie that Codas could be programmed to give whatever answer benefitted the hospital.
Paulie stared out the window, over the parking lot, to the eerily empty expressway. “I really believed we were close on that Perelman proof.”
“Maybe nobody’s meant to find it.”
Easy for him to say. He’d already been beyond questions of tenure and publication; now all of that was even more meaningless for him.
For Paulie, though, Perelman would have been the home run his tenure dossier needed. He turned back toward the bed. “Okay. Well.” He put a hand on the chair he’d sat in last night while his father complained about his breathing. He should say something. Something like I love you¸ he supposed. But his father had never gone in for the mushy stuff in life, so why start now?
“Goodbye, then,” he finished instead.
“Bye, Paulie,” said his father. “Thank you for visiting.”
Paulie subsequently arranges to take a copy of the Coda home with him, and the rest of the story mostly consists of scenes where Paulie visits his father’s Coda to work on the theorem (although we also see something of Paulie’s own family life and relationship with his daughter, and the peer pressure he experiences at his university job).
The two men’s attempts to solve the theory become increasingly complicated by the fact that Paulie’s father has no memory of what has happened during previous visits, which means that Paulie has to explain everything they have done each time he enters the Coda. We also see further evidence of the emotional distance between the men, and Paulie’s attempts to make some sort of connection with his father, such as the occasion he mentions his daughter’s forthcoming dance recital:
“It just. . .it reminds me of my piano recitals.”
His father leaned on his bed railing. “Is that what this is really about, Paulie? Are you here to tell me I was a shitty father? I know. I already acknowledged that, after the divorce.”
Paulie dropped into the chair by the bed. “No,” he said at last. “Sorry. I keep thinking of what other people use the Coda technology for, and I keep waiting to hear you talk about something besides math or life insurance. I keep hoping you’ll have something profound to say.”
“I’m not the mushy type.”
“You could fake it.”
“You’re the smartest person I ever met. You would see through any faking.”
Paulie blinked. A compliment.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t want anything to do with me,” his father went on, “after not being there for you as a kid. But then you made me a part of your life and we got along okay. You treated me like a colleague, so I tried to treat you the same. Now you’re mad at me for not acting more like a father? I didn’t think you wanted that from me.”
Paulie waited to see if he would say anything else. That was about as close to “mushy” as he’d come since the night twenty years ago when he’d apologized for abandoning him.
After a quiet eternity, he got up from the chair. “Okay, well, I think I have enough to work on for now. I’ll come back when I have some progress.”
“Bye, Paulie. Thank you for visiting.”
Eventually (spoiler) they go on to solve the theorem, and Paulie comes to accept that his father is never going to say the things that he wants him to say.
Normally I’m not remotely interested in “Daddy” or other problematical relationship stories, but this one works quite well—probably because Iriarte handles this in a fairly muted way and not as the usual whiny adolescent psychodrama. I’d also note that the description of the mathematical processes undertaken to solve the theorem are an equal focus of the story, and are quite gripping—a significant feat considering that I had no idea about what was being discussed.
This story has an odd combination of ideas and themes, but I liked it a lot.
**** (Very good). 6,250 words. Story link.
1. This story is a Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Award finalist.