{"id":5437,"date":"2022-08-23T23:23:15","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T23:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5437"},"modified":"2022-08-31T20:42:11","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T20:42:11","slug":"proof-by-induction-by-jose-pablo-iriarte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5437","title":{"rendered":"Proof by Induction by Jos\u00e9 Pablo Iriarte"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Proof by Induction<\/em><\/strong> by Jos\u00e9 Pablo Iriarte (Uncanny<\/em> #40, May-June 2021)1<\/sup> opens with Paulie arriving at the hospital to discover his father has died. Standing next to his father\u2019s wife is the chaplain, who offers Paulie the chance to enter his father\u2019s \u201cCoda\u201d, a computer simulacrum of his father\u2019s consciousness made just before his death:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gone was the endotracheal tube. The room was eerily silent, with none of the sounds he\u2019d associated with the hospital from his visits over the past week.
He met his father\u2019s eyes. \u201cHey.\u201d
His father smiled ruefully. \u201cHey.\u201d
\u201cAre you\u2014\u201d
\u201cDead?\u201d His father gestured toward the inactive monitors.
\u201cApparently so.\u201d
\u201cDoes it hurt?\u201d Are you afraid, he wanted to ask, but he knew better than to talk to his father about emotions.
\u201cNothing hurts,\u201d he said, picking at a scab on his leg. \u201cI guess they have a way of turning that off.\u201d
\u201cDid the doctors mess up? Should I ask for an autopsy?\u201d
His father shook his head. \u201cNah. I\u2019m seventy-one, diabetic, and with a bad heart. You\u2019re not going to win any lawsuits here.\u201d
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. \u201cI really believed we were close on that Perelman proof.\u201d
\u201cMaybe nobody\u2019s meant to find it.\u201d
Easy for him to say. He\u2019d 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. \u201cOkay. Well.\u201d He put a hand on the chair he\u2019d sat in last night while his father complained about his breathing. He should say something. Something like I love you\u00b8 he supposed. But his father had never gone in for the mushy stuff in life, so why start now?
\u201cGoodbye, then,\u201d he finished instead.
\u201cBye, Paulie,\u201d said his father. \u201cThank you for visiting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s Coda to work on the theorem (although we also see something of Paulie\u2019s own family life and relationship with his daughter, and the peer pressure he experiences at his university job).
The two men\u2019s attempts to solve the theory become increasingly complicated by the fact that Paulie\u2019s 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\u2019s attempts to make some sort of connection with his father, such as the occasion he mentions his daughter\u2019s forthcoming dance recital:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt just. . .it reminds me of my piano recitals.\u201d
His father leaned on his bed railing. \u201cIs 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.\u201d
Paulie dropped into the chair by the bed. \u201cNo,\u201d he said at last. \u201cSorry. 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\u2019ll have something profound to say.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m not the mushy type.\u201d
\u201cYou could fake it.\u201d
\u201cYou\u2019re the smartest person I ever met. You would see through any faking.\u201d
Paulie blinked. A compliment.
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have blamed you if you didn\u2019t want anything to do with me,\u201d his father went on, \u201cafter 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\u2019re mad at me for not acting more like a father? I didn\u2019t think you wanted that from me.\u201d
Paulie waited to see if he would say anything else. That was about as close to \u201cmushy\u201d as he\u2019d come since the night twenty years ago when he\u2019d apologized for abandoning him.
After a quiet eternity, he got up from the chair. \u201cOkay, well, I think I have enough to work on for now. I\u2019ll come back when I have some progress.\u201d
\u201cBye, Paulie. Thank you for visiting.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019m not remotely interested in \u201cDaddy\u201d or other problematical relationship stories, but this one works quite well\u2014probably because Iriarte handles this in a fairly muted way and not as the usual whiny adolescent psychodrama. I\u2019d 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\u2014a 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<\/a>.

1. This story is a Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Award finalist.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Proof by Induction by Jos\u00e9 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\u2019s wife is the chaplain, who offers Paulie the chance to enter his father\u2019s \u201cCoda\u201d, a computer simulacrum of his father\u2019s consciousness made just before his death: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1260],"tags":[50,101,1146,787,1261,1262,12,367],"class_list":["post-5437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jose-pablo-iriarte","tag-50","tag-101","tag-father-son-relationships","tag-human-simulations","tag-jose-pablo-iriarte","tag-mathematical-proofs","tag-short-story","tag-uncanny"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5437"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5518,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5437\/revisions\/5518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}