Ergo: A collection of short stories

A while back I said I would finish writing a book — I’m still working on it. In the meantime, here are some short stories I’ve written.

Passengers

The subway car sat motionless, its hum reverberating through the stagnant air, mingling with the metallic tang of iron, the acrid bite of oil, and a faint, sour undertone that clung to the platform walls. Inside, I sat alone, the cold, unyielding plastic seat pressing into my back, grounding me in the stillness. The window beside me, scratched and smeared with grime, offered a distorted reflection of a figure just beyond the yellow safety line. Him. Me. The boy I used to be.

He shuffled his feet, his sneakers scuffing against the platform’s uneven concrete. His hoodie hung off him, loose and shapeless, the way I used to wear it—like armor that didn’t quite fit. His hands fidgeted inside the kangaroo pocket, fingers moving like he was trying to hold on to something that wasn’t there.

He didn’t meet my eyes. His gaze stayed locked on the empty tracks, as if the steel rails might whisper some elusive truth he couldn’t yet grasp. Overhead, the intercom sputtered to life, slicing through the oppressive quiet: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are delayed momentarily due to train traffic ahead of us.” The static lingered like a ghost, then faded.

I leaned forward, elbows resting on my knees, my hands clasped tightly together. “Are you getting on?” I asked, my voice slicing through the silence.

He flinched, his shoulders stiffening, his head jerking slightly as though the question had startled him. “What’s the point?” he muttered, his voice low, almost swallowed by the distant sound of something clattering in the tunnel. “The train’s not moving.”

“It will,” I said, my voice firm, though it felt like the weight of doubt pressed against my chest. “They always do, eventually.”

He didn’t respond, but his jaw clenched, his eyes betraying a flicker of something—hesitation? Fear? It wasn’t disbelief in me. It was disbelief in everything.

“You could wait out there forever,” I said, leaning back against the hard plastic, “but you’d still be stuck.”

His head snapped up, his expression sharp and cutting. “Yeah? And what about you?” His voice cracked through the silence, raw and biting. “You’re sitting here, stuck on this train, acting like that’s any better. You call this moving forward?”

The words hit harder than they should have. Not because they were wrong, but because they weren’t.

“I’m trying,” I said quietly, my voice catching in the air between us. The words felt too small, but they were all I had. “Isn’t that something?”

He stared at me, his face a mixture of defiance and something more fragile, something I recognized all too well: the sharp edges of hope dulled by the grind of disappointment.

He let out a bitter laugh, his head shaking as though my words had only solidified his doubts. “Trying,” he said, the word dripping with disdain. “That’s it? That’s what I have to look forward to? Sitting on a train that doesn’t even know where it’s going?” His hands moved inside his hoodie pocket, restless, searching for some kind of anchor. “You’re sitting there calling yourself a dreamer, like that makes it all okay. But what has dreaming ever done for you? You’re still here. Still nowhere.”

The word hung in the air: dreamer. It felt heavy, hollow, like a worn-out promise.

I swallowed hard, my fingers curling around the edge of the seat. “Dreaming doesn’t mean standing still,” I said finally. “It’s about moving, even when you don’t know where the track ends. It’s about believing there’s something—anything—on the other side of the tunnel, even if you can’t see it yet.”

He turned his head, his eyes fixed on the streaks of graffiti along the platform wall. “And what if there’s nothing?” he asked, his voice quieter now, but no less sharp.

“Then at least I’ll know I tried,” I said, my voice steady. “You’re afraid to fail. I get it. I’ve been there. But failure’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is standing outside, watching the train leave without you.”

The intercom crackled again. “Please stand clear of the closing doors. We will be departing soon.”

“I’ve fallen more times than I can count,” I continued, leaning back, my voice soft but firm. “But every time, I got back up. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. That’s what dreaming is—it’s wanting to get back up, no matter how many times you fall.”

He looked at me then, his eyes meeting mine for the first time. They were sharp, narrowed with defiance, but I saw the cracks beneath—softer, quieter things he didn’t know how to hide. His foot shifted closer to the edge of the platform. For a fleeting moment, I thought he might step forward, might take that final step onto the train.

But he stopped, his hesitation palpable. Relief flickered in me, unbidden and faint, but it was swallowed by something darker, something hotter—a feeling that burned in my chest and curled in my throat.

Anger.

He was still standing there, hesitant, like stepping onto the train would mean conceding some unseen battle. As if this whole situation wasn’t already a loss. That hesitation, that fragile indecision, cracked something open in me—a heat I’d been swallowing for too long, waiting for the right words that never came.

“You think I’m proud of this?” I snapped, the words spilling out sharper than I intended. “You think I wanted us to be here, stuck in this goddamn system, fighting for scraps, waiting for trains that don’t even come on time?”

His head jerked up, startled. For a moment, he looked small, fragile even. But the fire in my chest didn’t care.

“I’m angry too,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m furious that we had to fight so hard just to stand in this place, on this platform, waiting for something we were told was already ours. I’m angry that I had to spend my entire life dreaming of a world where you wouldn’t have to feel this way—scared, stuck, uncertain.”

He stared at me, wide-eyed, his hands stilling in his pockets. The platform was silent except for the distant rumble of another train somewhere far away.

“I’m mad because you don’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve this. And no matter how hard I’ve worked, how much I’ve dreamed, it feels like I’ve spent every moment since you existed just trying to make the world a little less cruel for you. But here we are.”

He didn’t say anything, but something shifted in his gaze. The sharpness softened, replaced by something quieter, something that made him seem older and younger all at once. His fingers curled and uncurled in slow, deliberate movements, like he was holding and releasing the weight of my words.

“I’ve carried your fear, your hopes, your goddamn weight for years,” I said, quieter now but no less fierce. “I’ve fallen, I’ve failed, and I’ve bled to make something better for us. And you know what?” I leaned forward, my reflection in the window merging with his face. “It still might not be enough. That’s the hardest part. I might not ever be enough.”

The admission hung in the air, uncomfortably honest, but it didn’t feel as heavy as I thought it would. I leaned back, staring into the tunnel ahead, letting the stillness settle over me.

“I’m not proud of this,” I said, the edge of my voice softening. “But I’m still here. I’m still standing. I’m still dreaming, even when I’m mad at the world for making us fight this hard just to be seen. I dream because it’s all I’ve got, and because you deserve better. So yeah, I’m angry. But I’m not done. Not for you, not for me.”

He didn’t move right away, but something in his posture shifted. His shoulders relaxed just slightly, the tension in his frame melting into something more hesitant, more open. His hands slipped out of his hoodie pocket, resting at his sides like he was finally ready to stop bracing himself.

“Come on,” I said, even quieter now, my voice losing its edge. “Get on the train. It’s not about where it’s going. It’s about not staying here.”

He hesitated, staring down at the narrow gap between the platform and the train. His foot hovered for a moment, trembling like the whole world was balanced on the edge of that decision. Then he stepped forward. And then again. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he crossed the threshold and sat down across from me, his movements stiff and uncertain.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The train jolted forward, its lights flickering as the platform slid into darkness behind us. He leaned back against the seat, his eyes fixed on the streaking tunnel walls outside. I noticed the way his lips quirked, just faintly—almost a smile.

And for the first time in what felt like years, I smiled back.

The anger still sat with me, low and simmering. I doubted it would ever leave. How could it? It wasn’t just anger at the world or the circumstances that had shaped us—it was anger at myself. At how long I’d spent fighting, clawing, and falling, only to end up here, still searching for stability, still carrying his weight.

But as I looked at him—at the boy I used to be, the boy I still carried in so many ways—I realized something: that anger, that weight, it was what drove me. It was why I kept getting back up, even after every failure, every broken dream. I was still living for him, and maybe I always would be.

And yet, for the first time, I didn’t resent it.

Because that drive, that weight—it wasn’t just his. It was mine. It was about learning to carry it, to move forward step by step, even when the tracks ahead were nothing but shadows and questions.

The train’s rhythm steadied, a quiet pulse beneath us. He looked up, his lips curving into the smallest of smiles—uncertain, but real.

“You think we’ll make it?” he asked, his voice barely louder than the hum of the wheels.

I held his gaze for a moment, then let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I don’t know,” I said, my own smile breaking through, soft but sure. “But maybe not knowing is part of it.”

The tunnel stretched ahead, its darkness yielding to the faint, flickering glow of the next station in the distance. And together, we moved forward.

The Reasonable Man

Thomas had always considered himself a rational person. Then he got cursed with extreme reasonableness.

It started innocently enough, during a perfectly normal Tuesday lunch break when Kurt Gödel materialized beside his sandwich. Not a flesh-and-blood Gödel, mind you, but a shimmering, mathematical apparition composed entirely of logical symbols and set theory notation.

“Congratulations,” the spectral Gödel announced, adjusting his incorporeal glasses. “You’ve been chosen to bear the burden of ultimate reasonableness. Have fun with that.” Then he vanished, leaving behind only the faint scent of chalk dust and broken axioms.

At first, Thomas didn’t notice anything different. But then the affliction began to manifest.

He found himself unable to get angry at traffic jams because he kept considering the complex systems of urban planning and the reasonable limitations of infrastructure development. Road rage became road mild-understanding.

During arguments, he’d stop mid-sentence to acknowledge valid points in his opponent’s reasoning. His girlfriend broke up with him after he spent three hours explaining why her frustration with his emotional unavailability was “logically sound given the predetermined axioms of romantic expectations in contemporary society.”

The real crisis came during a mathematics lecture when he raised his hand and asked, “But why base 10? Isn’t it arbitrary? Couldn’t we just as reasonably use base 12? Or base π? Is anything real?”

Gödel appeared again that night, floating above Thomas’s bed while he tried to sleep.

“How’s the reasonable life treating you?” the apparition asked, smirking.

“Well,” Thomas began, sitting up, “it’s both optimal and suboptimal, depending on one’s chosen metric for evaluation. Though of course, the very concept of metrics is inherently subjective, built upon arbitrary foundations of measurement that we’ve collectively agreed upon through social contract, which itself is a construct based on…”

“Yes, yes,” Gödel interrupted, “you’re getting it. Keep going.”

The next week was a descent into deeper realizations. Thomas spent three hours in the grocery store, paralyzed by the reasonable arguments for and against each breakfast cereal. He wrote a 47-page proof explaining why his preference for chocolate over vanilla was simultaneously valid and invalid based on different sets of axioms.

His coworkers found him in the break room, surrounded by coffee cups, muttering about how the concept of a “coffee break” was a social construct built on arbitrary divisions of time, and really, wasn’t time itself just another axiom we’d chosen to believe in?

Gödel’s appearances became more frequent. He’d show up in mirrors, in puddles, once as a particularly mathematical-looking cloud.

“Having fun yet?” he’d ask, while Thomas hyperventilated over the inherent incompleteness of his tax returns.

The breaking point came during a dinner date (with someone who hadn’t yet heard about the cereal incident). Thomas spent two hours explaining why the restaurant’s rating system was based on subjective value judgments that couldn’t be proven consistent within their own system.

“But that’s perfectly reasonable,” he insisted to his fleeing date’s back. “Just like how the Axiom of Choice is both consistent and independent of ZFC! Wait, come back! I can prove it using a well-ordered set of relationship definitions!”

That night, Gödel found Thomas sitting in his kitchen, surrounded by textbooks, empty coffee cups, and scattered notes covered in increasingly desperate attempts to prove that anything at all was objectively true.

“Ready to understand the joke?” Gödel asked, perching on a stack of philosophy books.

“There is no objective truth, is there?” Thomas whispered. “It’s all just different sets of assumptions leading to different kinds of reasonable conclusions. Even this conversation could be reasonably interpreted multiple ways depending on our chosen axioms of reality.”

“Now you’re getting it!” Gödel beamed. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Thomas started laughing. Then crying. Then both at once, which was perfectly reasonable given the circumstances.

“So what do I do now?” he asked, wiping his eyes. “How do I live in a world where everything is simultaneously reasonable and unreasonable?”

Gödel shrugged, his form flickering like a faulty mathematical projection. “Same way everyone else does. Pick your axioms, live with the inconsistencies, and try not to think too hard about why we use base 10.”

“That’s… that’s not very reasonable,” Thomas protested.

“Exactly!” Gödel exclaimed. “Now you’re really getting it!”

And with that, he vanished, leaving Thomas alone with his reasonable confusion, which was, all things considered, the only reasonable response to an unreasonable universe.

Thomas still has his extreme reasonableness, but he’s learning to live with it. These days, he only spends an average of 45 minutes choosing breakfast cereal, and he’s almost convinced himself that it’s okay to prefer chocolate for no logically rigorous reason.

Sometimes, late at night, he swears he can hear Gödel laughing. But then again, that’s just one reasonable interpretation of many possible sound wave phenomena, isn’t it?

Opposite Ends of the Spectrum

If there’s a spectrum of happiness, I’m pretty sure I’m on one extreme: the wide-eyed, goofy, relentlessly optimistic quokka. The kind of creature that smiles at every shadow, assuming it’s a friend. And her? She’s the viscacha—calm, serious, with that perpetual frown that seems to carry the weight of ancient wisdom. She doesn’t believe in frivolous smiles or fleeting joys; she believes in caution, in stillness, in thinking twice.

We met in a world that wasn’t quite hers or mine. Somewhere between my sunlit, carefree fields and her rocky, contemplative cliffs. She looked at me like I was a joke. I looked at her like she was a puzzle I wanted to solve.

“You can’t just… smile all the time,” she said one day, watching me scurry around, making the most out of nothing. “It’s exhausting just to look at you.”

“And you can’t just frown forever,” I replied, hopping closer. “How do you even enjoy the world if you keep your head down so much?”

For a while, we were stuck in our corners of the spectrum. She would sit in the shade, arms crossed, watching as I tried to turn every moment into an adventure. I would try to pull her out of her stillness, only to be met with her exasperated sighs. It felt impossible—how could we ever compromise when we were made so differently?

But slowly, we began to meet in the middle.

She taught me the beauty of quiet moments. How not every second has to be filled with action, that some joys are found in stillness. We’d sit together on her favorite rock, overlooking a world that seemed a little less chaotic when we were side by side.

And I taught her to loosen up. That it’s okay to chase sunbeams and let your guard down every now and then. She even smiled once—a small, fleeting thing, but I swear it lit up the cliffs.

We didn’t change completely. I still smile at shadows, and she still sighs at my antics. But somewhere along the way, we found a rhythm that worked. Her grounded nature anchored my energy, and my optimism softened her edges.

We weren’t the same. We didn’t need to be. We were the quokka and the viscacha—opposite ends of the happiness spectrum, somehow meeting in the middle.

And it worked. It really worked.

Unfinished Sketches

The kitchen table trembles as I write, each equation bleeding through the thin paper onto the wood beneath. It’s 3 AM, and the house breathes with the quiet rhythm of my sleeping family. The margin of my daughter’s math homework has become my blackboard – careful not to obscure her own neat calculations, I’ve filled every empty space with fragments of quantum mechanics, trying to understand how light bends and time flows.

My son’s cough echoes from down the hall. I pause, pen hovering over half-finished derivations, listening for the pattern I’ve memorized: three sharp coughs means his asthma is flaring, four means I need to ready the nebulizer. Two coughs, then silence. He settles back to sleep, and I return to my stolen education.

The kitchen walls are a patchwork of my obsessions. Between the calendar of doctor’s appointments and school events, I’ve pinned diagrams of flying machines sketched on the backs of past-due notices. Next to the grocery list hangs a study of muscle mechanics, drawn while waiting at the pharmacy for my wife’s medication. The refrigerator holds my daughter’s artwork alongside my attempts to decode the mathematics of beauty – the golden ratio found in her crooked smile, the fractal patterns in the way her hair curls.

During my lunch breaks at the warehouse, I read. Today it’s a worn copy of da Vinci’s notebooks, rescued from the library’s discard pile. My coworkers joke about it – call me “Professor” as they pass by. They don’t understand why anyone would choose to spend their precious thirty minutes studying the flight patterns of birds or the flow of blood through the heart. But in those pages, I see myself – or rather, who I could have been. A universal mind. A Renaissance soul trapped in the machinery of necessity.

At night, after the dishes are done and homework is checked, I sometimes allow myself to dream. I imagine my name in academic journals, my designs changing the world, my understanding of the universe expanding beyond these cramped kitchen walls. The possibilities unfold like infinite reflections in parallel mirrors – each one perfect, pristine, and permanently out of reach.

“Daddy?”

My daughter stands in the doorway, blanket clutched to her chest. The clock reads 3:47 AM.

“What are you doing?”

“Just some work, sweetheart.” I close the notebook, sliding it under bills I need to sort tomorrow. “Bad dream?”

She nods, and I open my arms. She climbs into my lap, small and warm and real, while Leonardo’s sketches peek out from beneath the overdue electric bill. Her breathing slows as I hold her, and I feel the weight of her trust – heavier than any textbook, more complex than any equation.

The next morning, I receive an email from the online physics course I’ve been taking. My latest paper on theoretical quantum mechanics has caught the professor’s attention. He wants to discuss my ideas, mentions words like “potential” and “extraordinary insight.” He suggests I consider applying to their graduate program.

I read the email three times during my break, then delete it.

That night, my wife falls asleep on the couch waiting for me to finish my “studies.” I cover her with a blanket, noting how the shadows under her eyes have deepened since she took the second job. On the coffee table, her nursing school application sits half-completed. She’s put it off three years now, always saying my dreams should come first because “you’re the genius in the family.”

I stand in our dark living room, surrounded by the ghosts of unfinished ideas. They hover in the shadows – perpetual motion machines, revolutionary algorithms, philosophical treatises. Each one a road not taken, a universe unexplored. My mind races with possibilities, with the burning certainty that I could solve these puzzles if only I had time, if only I had resources, if only, if only…

My son’s inhaler needs to be refilled next week. My daughter’s school shoes are wearing thin. The car makes a sound that means expensive repairs are coming. Each necessity is a door closing, each responsibility a weight anchoring me to earth while my mind strains toward the stars.

I gather my notebooks – physics, engineering, philosophy, art – and stack them neatly in a box. My hands shake as I close the lid, but my heart is steady. The truth is, I’ve always known this choice was coming. The world is full of undiscovered brilliance, potential locked away by circumstance. History only remembers the geniuses who had the luxury of time, the freedom to pursue their obsessions to their natural conclusions.

I am not Leonardo. I will never be Einstein. My theorems will remain unproven, my inventions unbuilt, my understanding of the universe fragmentary and incomplete. But my children will be fed. My wife will finally apply to nursing school. Our home will be warm in winter.

That night, I dream of flying machines and unified theories. But when I wake, I make breakfast, pack lunches, kiss foreheads, and drive to the warehouse. My mind still soars with questions about light and time and the architecture of reality. But my love is anchored here, in the solid world of small needs and vital necessities.

Sometimes, on my lunch breaks, I still read. But now I keep my notes in my head, let my dreams live in the spaces between breaths. The universe whispers its secrets, and I listen, even though I can no longer answer back. Perhaps that’s enough – to know that I could have soared, but chose instead to build a nest, to shelter the dreams of those who depend on me.

After all, some forms of genius lie in the choices we make, in knowing when to fold our paper wings and walk the solid earth. There’s a different kind of renaissance in learning to live with the weight of unrealized potential, in finding grace in the gap between what we could become and what we choose to be.

Tonight, I will help my daughter with her math homework. And if she asks me about the stars, I will tell her everything I know, and then I will tell her to fly higher than I ever could.

Notes from a Thursday Night

I sit here, cross-legged on unwashed sheets,
surrounded by textbooks I pretend to read.
Another night of almost-understanding,
of reaching for thoughts that slip like smoke
through fingers too clumsy to catch them.

They say college is where minds catch fire.
Mine just smolders, giving off toxic fumes
that smell like yesterday’s coffee
and tomorrow’s disappointment.
(God, I’m so tired of disappointing.)

My roommate’s out again, living what they call
“the best years of our lives” while I
conjugate verbs in languages I’ll never speak,
memorize formulas I’ll never use,
chase dreams I’ll never catch.

The library closes in twenty minutes.
I should go – pretend I belong among
the bright ones, the quick ones,
those who understand on first reading,
who raise their hands without their hearts racing.

Instead, I stare at my reflection
in a laptop screen gone dark,
counting the hours until dawn,
adding them to the collection
of nights I’ve wasted being almost-good.

My father calls these growing pains.
(He means well, they all mean well.)
But what grows in these fluorescent hours
besides the stack of half-filled notebooks
and the weight of what I cannot grasp?

Sometimes I think I feel it coming –
that moment when it all makes sense,
when the fog lifts and reveals
the person I’m supposed to be.
But it’s just another false dawn.

The group chat buzzes with plans:
Friday nights and future dreams.
I type “maybe next time” with practiced ease,
then return to these pages
that refuse to yield their secrets.

My high school valedictorian speech
sits in a drawer somewhere, yellowing,
full of promises about potential
and the future’s bright horizon.
(God, we were all so young.)

Now I’m here, three years deep
in a game I don’t know how to win,
watching others soar past
while I remain earthbound,
heavy with the weight of mediocrity.

But still I sit, and still I try,
and still I fill these margins
with desperate annotations,
as if understanding might come
through sheer stubborn repetition.

Tomorrow I’ll smile in class,
nod at all the right moments,
pretend I’m keeping pace.
Tonight, I’ll sit with my failure,
let it teach me what it will.

Maybe that’s all I’ll ever be:
The one who tried too hard
to be what others are by nature.
The one who loved the dream
enough to bear the waking.

So here’s to another night
of almost-understanding,
of reaching for thoughts that slip away,
of being less than I should be,
but more than I was yesterday.

The library’s closed now.
My coffee’s gone cold.
The words still swim before my eyes,
but I remain here, drowning slowly,
in the beauty of the trying.