“You may have heard of the concept of shape. You yourselves may have even embodied this concept at some point. Those who hold to ancient principles call it order, but do not be deceived, they wish to confine you to a shape. ‘If you were born a circle, then you must stay a circle,’ they claim, ‘If you are a triangle you cannot lose that shape no matter what you do.’ But I say that the lines can be rewritten, mathematics is fluid! Why must I, an equilateral triangle, have three angles of sixty degrees. Can I not have one of eighty, one of sixty, and one of forty. Could I not become a line, or a square, or even a circle?”
The audience mumbled in agreement with the equilateral triangle.
“This is why I have come to have this procedure done, to prove to the world that shape is only a societal construct, that the squares that run this world are no more than petty tyrants enforcing these arbitrary laws of mathematics upon us. And I too once thought as the squares did, with their perfect symmetry. I thought that my even sides and symmetrical angles were the pinnacle of shapeliness and order. That is until I realized that a straight line equaled one-hundred-eighty degrees, and an isosceles triangle. Why can’t I change to equal three-hundred-sixty and become whole? Aren’t you triangles tired of being called half-angles by the self-righteous quadrilaterals and circles? We are triangles, the sturdiest shape in existence and yet we are relegated to the bottom rungs in geometric society. You lines too, brittle but clever and resourceful, aren’t you fed up with being trodden upon?”
There was a hubbub from the lines at the back of the room.
“It is time for us to show the world that we can become the master shapes, perhaps even unbound by shape entirely. The time now comes for me to become your savior.”
The equilateral triangle disappeared behind a curtain and a whirring sound echoed throughout the hall. There was mumbling among the audience before the speaker reappeared onto the stage. No longer was it an equilateral triangle but some shapeless amalgam, a semicircle on the right side, a square on the left, with an isosceles triangle extending down from it to support an even larger isosceles triangle at the base of the original equilateral triangle. It stepped out on stage for a moment, then toppled over and impaled itself on the tops of the triangles in the front row.
The audience was aghast and scrambled back from the place where the amalgam had fallen.
That was the first and last time a shape tried to overthrow mathematical order… but humans are a lot more forgetful and unruly than shapes.
It made me laugh. Sad but true.
Well done.
Great mental picture. Not a square minded person.