Imaginary Math

"Why would I care about fake numbers? I asked Joe.

"Not fake," he said. "Not fake. Imaginary. Imaginary numbers."

"Sorry," I said. "Sheesh." What did I care about the square root of negative one?

"Normally I would sooner tell you to bugger off than ask for anything, but Kim reminded me how you brought us together--and for some reason she thinks you have a sense of humor."

"Thank you?" I asked.

"We're having a Brain Eater family get together tonight. Kim says to stop by and watch me eat the first bite of ceremonial brain-food cake. It looks like you."

"Gee thanks," I muttered. I need to pay more attention to what I say about people. Kim read one of my boring personal logs about Joe, and was so intrigued with my description that she tracked him down and started sleeping with him.

''So you'll stop by? It's chocolate fudge."

"Uh... I don't know. It's a bit creepy, " I said. "And there's the thing where we don't like each other."

"Your loss," Joe said. "I need to know where those drives came from. I found some data. It's not complete, but I if can tie into the original q-link, I might...."

"There's only one drive, Joe, and why should I tell you anything? I got you the drive, and you won't even let me have a super-node."

"Tell me and we'll talk about a super-node," Joe said.

"It would be nice to start dumping data on the Relativity tests I've been running."

"Fine. Please just tell me where they came from before you disappear for another week."

"One of the old Jupiter bases. There's a whole nest of crazies around Jupiter, and every one of them owns a base-station or hydro-ship or something."

Joe snapped his fingers. "I've got a couple of cousins living over there. I'll bet they can help us track down the q-link."

"The q-link fell into Jupiter. The drive was reset to n-link on Jupiter Station Seven before they shipped it."

"But there's data in there. It can't be null."

I shrugged. "How'd you get it online? Has to be null before you can link to the local quanta."

"I.... I tuned it in I guess," Joe said. "I felt for the connection and..." He stopped.

"You activated your symbiont and grabbed hold of an imaginary number," I said.

"I was explaining that part when you started to play dumb," Joe said. "But yeah, if you want to get metaphorical."

"It's the only way I do math," I said. "Was that before or after you officially linked it to the local quanta?"

"After."

I looked at him for a minute and then shrugged. "You're the math wiz. You must have tapped into something."

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. "Thanks."

"No problem," I muttered. I almost asked why they called it an 'imaginary' number, and not something like 'impossible' number, but he would have had to answer it instead of leaving.