My name is Isaac Newton, soon to be Sir. Thank you very much. We currently live in the most advanced period of time in history, our ships are able to conquer the Atlantic Ocean in just eight months, the average life expectancy has been pushed to a whopping forty years of age, and people from two entirely different towns can communicate with each other in a manner of weeks.
The reason for this advancement? Science.
And the reason for science?
Me.
That’s right, I have dedicated my entire life, my entire being, to advancing the progression of science and mathematics. Countless nights, and innumerable hours, I toiled in pursuit of this great purpose. I shirked relations, friends, and even my duties as a gentleman in order to accomplish these formulas, and the world is grateful that I did. Thanks to my formulas, I am at the razor’s edge of solving humanity’s woes.
Some might say that I have wasted parts of my life in this pursuit. That I have missed out on key aspects of humanity. For example, some of my closest friends and confidants have taken to ridiculing me for my relative naivete in regard to relations with the gentler sex.
This is nonsense.
For one, I am not the type to be embroiled in such petty comparisons.
For example, a close friend of mine recently took me, against my will, mind you, to one of the local brothels in East London. When I, as any of the educated nobility should, ran screaming in indignation (not fear), from the establishment, my so-called friend took that as a sign of weakness on my part.
In fact, he went as far as to tell pretty much every single person I know, including every single woman I have ever met, or will meet, that I am “afraid of women,” which is of course patently untrue.
Any person in my opinion would be completely justified in being extraordinarily upset, but not me. I was just like, “Whatever man.” Because I did not, and still do not care.
And the second, is that my precious calculations in math and science are of course able to be connected to all manner of problems, not just those of arithmetic.
Thus, in this essay, I will demonstrate how my bold calculations, drafted from my extraordinary mind, can conquer even the mysteries of courtship.
First, I will use my most famous theory, that of gravity, in order to “pick up chicks.” How? Simple: I will simply exchange the integer, “G,” for “C” (chicks). That’s right, my formula is so foolproof, that is all the change necessary.
But how do I carry out this equation?
To bring this formula from page to reality, I needed an experiment. After hours of contemplation, I came to my oil lamp discovery.
It went as such.
I hid on the side of the road in a bush. I waited in the early morning for passers-by. Eventually, a horse-drawn cart, filled with women from the local nunnery, ambled slowly down the road. For a moment I wondered if the fact that these were women of the cloth would affect my calculations, but decided to forge on anyway –I’d been in the bush for a long time.
As the cart passed by my bush, I popped out with a large hammer in my arms. With a mighty crack, I broke the axle of the carriage. The cart jerked violently. The horses galloped away screaming. The women went flying.
The plan was going perfectly. Using my gravitational calculations, I was able to perfectly calculate the rate at which my soon-to-be-beloved was falling toward the ground. As she fell, her love for me would increase in tandem. I picked out the most comely of the bunch, and stood under her ever growing shadow, arms splayed in an athletic stance.
Unfortunately, I miscalculated my own ability to arrest my fair lady’s descent, resulting in her crashing (quite quickly) through my hands and into the dirt.
To make matters worse, her descent appeared to be the gentlest, as I now found myself surrounded by wounded nuns, yelling at me with a coarseness of language I think not befitting of their occupation.
Regardless, I had to admit the relative lack of success in my experiment. Although I firmly believe the main reason for failure was not my fault (that nun was clearly a porker), I realize a new path must be forged.
It would take great cunning to figure a way out of this quandary, and I am sure most men would not be up to the task.
Luckily, I am a genius.
My next equation was that of acceleration. F= M x A.
The answer to this came even quicker than the last.
I once again found myself in a bush on the side of the road. I once again waited until a cart ambled past me. However, instead of upending the cart, I hopped onto the front and grabbed the reins from the cart driver.
Due to the intricate nature of the action, it required much more focus from me, so it was not until I wrenched the reins out of the cart driver’s hands did I realize I was once more surrounded by the very same nuns from my earlier experiment.
I am not sure who was more disappointed by this revelation, but like any great scientist, I did not let that stop my experiment.
I whipped the horses to greater speeds whilst attempting to dodge the attacks from the nuns. When we finally reached top speed, I asked, shouting over the wind, if any of them would care to join me for supper.
But as it turns out, most of them had already jumped off, and the ones they hadn’t were robbed of a response when the cart hit a ditch in the road and careened end over the front.
I broke my pinkie finger, and the cart, that day. To say nothing of my pride.
Perhaps it was the head trauma, perhaps it was the defeat, but as I lay there, face down in the mud, I began to posit an entirely new calculation.
It was not solely based in science, like my theories of old, but instead branched into brave new territories. These new territories were wide ranging, but if I had to boil it down, I’d say they mostly centered around drinking large doses of mercury.
As soon as I returned to my estate, I rounded up as much of the miracle liquid as possible, and imbibed heavily.
The effects they had on me were immediate. I could see the world in entirely new ways, draft theorems on the human totality never before dreamt of, I could read peoples’ minds, fly, turn into an invisible goo and squirm all over the place.
It was truly incredible.
The only problem was that the mercury’s effects were isolated to me; nobody else was able to witness my ascension into the higher plane. Far from it, my staff would usually regard me with some version of disgust when I would come out of my mercury-induced spells.
The ability to spread this heightened state became paramount to the success of my newest theorem. But how do I accomplish this feat? The answer came to me, unsurprisingly, at the height of one of my mercury indulgences.
In the dead of the night, I crept towards the local nunnery. They were to be my target for this experiment. You might ask why I chose the nunnery, especially after my previous failures with them.
For one, I have to admit I had a bit of a personal vendetta against these women. They had spurned my advances not once, but twice, and I would make them rue their earlier transgressions. In addition, it turns out that the nunnery is the only building within fifty miles that has any quantity of women in it, so I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.
Pushing that aside, I crawled toward their stone structure, dragging my sealed tub of mercury behind me. Luckily, the Nuns had a central vat where they kept their drinking water, so it was extremely easy to enact the next part of the plan; pouring the mercury into their water.
My hypothesis was that once these ladies had consumed enough mercury, which was to be diluted in the water to keep safe their more delicate frames, they would henceforth see the wisdom of my previous experiments, as well as how charming and irresistible I am.
Then they will leave their supposed “God,” and begin worshipping me. Sexually. Which, coincidentally, I found much more palatable whilst under the influence of mercury.
That was my hypothesis at least.
I waited in a thicket outside of the monastery, keeping an eye through a looking glass to watch for their changes.
At first everything went exactly to plan, the nuns got up for their daily mass, during which some of them drank some of the water. I saw they commented on the taste, but luckily, mercury mixes quite naturally with the usual taint in drinking water.
However, before they could drink the required amount, they did something I had not accounted for, they began to heat up the water.
The mercury began to simmer, and from there, turn into fumes, which I don’t have to explain are significantly more intense. I would have gone in to stop them, but I feared the fumes would even overwhelm my raised tolerance. Plus, I had to assume those nuns would not be pleased at all to see my face yet again.
So the nuns took the full brunt of the mercury fumes, and they all pretty much passed out on the spot. I clocked the experiment as inconclusive and made my way back home, head hung low.
Reports eventually returned to me that those nuns all swore that they were visited by the holy spirit that morning, so at least they had a good time.
Me, on the other hand?
Single as ever.
For the first time in my life, my theorems have failed. They have failed humanity. They have failed the future. But most importantly, they failed me.
But I will not quit.
Somewhere underneath the mercury, and some toad bile, there lies the answer to my, and society at large, relationship woes.
So fear not, Newton is on the case.
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