He retrieved the ice pack, now room temperature, and exchanged it for a fresh one from the freezer.He thanked me with a nod, applying the cold like a ritual.
Lights dimmed at eleven on the dot.He crossed to his bed, peeled back covers and climbed under them.I powered down the desk lamp, but a slice of streetlight still found the puck on my shelf—centered, standing vigil.
Luke’s voice drifted through the dark.“Austen?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.For not… you know.Treating me like overflow.”
“We solve for the new perimeter,” I answered.
“Yeah.We do.”
Silence, then the soft rustle of sheets.If he smiled, I couldn’t see it, but the room settled—puzzle edges aligned, picture not finished, yet recognizably ours.
I lay back, counting radiator ticks like metrical proof.Somewhere around tick twelve my phone buzzed—Maya:x equals yes?
I typed under the blanket:System update in progress.Variable ‘Friend’ added to dataset.
Send.
Radiator ticked thirteen.The math held.
Chapter 11
The Lab
Austen
Starlings are, statistically speaking, boring.
I sat in the library carrel, staring at a simulation ofSturnus vulgarismigration patterns.On my screen, thousands of digital dots swooped and swirled in a mesmerizing cloud.Efficient.Beautiful.
Putting me to sleep.
I checked my phone.No texts from Luke.He was at practice, likely stopping pucks or getting yelled at by Harper.
I minimized the birds and pulled up a different window—a pirated stream of the Merrimack game I’d found on a shady forum.I watched Luke move.
Shuffle.Post-tap.T-push.Freeze.
Technically, the players weren’t a flock.Luke was a single point of data navigating a hostile geometric plane.
I typedhockey as flock of birds into a Google search to see if anyone had looked at flocking behavior of hockey players.All I found was an obscure reference to a pigeon.I read the result,In hockey, a “pigeon” is a common slang term, usually a friendly jab, for a player who doesn’t do a whole lot on their own but capitalizes on the work of others (e.g., scoring a goal off a lucky rebound after a teammate did all the hard work).Pigeons are often seen as “bench warmers” or not highly respected, much like the common perception of the bird itself.This made no sense to me.If someone wasn’t a working part of the system, why would they keep them.If a gear in a watch breaks down, you replace the gear with one that works.I made a mental note to ask Luke when I saw him.
The birds were random chaos masquerading as order.Luke was order imposed on chaos.
I closed the laptop.I couldn’t write about birds.Not when I had a much more interesting variable sleeping five feet away from me every night.
I scribbled in my notebook,“Flocking behavior?”Can we apply mathematical flocking behavior to hockey players?We already use the term to describe and analyze other forms of leadership.Can teamwork, positioning, and coordinated movement among players on the ice be evaluated in the same way?It is a metaphor for how individual players, without global control from a single leader (the goalie), follow simple local rules to achieve complex, collective movement, much like a flock of birds or a school of fish.
But to prove it, I needed raw data.
The Audio-Visual Department lived in the sub-basement of the Arts building, a windowless dungeon that smelled of Doritos.
I walked up to the cage.Ben, the student manager—a guy who wore a beanie indoors and looked like he hadn’t seen the sun since mid-June—was wrapping cables.
“We’re closed, man,” Ben said without looking up.“If you want a camera for a film project, fill out the form online.”
