In the midst of a lecture regarding the tangent spaces of manifolds and covariant tensors, our traveler is exposed as a student of mathematics; the mathematician. Yet the mathematician is not focused on the study of the language of nature this day. Instead the mathematician considers his predicament as he attempts to avoid the masochism through writing:

I seem to have been born in such a way, conditioned in such a way that I seem to think or at least behave as if anything that is valid I should somehow have the capacity to comprehend. However, despite my peculiar ability to consider myself to be somehow special, I find myself at the edge of my ability to understand. I am lost with this material. Lost in a sea of symbolism, in a perfect storm of incomprehensible banter, and yet I find serenity; solace in my inability.

However, it would seem that writing was destined to bring reprieve from the tumultuous mundane only temporarily. Upon finishing his manuscript, the mathematician is brought back into the fold with the ravenous fury of a terrible migraine, induced by the deafening whisper regarding mappings of a multi-linear and antisymmetric kind.

A vision corrupts his focus and he is met with a glimpse, a searing sensation, ache-burn-grimace and gnash. The creak, a siren alarming–racing–thumping, coagulation diminishing. Screeching of rusted metal followed by heavy clunk. Chains stressed by brittle bone wrapped in minimal flesh; a thin membrane distinguishing an embodiment of darkened fear, acclimated to pain, from the shadows. As the vision fades the mathematician realizes he is trapped in a walking grave. He recalls that he died years back. His perdition must then be this aimless forced wandering along a turbulent surface, continuously awaiting to be graced by the pale rider’s presence, longing for the ethereal kiss of death.