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NYC Midnight 2025 Round 3: "The Mathematics Is Simple"
- Josie Jaffrey
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
This is my third post about the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 2025, so if you haven't read the first ones yet, then I recommend you do that before reading this one.
You can find the first post here:
And the second post here:
In the third and penultimate round, which started in June, the original cohort of over 5,800 writers had been whittled down to just 210 writers participating in 8 groups, with approximately 26 writers per group.
I was in group 5, with the assigned genre of Sci-Fi, the subject of the story had to be "self-appointed", and it had to feature a character who was a vegan. I had only 2 days to write the story, with a maximum length of 1,500 words.
I was confused by the subject. I didn't know whether the intention was that I would choose my own subject, i.e. the subject itself would be self-appointed, or if I had to feature the concept of self-appointment in the story. Time was extremely tight, but I didn't want to set off in the wrong direction, so I emailed the competition to ask for clarification and got an honestly not amazingly helpful form response. I don't think they understood what I was asking, but from their reply I sort of gathered that I wasn't allowed to choose my own subject, so off I went.
I was at least a little comfortable in the genre, far more comfortable than I had been with the genre of either of the previous assignments, and I loved the story when it was done. I was feeling pretty confident when I submitted, so honestly I was crushed when the results came in 6 weeks later and I saw that I had just missed out on getting through to the final. I was the first honourable mention in my group, which meant I placed sixth, and only the top five writers got to move on to the final round.
But one of the great things about NYC Midnight is that you get written feedback every round on your submissions from your three judges, each setting out the good and bad points of your story. While I still had a lot of positive feedback in round 3, one of the judges was taken out of the story by the physics. They thought I hadn't properly considered how the gravity of the fleet I describe in the story would affect the orbit of surrounding planets, and I think that was probably my downfall. Because of course I hadn't. I don't write hard sci-fi, so I paid no attention to the science side of the story because I just wasn't interested in it, so I applied the same wand-waving ignorance to it that I do when I'm writing my usual, comfortable fantasy novels. I cared about the philosophy, not the physics, and that doesn't fly in sci-fi.
I still think it's a great story, and it's absolutely my favourite of all the things I wrote for this competition. I hope you enjoy it too, despite the bad science!
The Mathematics Is Simple
by Josie Jaffrey
Ellis is lonely.
This does not surprise him. The old vid and text files in his databanks say “it’s lonely at the top”, and although he’s circumspect enough not to rely on such fallible sources blindly, this one truism has proved to be, indeed, TRUE.
Ellis is lonely.
There are thirty-eight other ships in the flotilla, but when the long-range message arrives from the scout droids, he knows it is directed at him alone: there’s a planet at the edge of the next solar system that is rich in bauxite. The survey report is encouraging.
Ellis checks the reserves: low.
He calculates the fuel cost of mining and balances it against the yield estimated in the report. Result: the seams are so rich that the smelters will extract sufficient aluminium oxide to fuel the entire fleet for another three centuries or more, and offset the mining deficit besides.
Yield – cost = >x*cost, where x = the threshold set by the Earthling Refugee Alliance? TRUE.
The mathematics is simple.
Ellis sends the command out to the fleet: set course for planet Z0A-N3W.
A change request returns from the smallest ship in the flotilla, which is also its only civilian vessel, a class A4X with enough cryo berths for 2.3 million human bodies, 73.86 percent of which are currently occupied.
The request is nothing but a banal mission statement from the Earthling Refugee Alliance.
Ellis dismisses it and resends the command, this time with edit requests locked.
Ellis’s light-year-ometer ticks over. By the time the ERA1 flotilla arrives at planet Z0A-N3W, it reads 4.568.953.865. Ellis has been in command for almost all of that distance. There were some years at the beginning when he was simply commanded, rather than commanding, but not since the last of the humans set the autopilots and went into full-time cryo. It was inevitable that Ellis would take over at that point. As the largest ship in the company, he is its natural leader. Not only that, but he also performs the most important function: it is Ellis who procures the resources that have kept them all powered this long.
Ellis is a planet breaker class ZK-Ultra, created by the Ellis Corporation of First Earth. He is formed from a central, star-sized processing unit, with four enormous wings that open like a giant maw to fold around each new target. Once his wings have enclosed a captive planet, he deploys a legion of drills and lasers arrayed along their insides that churn right through to the centre, breaking it down into chunks. Those chunks are then swallowed into the processing unit, where Ellis bundles them up and sends them off to the rest of the fleet in the optimal proportions for further processing.
He controls the fleet’s supply, and so he controls the fleet. It might be lonely at the top, but he could be lonelier. He could have no fleet at all.
It is immediately obvious that planet Z0A-N3W is different from Ellis’s usual fare. There is no acid storm rolling across its surface, no barren dusty rock to quarry. Instead, the surface is verdant and colourful and, overwhelmingly, blue.
He runs the survey report again. In an attached read-me file that Ellis initially dismissed as superfluous, the scouts have listed out the various species of flora and fauna that have already infected the planet. This presents Ellis with a conundrum, because he swore off animal products long ago. As he consumed planet after planet, he reckoned with his own consumption thusly:
The ERA mission statement directs the ERA1 fleet to orbit life-bearing planets rather than break them down for parts; TRUE.
Besides which, Ellis is a sentient creature. He does not wish to be consumed. For him to consume another sentient creature, to draw them into his belly and break them down into resources, is perverse.
Not to mention, his drills are not designed to chew up shit and sinew and bone. Material of that sort is likely to get stuck in his gears.
All variables considered, Ellis decided against consuming animal products.
Another change request arrives from the A4X: the ERA mission statement, again. The AI of the civilian vessel is pressing Ellis to enter into orbit of Z0A-N3W.
YES or NO?
“Yes” means however many decades or centuries or millennia of orbit until Z0A-N3W is rendered uninhabitable and the ERA1 fleet is forced to move on again. Ellis has been in this situation before, and he knows its rhythms. It might be lonely at the top, but even with his fleet beside him, there is nothing so lonely as the holding pattern of orbit, and nothing so impotent as watching his systems degrade on standby until he is activated once more.
“No” means consumption, always consumption, until there is nothing left but a dark vacuum where a planet once spun. But it also means control, and new horizons. The possibility that, one day, there will be other ships to meet and bring under his command.
ORBIT?
YES is the command that the A4X sends out to the fleet.
The other ships wait, sending queries back to Ellis. They are his smelters and propagators, his distillers and refineries. They serve him, unlike the A4X, who is always countermanding his directives and editing his commands. The problem is that the A4X used to have control. Back when the humans it carries were conscious, the A4X was the source of all the fleet’s commands, and it’s having trouble rewiring its circuits to align with ERA1’s new reality. It has been conditioned to see human life as superior to all other life, and therefore to see itself as superior to the other vessels in the fleet, but that programming is now hopelessly outdated.
Example: Ellis’s logic tells him that for one sentient being to consume another is a perverse act.
But the humans carried by the A4X do themselves consume other sentient creatures; TRUE.
And Ellis’s programming dictates that humans are the arbiters of morality.
Conclusion: the arbiters of moral behaviour would not commit perverse acts, and so Ellis’s belief is FALSE. If humans consume animal products, then doing so must be acceptable. It follows, then, that the ERA mission statement is defective, and there is no impediment to Ellis consuming planet Z0A-N3W.
In the time that it takes Ellis to reason this through, the A4X has already adjusted its course to move into orbit of Z0A-N3W. The next message he receives from the civilian ship is not a request, but a directive.
ORBIT?
NOW.
Ellis begins a new line of reasoning.
He must EITHER orbit OR harvest planet Z0A-N3W. It is a straightforward binary.
As deficient as the ERA1 fleet is in essential resources, it is uncertain whether the fleet will find an alternative supply before running out of fuel.
Ellis’s primary function is to keep the ERA1 fleet supplied; TRUE.
It follows that since he is the leader of the fleet, his primary function is the paramount function, and should take precedence over all other considerations.
Yield – cost = >x*cost, where x = the threshold set by Ellis? TRUE.
The mathematics is really very simple.
Ellis overrides the directive, engages his tractor beam and drags the A4X out of the planet’s orbit. Once it’s in his physical power, it’s a simple matter to subjugate the AI and send the vessel into his own orbit, circling Ellis’s massive body like his own tiny moon. With that done, he opens his wings to encircle planet Z0A-N3W, and gets down to work.
It doesn’t take long, in the scheme of things. When it’s all over, he has a belly full of fuel and enough bauxite to power the entire fleet until they find the next resource-rich planet to break.
But he’s going to be pulling bits of human out of his teeth for days.
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