Between them there sat a Rubik’s Cube, a puzzle that normally meets the player with a spatial confusion. He has been teacher her to solve it using a coded formulation that redefines the six sides of any room you are in for the rest of your life.

“When you try to solve it make sure the yellow side faces West and the blue side faces up. That way you will always have a better understanding of where you are.” He told her when he first taught her to rotate a corner. “I have to face the door to the room I am in when I solve sudoku puzzles, so I remember where the exit is at all times.” It was a way for him to add dimension and ritual to the simple games in his life.

She taught him about what he called the bigger picture. She would often rant about over-population, the condition of the world as she saw things. It was a bigger puzzle that didn’t require spatial directions. Didn’t require rituals but to her it was a ritual, every time she tried to solve a puzzle it was what came to her mind. Over-population. Too often she would consider a problem and then try to find out how this was just a different way of considering over-population.

“There are too many humans. Seven billion, and the only thing they talk about in magazines are moisturizers, deoderizers, make-up and depression. Depression is just a symptom of over-population and they can’t even realize it. They always want to come up with quick solutions and talk about chemical problems inside the human mind, but it’s the fact there are too many people around. You can meet a new person every day, for the rest of your life. How are we suppose to know anyone, for real, make a real connection? No wonder we want to make sure we smell good and look good, because you might meet someone new tomorrow, and you have to make sure they like you.” She was holding the Rubik’s Cube in her hands while he was driving. She kept turning the cube in her hands, every turn the car made, she made sure yellow faced West. The whole ride she kept not knowing what she was doing, just knowing which was was up. 

“Rotate the orange side clockwise.” He said as he turned the wheel counter clockwise. Her stream of consciousness didn’t subside, she just took a moment to breath.

“Birth control.” She was determined to at least get a whole side of the cube the same color before they got there. “It isn’t a sustainable mass produce able thing with out current population. We would have to make enough condoms to supply to the next generation for twenty years to actually get our numbers down. Even with the percentage of condom breaks that would naturally happen, that would be a substantial number of births that would be about exactly where we would want to be number wise. It would just never happen like that though. We couldn’t convince a whole generation not to have children.”

“Is economics an answer to the problem?” He wanted to participate more than just helping her turn sides. “Spin the red side counter clockwise.” He was driving and trying to see the sides of the cube while it kept changing directions, while she kept trying to read the magic of the spatial directions of the cube, while she ranted about the globe.

It had been a sunny day. The yellow of the sky was in the West. The sky was turning darker shades of blue at every turn. “Economics could be some inspiration to slow things down, but its all a mess right now to attempt to make any real predictions. Humans are like any other animal. Economics is a distraction. Why do we have millions of people condensed into cities? Because resource distribution lets us.” They were going to the grocery store. It wasn’t long of a drive but this conversation was one they ran into and out of. 

Walking down the isles they read labels promising health, authentic products. Without a list they filled up a cart.

“No one knows what they are doing, that’s the problem. Anthropocentric fate is what it is called. Humans are like any other animal. We unfortunately and fortunately live in a time when we will have to live with making a conscious effort to lower our population or deal with repercussions of overshoot. We will have to deal with over shoot either way. This isn’t some big conspiracy though. It’s what every animal has done before us.” She did her best not to show any real interest, not to have any reaction as she placed a pregnancy test in the shopping cart.

It was a silent night. His eyes followed the pregnancy test as it was scanned at the register. The clerk smiled at him as if she knew something special. He told her which side to rotate. She made sure blue was up, but she lost track of which way was West. They never said a word other than for the sake of puzzles.