StoriesBlog The mathematician he’d buried with his mother was clawing its way to the surface.
“Fine,” he said quietly, his voice steady despite the earthquake inside him. “Give me one week.”
The challenge hung in the air between them, heavy and electric. Professor Rhodes laughed, the sound echoing off the walls.
“One week it is. Don’t disappoint me.”
As Ethan left with his cart, the wheels squeaking on the linoleum, he heard her tell the class, “This is what happens when people don’t know their place.”
That night, Ethan climbed the stairs to the university library for the first time since starting his janitorial job three years ago. His key card granted after-hours access for cleaning, but he’d never used it for this purpose. The mathematics section stood before him like a cathedral of forgotten dreams, each book spine a memory of who he used to be.
He pulled down volume after volume with hands that trembled slightly, his fingers remembering the texture of academic pages, the smell of knowledge preserved in print. The equation Professor Rhodes had written wasn’t just complex; it was a masterpiece of mathematical cruelty. It combined elements from topology, number theory, and quantum mechanics in ways that shouldn’t work together.
It was designed to be unsolvable, a trap to humiliate anyone foolish enough to attempt it. He spread his work across a table in the furthest corner, away from security cameras and late-night graduate students. The familiar rhythm returned slowly, like a musician picking up an instrument after years of silence.
Each symbol he wrote felt like coming home and saying goodbye simultaneously. His mother’s face kept appearing in his mind, not sick and frail as she’d been at the end, but vibrant and proud as she’d been when he won his first mathematics competition at twelve.
“You have a gift, Ethan,” she’d said, her hand warm on his shoulder. “Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed of it.”
But shame was all he’d felt for five years. Shame that his gift hadn’t been enough to save her. By three in the morning, he’d filled twenty pages with calculations, pursuing approaches and abandoning them, circling the problem like a wolf stalking prey.
The janitor’s uniform felt strange now, like a costume he’d worn so long he’d forgotten it wasn’t his real skin. As dawn approached, he carefully gathered his papers, hiding them in a supply closet only he could access, then returned to his regular rounds. As he cleaned the mathematics building, he noticed something he’d never paid attention to before.
The late-night lights in various offices showed graduate students and professors wrestling with their own problems. He wasn’t alone in this dance with numbers; he’d just been dancing in the shadows. Professor Jennifer Martinez passed him in the hallway, and for the first time, she nodded and said, “Good morning.”
The acknowledgment felt like sunlight breaking through clouds.
Word of the janitor’s challenge spread through the mathematics department like wildfire consuming dry timber. Students created a Facebook group called “Janitor vs Professor” that gained 300 members in just two days.
They began taking photos whenever they spotted Ethan, turning him into an unwilling campus celebrity. The rumors grew more elaborate with each telling. Some claimed he was a Russian spy gathering intelligence. Others insisted he was an eccentric billionaire researching a movie role. A few suggested he was Professor Rhodes’ ex-lover seeking revenge. The student newspaper ran a front-page story with the headline: “David vs Goliath: Can a Janitor Solve the Impossible?”
Amelia heard every whisper, each one stoking her anger to new heights. The idea that this nobody, this maintenance worker, had dared to challenge her publicly was intolerable. She began arriving earlier and staying later, determined to solve the equation herself before the week ended.
Her regular research fell by the wayside as she obsessed over the problem. On Thursday morning, she discovered something that made her blood run cold. Someone had been using the spare blackboard in the abandoned seminar room.
It was the room nobody had used since Professor Harrison retired two years ago. The work on the board was elegant, approaching the problem from angles she’d never considered. The handwriting was neat but unpracticed, as if someone was remembering how to write mathematics rather than doing it regularly.
She photographed everything with her phone before erasing it, spending the entire day trying to understand the methodology. The approach used techniques from papers published in the last year, things no amateur would know. That evening, she waited in the shadows outside the seminar room like a detective on a stakeout.
At midnight, Ethan appeared with his cleaning cart. But instead of cleaning, he went straight to the blackboard and continued where the previous work had been erased. She watched through the door’s narrow window in growing disbelief as he worked through transformations she’d only seen in the most advanced journals.
His movements were confident now, the hesitation gone as he lost himself in the mathematics. When he suddenly sensed her presence and turned around, she was already gone, her worldview cracking like ice under the spring sun. She practically ran to her office, where she sat in the dark, trying to reconcile what she’d witnessed with everything she believed about the world’s natural order.
Friday afternoon, the video appeared on the university’s social media page. A student named Jennifer Wu had been practicing a presentation in an empty classroom when Ethan entered to clean. The board still contained a problem from an earlier class, a graduate-level differential equation that had stumped several PhD candidates.
Jennifer, recognizing him from the rumors, asked jokingly if he could solve it, her phone already recording for what she assumed would be a funny failure to share with friends. What happened next was captured in crystal clear footage that would be viewed over a million times. Ethan studied the board for 30 seconds, his eyes moving in patterns that suggested deep analysis rather than confusion.
Then he picked up chalk and began solving the equation with the kind of fluid confidence that comes from true understanding. He worked through the problem in under three minutes, explaining each step in a clear, patient voice that revealed not just knowledge but the ability to teach.
“You see here,” he said to Jennifer, who stood frozen in shock. “The trick is recognizing this as a hidden Laplace transformation. Once you see that, the rest follows naturally.”
The video went viral within hours, shared across academic forums and social media platforms. It reached the dean’s office before dinner. Dean Robert Thompson, a man who’d led the university for 15 years, watched it three times before calling an emergency faculty meeting for Saturday morning.
The conference room filled with professors from multiple departments, all having seen the video. They played it repeatedly on the projection screen, pausing to examine Ethan’s work.
“This is graduate-level material,” Professor Harrison muttered, adjusting his glasses for a better look.
“No, David, this is beyond graduate-level. The approach he used wasn’t published until last year in the Journal of Advanced Mathematics.”
Professor Martinez added, “I’ve seen that handwriting before, on boards left unerased in the morning. I thought it was a graduate student working nights.”
The dean turned to Amelia, who sat rigid in her chair. “Professor Rhodes, you issued this challenge publicly. The university’s reputation is now involved. We need to know: can this man actually solve your equation?”
The humiliation was complete. She had to admit she didn’t know. That the work she’d seen him do suggested he might actually succeed.
“Then we need to verify this properly,” the dean decided, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Monday morning. Public demonstration in the main lecture hall. If he can do what he claims, we need to know who this man really is.”
As faculty members filed out, discussing the unprecedented situation, Amelia remained seated, staring at the frozen video frame of Ethan at the blackboard. Professor Harrison lingered, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Amelia, I’ve been teaching for 40 years. I’ve seen prodigies and frauds, and that man is no fraud. Whatever his story is, you might want to prepare yourself for Monday.”
Monday morning arrived gray and drizzling, the November sky matching the somber mood that had settled over campus. The largest lecture hall, with a capacity of 500, was packed beyond limits. Faculty from mathematics, physics, engineering, and even humanities departments filled the front rows.
Graduate students stood along the walls. Undergraduate mathematics majors sat in clusters, phones ready to record history. Local news crews from three stations set up cameras in the back, their reporters practicing their introductions.
The university’s PR team looked nervous, unsure whether they were about to witness triumph or disaster. The board had been cleaned and prepared with the equation exactly as Amelia had written it a week ago. Covering three full panels with its intimidating complexity, she stood at the podium in her best suit.
A navy ensemble that usually made her feel powerful now felt like armor that couldn’t protect her. The clock on the wall showed 9:58. At exactly 10 o’clock, Ethan walked in wearing his janitor’s uniform.
The room erupted in whispers, and phone cameras emerged from pockets like flowers turning towards the sun. He looked smaller somehow under the harsh stage lights, more vulnerable than the mysterious figure who’d been haunting the mathematics building at night. His hands shook slightly as he approached the board, and Amelia noticed he’d attempted to clean the permanent stains from under his fingernails.
She forced herself to speak, her voice steady despite the chaos inside her. “Mr. Ward, you claimed you could solve this equation. The terms remain the same. If you successfully solve it, I’ll honor my original statement.”
The words tasted like ash in her mouth, each syllable a small death of the world she’d known. Ethan picked up the chalk, its weight familiar and foreign simultaneously. For a moment, he stood frozen, feeling the eyes of hundreds on his back, the weight of expectation and skepticism in equal measure.
Then his mother’s voice echoed in his memory. “Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed of your gift.” And he began to write.
The room fell absolutely silent except for the sound of chalk on the board. His approach was unconventional, starting with a transformation that made several professors lean forward in surprise. He worked methodically but with increasing confidence, filling board after board with increasingly elegant mathematics.
Forty minutes passed. Then an hour. Nobody moved.
Several professors had pulled out notebooks, following along with his work, occasionally nodding or gasping at particularly brilliant moves. When he finally set down the chalk and stepped back, the complete solution covered five blackboards. The silence stretched for ten heartbeats.