Albert felt the strong weight of work in his shoulders, a hot glow at the base of his back, tight up into his neck. It was not the career his mother might have planned – in the old country, Albert, a clerk is a fine thing to be – but a brief apprenticeship in book-keeping had at least been enough to get him here and here was so unexpected, so wonderful, that for Albert to be here was enough.

The November 2016 edition of Long Story, Short Journal is 'The Aerialist' by Morgan Downie. Witness the trapeze act of a well-loved mathematician living out an alternative reality that might have been his, given all the potential that time and space holds, both in science, and in fiction. READ 'THE AERIALIST'.