Rain fell, as it always seems to do.

Rarely, without the assistance of wind or antigravity, does rain find a way to move upward out of dense humidity we call clouds to reach outer space.

This tale will tail the sordid details of telltale signs of rain.

“Raja!”

“Yes, Lee?”

“When did you first join the Order of Mathemati-e-radicals?”

“Funny you should ask. I was just about to eat my mid-afternoon snack. Here, let me show you.”

Raja put his right index on his nose, drew a straight line in the air down to his breastbone, moved his index finger to his left shoulder and drew a horizontal line across to his right shoulder and then picked up the bowl of freshly-cut fruit on the table.

“Yes, Raja. I know the sign of the Order. Did another member teach you the sign?”

“Not that I’m aware of. My friends at university invited me to attend a special meeting in a large building they called a church. Inside, they made the sign of the Order and informed me they also made the sign before they ate their meals.”

“So…”

“So I’ve been making the sign ever since.”

“And…”

“And one day a member of the Order quoted a long mathematical equation to me after I made the sign, which I could mentally picture as a completion of the formula.”

“You mean he…”

“She…”

“She told you THE formula?”

“Yes. And I could see its beauty immediately, the ultimate explanation of the explanation for everything!”

“She must have assumed you were a higher member of the Order. To share the ‘decoder ring’ in public like that…”

“Yes, well, we weren’t out in the public. Anyway, I quoted her a piece of an esoteric math model developed thousands of years ago, dug up by an archaeologist friend of mine. That got us talking and she inquired about which branch of the Order I belonged to.”

“‘Which branch?’ There are branches?”

“Groups which merely disagree about the purpose of some unsolvable problems, that’s all. Not formal suborders. She holds the belief that no equation is perfect, that a hidden variable, or many, wait to be revealed in even so simple a statement as 1one quals one.”

“She invited you to join the Order after that?”

“No, she assumed I was a member. I guess I’ve always been a member and didn’t know it.”

“What about the Ritual of Initiation?”

“Oh, I’ve taught it to new recruits so many times now I can’t remember.”

“Wow, Raja. To think you slipped into the Order that easily…how many others are like you?”

“Lee, I could say the same about you. How many members require a lot of ceremeny, pomp and circumstance when our only shared goal is the study of the purity of mathematics?”

Lee lifted a glass of water that was three parts per trillion impure. “To the Order!”

Raja raised his fork which speared a piece of what was mostly mango. “May we teach people that the only true religion, science, art, politics or sport is Applied Mathematics – to the Order!”