Alicia, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, specializes in topos theory—at the time, a cutting-edge approach to algebraic geometry. This specialization reflects her ultimately unsuccessful obsession with uncovering evidence of the existence of material reality independent of human perception.

Alicia holds a profound belief in the inherent importance of mathematics, regarding it not only as a crucial field of inquiry but as the most significant human pursuit imaginable. In her words, “And again, when you’re talking about intelligence, you’re talking about number. A claim that the mathless are quick to frown upon. It’s about calculation and the nature of calculation. Verbal intelligence will only take you so far” (20). Mathematical language, in her view, gets closer to something that might be termed objective reality than verbal language can. Alicia goes further at times, emphasizing that intelligent comprehension constitutes the sole purpose of life, a goal achievable, in her view, only through the framework of mathematics.

Alicia, having invested three years studying mathematics at Princeton and a subsequent year as a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, was initially drawn to mathematics by its apparent assurance of predictability. However, her disillusionment grew as she discovered that the operations of advanced mathematics were far from stable.