Infinite curves on invisible planes generate, turn, swell, and simulate 3-dimensions across a lighted acrylic screen. Each iteration no matter the level of magnification, mathematically identical, formed from some portion of the whole. Rei had never seen such a complex fractal.Not that she was a mathematician mind you, but she dimly remembered Dr. Soren using fractals in his lessons about predicting the movements of the tides, or the shape of trees, or the way different materials would crack when impacted by a bullet. The shapes were burned into her memory bank, deep in there, and none of them compared to this one in terms of the disparity between their Hausdorff dimension and the topological dimension.
Whole days had gone by before she even discovered that Spark's Journal had an interface. She could manipulate the image slightly, zooming in and out, or freezing the movement. Rei turned the picture over from every angle time and again attempting to discern if it was following a pattern of exact self-similarity or quasi self-similarity, or whether it might be an optical illusion entirely generated by mere statistical self-similarity. It was work dredging up these childhood geometry lessons. More tinkering eventually brought up a blank command prompt. She stared at it, with no idea what to type.
Evening after evening of examining the damn repeating curves began to have their effect after all. Rei was dreaming in fractals. When she closed her eyes she saw fractals. The fractals were leaping out at her from the forest as she walked; in the clouds in the sky. It was as if her vision was being trained by the prolonged focus. The world itself seemed to be taking on a pattern of predictable sets in infinite iterations. Meaning, is the illusion we see when our mind has transposed the fractals into plants and faces.
Then one morning, before the sunrise, Rei woke up with a start. Spark you genius! The fractal is multi-stable. It can be calculated in two ways. You built choice into this journal of yours.
The cursor in the command prompt blinked. Rei could begin the calculations for the fractal as if it were in either the deterministic or the stochastic mode.
Which would it be?
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Rei's first instinct is to select the Deterministic mode, but something, some strange, faint impulse stops her hand. She stares at the screen for a long, long time, her mind hovering between the two possibilities.
Purpose. Determinism. A chain of causation links her from the distant past to the present moment. Inase Spark mixes her DNA in a test tube. Doctor Soren teaches her that she is distinct from everyone. Mama Pain instructs her in basic interrogation techniques. The missions. Moses. The long flight. The battle. Gurandu-Oni. The long journey. Mistakes in the jungle. Zipsum. Jevuum. Gogajin. Prill. Ben Hamor. The battle at the Gogajin village. Night after night after night studying fractal patterns. All connected, all bringing her inexorably towards this time, this place, this moment. She feel the truth of it in her bones: here as on Ben Hamor, the hidden Purpose of her life is at work.
It feels like everything she's ever wanted; it isn't what she wants.
"Is that all you are?" Rei asks aloud, her voice full of uncertainty. She can almost see the faint, luminous form of Amaterasu hovering over the screen... but no. It's a trick of the light. "Don't you have anything of your own? Anything that wasn't provided, defined, and numbered by others?"
Deterministic.
Stochastic.
Rei looks away from her computer screen, deeply troubled.
After a moment, she presses the power button, folds the computer up, and puts it back in her bag.
And she avoids it!
It's lurking Rei. Amaterasu can tell you the answer. She knows. Just ask her.
Later.
Much later.
In the privacy of the house afforded to her by the Prill, Rei sits down on her bed, opens the computer, and once again activates the fractal interface.
Once more, she sees Amaterasu floating there above the display, and she is no longer certain that the image is just a trick of the light.
"I've got a message for you from an old Prill, Ama-chan." Rei suspects that the little girl, golden eagle, or whatever it is can hear her even if the projection is in her imagination and not really floating above the screen. "Fuck off," she says fondly, and selects the stochastic mode.
It's silly, and small, and probably the mode selected has absolutely nothing to do with Amaterasu or the god-nature she wants Rei to embrace, but there it is nonetheless.
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