Stochastic. Random.Rei begins inputing measurements of lines, degrees of angles, and equations to describe curves and slopes. Countless little ways to calculate dimensions in space and in the stochastic mode the results of your computations never quite match the integers involved. At the end of the day, all of your work leads to something unpredictable. Unforeseen.
It is randomness that gives life variety. Randomness that makes one person's smile so attractive and another person's just average. Randomness that determines which granules of sand the tide will take away and which will be replaced. Randomness that ultimately shapes a coastline, the branches of a tree, the path of water down a rock. Randomness is not chaotic, it is fresh and inspiring. It enables life. Without randomness everything would be crystallized and inert.
As Rei's calculations continue the fractal begins to change. There is no question any longer of this being a deterministic fractal. It could not even be reconstructed as one any longer. The twisting shapes are too wild. Wild and beautiful.
Despite the wildness there is clear intent here. It is not that the randomness is purposeless, but that the purpose is revealed to be unable to be restrained by determinism. Inase Spark knew that the future itself was unpredictable and thus he accounted for the diversity of possibilities by an equation that would mutate along with the vagaries of fate. Here in this journal, Rei was encountering, not a dead letter, but a living testimony of the greatest geneticist and mathematician in recent memory.
Then, one night long after she should have gone to bed, the fractal suddenly opened for Rei like a rose. Staring at the looping shapes till her eyes blurred she perceived a message. It was a visual language. The angle was a question, that intersection the predicate, these sweeping lines the subject. At once she read a geometric sentence: Can you hear me, Mikomi?
The command prompt appeared again, the cursor blinking...
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Rei blinks at the prompt. "... What in the..."
She thinks about it for a moment. 'Is it communicating with me? That's impossible, isn't it?' After the moment has passed, she shrugs, and then writes:
'I am Rei. Who are you?'
Rei? No. I'm sure you are Mikomi.
I am Inase Spark.
What would you like to know, Mikomi?
Rei stares.
Mikomi? ... Was this a joke? It had better not be a joke. She had a million questions. A hundred million. Questions beyond count. Almost all of them begin with 'why.'
Why.
'Mikomi?' she types, and then:
'...Why did you make me?'
'Why white-rock?'
'Did you know about the others? Moses, Kiyoshi, Una, High Dive, and Mokuzai? ... Did you know what Mama Pain and Doctor Soren would do?'
'Why did I survive the fire?'
A pause. And then:
'Why am I so wrong inside?'
Mikomi. My hope. If you live, my hope does also.
'Why' is a category mistake. I have many reasons for the things I have done, but did I do those things because of my reasons? Even if you knew all the reasons, Mikomi, you would not know why. Neither do I.
Silex Niveus is a conduit. By itself it is irrelevant, but under certain circumstances it provides access to distant phenomena. In some ways I am less your designer and more your... summoner.
Others? All the others like you are dead.
Aliya Pain? I feared that she would receive control of Project Scion. I should have been more thorough in destroying it.
You survived by chance Mikomi. All of this has been chance and it is only by chance that you have any chance to succeed.
Sigh. You are wrong, because I am imperfect.
The others. Moses, the Mechified. Kiyoshi the Allskin. Una the Vorax. High Dive the Zipsum. Mokuzai the Prill. My friends. My companions. They have... powers. Powers like mine. Kata Kariana.
*A pause.*
Then you don't know. I guess you couldn't. Inase Spark couldn't have put anything into the journal that he didn't know. Mama Pain made more. More like me. Malicious. Sever. Stitch. Nero. Aimi. She and Doctor Soren bombarded their foetal forms with energy from the White-Rock. I have brothers and sisters.
...
What do you mean by 'summoner?'
What 'distant phenomena?'
If you didn't make me, then what am I?
Summoner. I should know better than to indulge in poetic description. I mean only that in part you are composed of that which the Silex Niveus conduces. Your genetic code is partially drawn from another, distant source.
The distant phenomena is hard to describe and I know very little. I believe it is primal generative life, an entity or entities of very basic creative properties.
If you wish to know what you are look to what you do. If you do not like what you are, change what you do.
Rei types as if in a trance, barely aware of the content of her responses. 'The old Prill told us that the white-rock was made out of cataclysm. I found a device powered by White-Rock, though I don't know what it does. And the experiments...'
'Katashi Blade used it to draw something into the body of a Vorax. Some kind of monster. The Enemy. That's the legacy of the Whiterock Project. Project Star Power. Project Battery Stone. Project Karian Geo-Force. Their teleportation experiments drew down the Enemy.
How did Project Scion avoid that?'
...
There is a pause as she stares at the screen for a long moment, and doubt grows up within her heart. This can't really be Inase Spark, can it? ... even if it is, can he really be trusted?
'Are you alive?' she asks.
'Are you real?'
'Are you just a computer program?'
'Did you mean to kill me in the fire that destroyed Project Scion?'
And then the real Questions. The only two Questions that have ever really meant anything to her.
'I know your name, but...
Who are you?'
'What do you want?'
We have yet to see whether Project Scion will avoid the same fate as these others. That is a question you will answer with your actions as you are the only living product of the Project.
I hope that I am still alive, Mikomi. You are alive and that gives me hope.
I am as real as you are Mikomi, and yes you are speaking to a computer program, but this program has the ability to speak for me.
No Mikomi. I would never try to kill you. It was I who delivered you and this journal to Dr. Soren that night. Knowing that a secret like that could not be safely kept surrounded by telepaths, he voluntarily erased the memories of our encounter. He believes that he found you in the fire and rescued you himself. In a way it is still true that he rescued you. You would certainly have been destroyed if not for his intervention.
I am a frightened man whose head is too full of knowledge. If it is not already happening, I believe that disaster is coming to our refugee people Mikomi. As you said - the Enemy will find us. Hope is so fragile, Mikomi. So fragile. You are all I have to give this world, and because of my many failings it is almost certainly insufficient.
I want you to find me, Mikomi. If I still breathe. Search me out. At last I wish to know if my efforts have any chance to succeed, but for that we will need to meet in person.
I fear to tell you directly where I will be lest it be ripped from your mind. And depending on how much time has passed it is possible that I will have moved on. Your search may take time, but you should begin here:
Like the stone that bears light,
In every DNA strand,
She bore some through the night,
To a desperate land.
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