The vehicle’s gentle sway lulled Sean to sleep only to rudely yank him awake whenever Mrs. Lambert slammed the brakes. Which was distressingly often. His phone beeped a text receipt.
Tiffany: Memorial Park 6 to 7pm, basketball court. If u wanna talk.
Sean straightened upbanishing all thought of sleep, looking out the window to get his bearings. They were approaching the outskirts.
“Mrs. Lambert, could you please drop me off at, um... the exit after next? I’ll ask my mom to pick me up,” Sean reached into his backpack, pulling out the case containing SculptSight, “And please give this to Randall, I’ll collect it from him later.”
“If you’re sure?” she frowned, “it’s not the best part of town.”
Dusk painted the clouds pink when Mrs. Lambert dropped him off at the edge of Memorial Park. She drove away muttering about sketchy neighborhoods. The park was in disrepair with foot tall grass interrupted by crumbling sidewalks littered with hardenedgeese droppings and dead leaves of the fall. A swing set hung from rusted chains creaking in the breeze. Willow trees lined a large pond, its thermal mass resisting the coming freeze and reflecting the darkening sky. Shouts of laughter drifted from ahead. A basketball court next to a skateboard rink, lit by halogen lamps flickering ineffectively in the lingering twilight. Weeds poked through a broken expanse of concrete where silhouetted figures clustered, throwing long moving shadows as one of them threw a ballat the hoop.
Sean approached cautiously, ready to bolt if this was an ambush. He swore to himself that the Collection Agency would never get another crack at him. His breath caught when he spotted her. Shelounged on one of the benches bordering the court, legs crossed. Her golden hair gleamed in the lamplight. Sean approached warily, his eye on the small group prancing around the court. They were a motely-looking lot, middle schoolers judging by their heights. Sean relaxed. They were no threat, even if they ganged up on him.
Tiffany might have stepped off the pages of Teen Vogue, with herpale Aeropostale jacket and skirt. Her red bootswere a startling splash of color in a scene of browns and greys. Sean frowned. She didn''t belong here.The east end of the city wasa rough neighbourhood in contrast to the affluent west end.The gutted shell of a 70''s housing project loomed beyond the edge of the park, underscoring the incongruity of an upper-middle class girl loitering in the armpit ofPortsmouth. She noticed him, her smile faintly predatory.
"I won''t bite," Tiffany patteda spot on the bench. Apurselay on her lap, its strap looping over her other arm that rested on a bulky duffel bag.
"Um, you want to gofor a walk?" Sean gestured in the direction of the park entrance, "Maybe find a burger joint?"
"This place not good enough for you?" she gestured at the rundown ambience,smirking.
"No, it''s... it''s fine," Sean protested and sat down. He couldn''t stop staring, now that he was inches from her perfect face. The lamplight seemed to halo her golden crown withunearthly beauty. Her slightly upturnednose took the sting out of her smile making it whimsical instead. Noise from the kids goofing about filled in the conversational lull.
"Gonna say something, dork, or just droolat me all evening?" Tiffany''s smile faded.
"Why help me escape from Jason’s minions?" Sean blurted, "And the week before, youtipped me off that Jason had something nasty in store for me. The Collection Agency as it turned out. Trying to hedge your bets? Save your ass if Jason gets in legal trouble?"
"Legal trouble," she scoffed, "Half the county works for Jason''s dad. Any idea how much clout his family has ?"
"I can guess," Sean grimaced, old bitter memories seeping through the cracks. The school administration certainly knew which way the bread was buttered.
"Because I know what Jason''s tender loving care feels like," Tiffanypulled off her jacket and twisted around to face Sean, "And because youdon''t seem likea total loser anymore."
The jersey tank top left her arms bare. Dark blue bruisesbandedher left shoulder in stark contrast to pale skin, imprints like encircling lace. Faint bands ofsickly greencrisscrossedher other arm, fading memories of past trauma.
"Did... he hurt you?" Sean hissed, clenching his fist.
"Jasongets very possessive of his toys," Tiffany gave a twisted smile as she slipped back into her jacket, "especially when his toys don''t want to play with him. Butheneverforgets to sendme some foundation cream afterhe takes a belt to me. So the bruises don''t showduring cheerleading practice."
"Nice of him," Sean spat, feeling sick, "why the heck don''t you reportthe bastard? Principal Stewart can''t possibly let that slide. What''s a smart girl like you doing with a dipshit like him anyway?"
"Rich dipshit," corrected Tiffany, "There was a time I needed his... resources. Now that I have a paying internship, I don''t needJason so much anymore. But he won''t let me go. And if I report him, Jason''s lawyers will find a way to pin this on my foster parents."
"Foster parents?" Sean stared blankly.
"Been shuttledbetween fosterhomes since I was twelve," Tiffany shrugged, "Mybirth mom was too drunk to care for me. Never knew my real dad. My life in a nutshell. Couldn''t afford anything until Julia Thornton found me througha science talent search."
"But... but your clothes and stuff," Sean stammered in disbelief, "I thought..."
"Thought I was an upper classprincess, didn''t you," Tiffany bared her teeth, "I learnt to play the part after Jason got me into his social circle. Theapartment where I''m fostered now is located as far east it can bewithin the Portsmouth school district and still be assigned to Cardiff High. So there''s that."
"Wait... you live around here?" Sean gaped at the silhouttes of the low-income high-rises in the background.
"Dial down the snobbery, asshat," Tiffany scowled, "You aren''t exactly rolling incashyourself,"
"I... I didn''t mean..." Sean flushed, "I meant... it must betoughbeing a foster kid..."
"Tough?" Tiffany snarled, her pretty face twisting, "You have no idea what it''s like. At least you have parents you can call your own... who didn''t discard you like so much..." She paused and sighed shakily, "Never mind. My turn to interrogate."
One of the kids in the court wandered up to them, holding a basketball, "This shmuck bothering you, Tiff?"
He was a pudgy boy in dreadlocks, wearing frayed jeans shorts and a sports tee shirt too big for him. He sounded like a squeaky middle-schooler trying hard tomake his voice sound deep.
"Get lost kid," Sean waved dismissively.
The boy gave him a withering look, "Only Big Sis gets to tell me that."
"It''s OK, Jaylen," Tiff smiled slightly, "Ready to calibrate your shots?"Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Jaylen nodded and Tiffany opened the duffel bag to reveal a one foot cube framed in wood and crammed with transparent plumbing inaminiature version of the analog solver Sean had seen earlier that day.
"Pick a spot for Jaylen, will you," Tiffany indicated one of the hoops forSean who shrugged and lobbeda pebblethrough thegaggle of kidschasing each otheraround the court with loud yells.
Jaylen scowled asthe pebble landed midcourt. The boy stared betweenthe spot selected and at the hoopfor a little longeras if mentally pacing out the distance. Then he crouched before the analog fluid device,quickly pouring water from a fresh bottle into an arrayof little glass funnels. As the water dripped through spigotted orifices, Jaylen cranked a bronze ratchet through a graduated dial that varied the flowmetered through each spigot in a predetermined ramp.
Sean leaned closer for a better look at the gizmo, vividly aware of Tiffany''s proximity. A stray strand from her hair tickled his cheek and it took all his self control not to be a creep. He gritted his teeth and thought of the promise of Sculptsight, of how much easier this would be if Tiffany wasn''t so ''hot''. But then Seanwouldn''t be so motivated to be here, he admitted to himself. Water was poolinginto glass bulbs and then cascading through a second set of metered orifices. Second order differential equations being solved in parallel, Sean nodded thoughtfully. The weight of accumulating water opened up spring-loaded relief-valves to vent outside, diverting part of the flow from the primary path, probably to represent atmospheric drag on the basketball given the context.
Jaylen who had been staring at the water display with zen-like concentration got up suddenly and moved to midcourt. He hefted the balland after a few trial feints threw it in an high arc that terminated perfectlythrough the basket hoop.
"You''ve got to be kidding me," Sean stared in disbelief, "Tell me he''s been practicing for a while."
"He has," nodded Tiffany, "but his accuracy has really taken off since he''s gotten the feel of all possible ballisticsolutionsby studying myanalog integrator. Any basketball player is solving these equations subconsciously ofcourse, but I wanted to see if the learning curve could be consciously speed up."
"Couldn''t he do the same thing on a computer screen?" Sean frowned skeptically.
"I don''tthink it''s the same thing," Tiffany shrugged, "there''s something... tactile about watching waterflowthat you don''t get with a computer display. Anyway, just atrial runfor what I want to do with low-tech computing."
"For yourpost-nuclear utopia?" Sean quirked a smile..
"Julia Thornton is crazy," Tiffany laughed, "she''s been dealing with the dark side of international politics for so long, she seesdoom everywhere. No, I want to make people smarter."
"How?" Sean stared mesmerized by her laughter.
"These analog cubes are so intuitive an elementary schoolkid could use it," Tiffany''s eyes shone with passion, "Just think... a billion of these scattered across a continent. A new generation ofchildren who can model their environment as intuitively as seeing or talking. Homo sapiens mathematicus. What problems can''t they solve?Our world ismessed up from our own stupidity. We are the stupidest species that can build a civilization. We need to do better, if we want to salvage the fucking planet..."
"You remind me of another girl," Seanwhisperedalmost to himself.
"Oh?" Tiffany''s tone was sarcastic, "You''re saying the girls you hang out with look like me? Not subtle, are you?"
"I was talking about Judith Fuller..." Sean flushed, "Not saying she looks like you or anything... maybe just a little...it''s just that she alsowants to save the world so badly. She''s been on my mind since she fell sick... "
"It''s OK," Tiffany looked at her feet, "Judith''s a nice girl. Not everyone in Jason''s family is a skirt-chasing piece of shit.But, like I said, it’s my turn to ask questions. You were badmouthingmy design on the phone. Tell me what you can do better, hotshot, or admit you''re full of shit.”
From the duffel bagshepulledout and unfolded a large A1 size drawing print on her lap. It was an exploded view of the plumbing nightmare packed into the much larger analog solver that Sean had seen in Tiffany’s workspace at ZeroSum. The CAD blueprint was crammed with neat handwriting in the margins and blank spaces. Rows of differential equations, progressivelycrossed out and replaced with more complex ones. Sean studied it in silence under the lamplight, his face brightening with interest.
”Well?” she demanded.
”This mess... um, mass of plumbing isn’t doing much,” Sean tracedan especially intricate cluster of lines with his finger, “in fact they aren’t representinganything as far as I can tell.”
”No, they are stablizing circuits, you chump,” Tiffany retorted.
”Stabilizing circuit?” Sean frowned, “for what?”
“The numerical solution of course,” Tiffany rolled her eyes, “These equations are way more complicated than modeling basketball trajectories. That variableis population... this one is grain production... that one is disease fraction... they are all interconnected. Youget the picture. But the fucking solution won’t converge. Everytime I run it with the exact same input, the answer diverges after a while. I keep adding auxiliary lines, to damp out sensitivity, but they won’t help. I can’t forecast shitwith this.”
Tiffany suddenly smacked the bluprint hard, startlingSean. Shesounded frustrated to the verge of tears, as she got up from the bench.
“Oh, is that it?” Sean looked bemused at her outburst, “Obviously, for certain inputs theanswer willalways diverge.”
”What... obviously?” Tiffany turned on him, “Why would the same inputs ever end up with different answers? That doesn''t make sense.”
”Look, youhave three differential equations for three variables. Call them x, y and z,” Sean tapped the paper, “they are all non-linear becauseeach of these variables is a function of the other two variables. There is a periodic disturbance to represent seasonal rains or whatever. More importantly thesystem is dissipative, there is some loss that depends on the values of the variables.”
”Tell me something I don''t know, you pompous prick,” Tiffanysnapped impatiently.
“Don’t you see,” Sean demanded, “it’s a chaotic system. With aclassic Lorenz attractor.”
“A classic what?” Tiffany paused.
"Edward Lorenz was ameteorologist who tried to model weather on a computer using a set ofnon-linearequations much like these," Sean explained, "and he too found that when he tried to forecast weather more than a few weeks ahead,the answers would end up very different for reruns with the same inputs. Turns out that rounding off the last few decimal places in the inputs was enough for the system to end up in completely different states. Coupled dissipative systems are super-sensitive to initial conditions. You''d need infinite precision to get the same answer every time, which ofcourse isn''t practical in the real world."
"You''re saying my project won''t work?" Tiffany glared at him, and Sean thought her eyes glistening so brightly were achingly beautiful, "that''s its useless for predicting stuff like famine or epidemics?"
"No, I''m saying you should look at the structure ofchaos," Sean smiled, "rather than the exact state of the variables. Think of a swinging pendulum. If you plot its position on one axis and velocity on another, you get a phase portrait. If there''s no damping the pendulum will oscillate forever and its phase portait is a closed loop. If there''s any damping the phase trajectory will spiral down to the origin as the pedulum comes to a stop. Right?"
Tiffany nodded.
"When Lorenz plotted the phase portrait of his weather model in three axis," Sean held up three fingers to mimic a Cartesian coordinate system, "he saw that the trajectory would randomly spiral around one part of the phase space and then suddenly cross over to another region then spiral there, tracing out something like a butterfly. The exact path the system traces is very sensitive to initial conditions, don''t even think of predictingthat. But youcould predict which attractor - which part of the phase space the system willorbit around. And if you time the disturbance correctly, you canflip the systemto a new attractor. Impose your own order on the chaos."
"Is that possible?" Tiffany stared, anunreadable expression on her face.
"Put a mosquito in a box without sunlight," Sean pointed to the insects fluttering around the light bulb on the post, "and it will revert toa 23 hour cycle, not twenty four. Sunlightresets its default internal clock to the 24 hour circadian rythm each day. But there''s a singularity within its phase trajectory. A light pulse in the lab precisely timed to that singularity will knock out its circadian clock and give it jet lag. The human heart regulates itself with an electrical wavefront propagating in three dimensions. Shock it exactly during its singularity and it will go into fibrillation. George Mines figured that out in 1914. Totest it, he built and attached a gizmo to his chest to zap his own heart. Tosendits phase trajectory intoa new attractor. He didn''t survive the experiment, but the ECG was still recording his glitching heartbeat when they found him."
"How the heck do you know this shit?" Tiffany demanded shrilly.
"The shape of the clouds tells us the world is non-linear," Sean pointed up, "We neversee the same shape twice. But lifeoscillates around attractors in phase space. And that''s how we''ll beat Jason. Not through violence or threats or official complaints. He''s too strong and well-connected. But by visualizinghisphasespace and giving his social life some well timed shocks."
"We?" Tiffany gestured between them.
"We both want the same thing," Sean got up to look Tiffany in the eye, "You want to be free of Jason and he won''t have time toabuse you after I''m done with him."
"Revenge of the Nerds," Tiffany laughed shakily, "Who else would think of phasespace in a revenge fantasy."
END OF CHAPTER