Chaos Theory
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2003 7:19 pm
Chaos Theory (Or – careful where you fish!)
Prologue:
There’s a thing they say – that when a butterfly flaps its wings in, for example, India; it causes a hurricane in, for example, America. The people who said this caused some other people to set off a world-wide extermination of the little winged bastards in the hope that they could stop all this bloody awful weather they’ve been having lately. But these people didn’t see the punchline. You see, it’s an analogy. What it really means is that the even the smallest action has significant consequences. With the possible exception of cricket. Now bearing this in mind, dear reader, read on…
And So It Begins:
The evening air was deliciously warm. The lush trees hunched protectively over the riverbank, and the river flowed lazily, shimmering in the dusky light and splashing playfully over the rocks. A little way down the path a group of people were out playing cricket and enjoying the summer evening. It was all terribly English, and indeed that is where our story begins, in England. Tom Bryer sat in his canvas chair at the riverbank and took a deep, satisfying drag on his cigarette. He was dozing, his newspaper over his face. There was a sign behind a nearby bush, saying “NO FISHING”. There was more, but it was obscured and Tom was not interested. A fishing rod lay on his lap; the line still stretched out into the stream’s current. He wasn’t all that bothered about catching anything anyway; he just came out here for some peace, a chance to get away from his wife for a bit.
~
The fish looked. It was rather nonchalant about it all. It wouldn’t be in two minutes, when everything would be new to it again, but for now it was pretty streetwise for a fish. It knew about as much as was possible to learn in five minutes, which in such a limited locale as the stream was quite a bit. It was looking at a fly. Previous experience had proved these things to be rather tasty, so the fish was planning on leaping up in a moment and nabbing it. But previous experience hadn’t told it anything about the shiny thing that had just caught its limited attention. Shiny… Shiny… The fly forgotten, the fish leapt for the shiny thing.
~
‘Hgnah… what?’ exclaimed a startled Tom as he was roused from his doze by his fishing rod twitching in his lap. He grabbed the reel and began to turn it quickly. Suddenly, fighting him all the way, a trout burst out of the water, cascading droplets through the air. Tom heaved one final time and his prey lay on the riverbank, conquered. He was going to have a good meal tonight…
~
The fly didn’t think much of this exchange. In fact it didn’t think much at all. Giving a shrug with two of its forelegs, it buzzed away downstream.
~
Lord Henry Sedgewick Arthur Joshua Montague Rodriguez Fritz Hemingway-Smythe III, or “Bertie” to his friends, was riding his horse. Very little ever entered his head. Years of “selective breeding” (read “inbreeding”) had left him with a weak chin, runny eyes and big ears as well as a tendency towards stupidity. But since he was landed gentry, he could afford to be merely “eccentric”. However, “egocentric” would be a better description of Bertie. He was, in his own sheltered and blinkered way, a sexist, a homophobe and a racist. He sat on his huge muscular stallion and gazed blankly at his estate in the distance.
~
The fly buzzed. It buzzed a bit more. It could see a huge source of meat in front of him, and lunged.
~
Fleetfoot, Bertie’s horse, screamed as the fly bit him hard on the rump and he reared, throwing Bertie off his back. Bertie landed in a crumpled heap ten feet away, one arm pointing in completely the wrong direction.
~
Bertie was in a foul mood. He had checked out of hospital before the doctors could check him thoroughly for internal injury. He was an important statesman, and he had to be at the International Conference in Brussels by tomorrow morning. His right arm was in a thick white cast and some bastard had signed “Get well soon, big-ears!” on it while he was unconscious.
Once he was on the jet, he took two Paracetamols for the headache he had developed. It had been a stressful day.
~
‘These allegations are ridiculous, sir!’ exclaimed the Chinese Foreign Minister to the American Home Secretary, ‘Why would we wish to assassinate your ambassador in our own country?’
‘Because he found something you didn’t want him to see, and you killed him for it, didn’t you!’ accused the American Home Secretary.
Twenty men sat around the table, some of the world’s most powerful men. Behind them were vast banks of computers, and an impressive world map, with a microscopic red arrow over Brussels saying, “You are here”. And a little machine in the corner that went “Bip!” occasionally, for no discernible reason.
‘What would we be hiding?’ asked the Chinese Foreign Minister.
‘Something devious, you Commie bastard!’ roared the American Home Secretary, all vestiges of diplomacy forgotten.
‘Uhm… May ve analyse ze events leadink up to zis regrettable… incident?’ asked the Russian Deputy President, not quite up to speed. Perhaps the “medicine” he was taking from a hip flask had something to do with that. His eyes were fairly glazed as he asked the question.
The American Home Secretary shuffled his notes and pushed his glasses up his nose to rest more snugly on the bridge. He cleared his throat and began to read, ‘Twenty-first of May, two thousand and five. The report begins, “The corpse was discovered on the nineteenth of May, two thousand and five. Two Embassy guards breached the apartment after friends and relatives raised the alarm, since he had not been seen in two days. They found him lying fully clothed on the bed, clutching his chest. Because the heaters had been left on, the corpse had decayed quickly and relatives had to be called to confirm his identity. Initial findings suggest traces of the toxin ricin in his system, and that he was placed in the aforementioned pose to suggest that he died of a heart attack’. The American Home Secretary stopped speaking and glared accusingly at the Chinese Foreign Minister.
‘Blast it all!’ roared Bertie. He had a headache, and this was not helping.
The Chinese Foreign Minister looked at him quizzically.
‘Damn your eyes man, what are you looking at? You and your whole filthy, yellow-skinned, slitty-eyed race are to blame! We should just nuke you bastards and have done with you!’
The Conference ended abruptly in uproar as the representatives of every nation started quarrelling with one another.
~
Bertie opened the door of his room in the VIP suite of the British Embassy. It was dim, so he clapped his hand over the switch, illuminating the room. It was tasteful, if bare, the walls resonating with the lives of the hundreds of other people who had passed through the room before him. It was a room for temporary residence, and that was embedded in the very soul, the very core essence of the room.
He sighed and walked over to the drinks cabinet, where he fixed himself a stiff drink. Then he sat down on the bed, and a blood clot that had been travelling his body slowly all day lodged itself in his brain and he died.
~
The American Home Secretary received a call on his flight back to America.
‘Yeah… What?’ he asked.
‘Uhm, sir? The British Envoy has died in Brussels. Suspected heart attack.’ said an indistinct, androgynous voice on the other end of the phone.
‘Damn it.’ cursed the American Home Secretary, ‘Get me the President.’
The phone clicked and buzzed a few rings before the President picked up.
‘What is it, Jasper?’ demanded the President.
The American Home Secretary was momentarily taken aback by the use of his real name, ‘Uhm… Mr. President, sir? The British Envoy has died in Brussels, same MO as the Walters case.’
A brief silence, during which the American Home Secretary swore he could hear two breathing patterns.
‘Dammit, this requires immediate action! We’ve put up with their negative Communist influences for far too long. Send an order to Colonel Peterson. He knows what to do.’ said the President, then, ‘Mmmm… don’t stop honey!’ and a feminine gasping sound.
~
The prim looking young woman peered at the teleprompter in the corner of the room over her smart spectacles. The studio around her was neat and functional. She was sat at a desk shaped like a half-moon, and the man behind the camera counted down on his fingers. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. She looked into the camera and began her speech, ‘Good evening. I’m Jocelyn Barnstead, and this is the News at Ten. First up tonight, the war against China – the latest news from the front line. The UN forces have pushed deep into the south of China, but are meeting heavy resistance from guerrilla forces. Casualties have escalated dramatically on both sides as the conflict drags on.’
~
Their names were Zryx and Gryx. They stood at the observation platform of their space shuttle orbiting the planet MNG-3452, or “Earth” as the inhabitants so unimaginatively called it. They were both about four feet tall, with silver skin and large, shiny black eyes and they were both completely naked. Not that they had anything to cover – theirs was a sexless species and they reproduced via cloning, as it had been done for thousands of years.
They had been assigned to watch over planet MNG-3452, and ascertain as to whether the inhabitants were dangerous or not.
They both sighed and nodded to one another. Gryx keyed in the combination on a computer terminal on a wall to his left, and flicked a switch. They both stood in silence and watched as their ship emitted a thin beam of light. They watched it stretch down to planet MNG-3452. They watched it disintegrate a large patch of the atmosphere. They watched it strike the planet’s surface. They watched impassively as the planet exploded in a vast supernova. Their hi-tech ship was not even marked by the blast.
What Happened Afterwards:
Zryx and Gryx’s people, the U’zxylia, were attacked by the Intergalactic Peace Accord for illegal use of a planet destroying weapon. The U’zxylia were outnumbered and slowly wiped out. As the Intergalactic Peace Accord’s troopers stormed down the hall to capture the Emperor of the U’zxylia, he activated a device. It created a powerful singularity that folded the entire Universe in on itself and destroyed it in an instant.
Tom Bryer was unaware of any of this, as he had died in his sleep the same day he caught the fish. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to the sign, as if he had uncovered it he would have read, “NO FISHING, CHEMICAL PLANT OUTFLOW ½ MILE UPRIVER”.
Prologue:
There’s a thing they say – that when a butterfly flaps its wings in, for example, India; it causes a hurricane in, for example, America. The people who said this caused some other people to set off a world-wide extermination of the little winged bastards in the hope that they could stop all this bloody awful weather they’ve been having lately. But these people didn’t see the punchline. You see, it’s an analogy. What it really means is that the even the smallest action has significant consequences. With the possible exception of cricket. Now bearing this in mind, dear reader, read on…
And So It Begins:
The evening air was deliciously warm. The lush trees hunched protectively over the riverbank, and the river flowed lazily, shimmering in the dusky light and splashing playfully over the rocks. A little way down the path a group of people were out playing cricket and enjoying the summer evening. It was all terribly English, and indeed that is where our story begins, in England. Tom Bryer sat in his canvas chair at the riverbank and took a deep, satisfying drag on his cigarette. He was dozing, his newspaper over his face. There was a sign behind a nearby bush, saying “NO FISHING”. There was more, but it was obscured and Tom was not interested. A fishing rod lay on his lap; the line still stretched out into the stream’s current. He wasn’t all that bothered about catching anything anyway; he just came out here for some peace, a chance to get away from his wife for a bit.
~
The fish looked. It was rather nonchalant about it all. It wouldn’t be in two minutes, when everything would be new to it again, but for now it was pretty streetwise for a fish. It knew about as much as was possible to learn in five minutes, which in such a limited locale as the stream was quite a bit. It was looking at a fly. Previous experience had proved these things to be rather tasty, so the fish was planning on leaping up in a moment and nabbing it. But previous experience hadn’t told it anything about the shiny thing that had just caught its limited attention. Shiny… Shiny… The fly forgotten, the fish leapt for the shiny thing.
~
‘Hgnah… what?’ exclaimed a startled Tom as he was roused from his doze by his fishing rod twitching in his lap. He grabbed the reel and began to turn it quickly. Suddenly, fighting him all the way, a trout burst out of the water, cascading droplets through the air. Tom heaved one final time and his prey lay on the riverbank, conquered. He was going to have a good meal tonight…
~
The fly didn’t think much of this exchange. In fact it didn’t think much at all. Giving a shrug with two of its forelegs, it buzzed away downstream.
~
Lord Henry Sedgewick Arthur Joshua Montague Rodriguez Fritz Hemingway-Smythe III, or “Bertie” to his friends, was riding his horse. Very little ever entered his head. Years of “selective breeding” (read “inbreeding”) had left him with a weak chin, runny eyes and big ears as well as a tendency towards stupidity. But since he was landed gentry, he could afford to be merely “eccentric”. However, “egocentric” would be a better description of Bertie. He was, in his own sheltered and blinkered way, a sexist, a homophobe and a racist. He sat on his huge muscular stallion and gazed blankly at his estate in the distance.
~
The fly buzzed. It buzzed a bit more. It could see a huge source of meat in front of him, and lunged.
~
Fleetfoot, Bertie’s horse, screamed as the fly bit him hard on the rump and he reared, throwing Bertie off his back. Bertie landed in a crumpled heap ten feet away, one arm pointing in completely the wrong direction.
~
Bertie was in a foul mood. He had checked out of hospital before the doctors could check him thoroughly for internal injury. He was an important statesman, and he had to be at the International Conference in Brussels by tomorrow morning. His right arm was in a thick white cast and some bastard had signed “Get well soon, big-ears!” on it while he was unconscious.
Once he was on the jet, he took two Paracetamols for the headache he had developed. It had been a stressful day.
~
‘These allegations are ridiculous, sir!’ exclaimed the Chinese Foreign Minister to the American Home Secretary, ‘Why would we wish to assassinate your ambassador in our own country?’
‘Because he found something you didn’t want him to see, and you killed him for it, didn’t you!’ accused the American Home Secretary.
Twenty men sat around the table, some of the world’s most powerful men. Behind them were vast banks of computers, and an impressive world map, with a microscopic red arrow over Brussels saying, “You are here”. And a little machine in the corner that went “Bip!” occasionally, for no discernible reason.
‘What would we be hiding?’ asked the Chinese Foreign Minister.
‘Something devious, you Commie bastard!’ roared the American Home Secretary, all vestiges of diplomacy forgotten.
‘Uhm… May ve analyse ze events leadink up to zis regrettable… incident?’ asked the Russian Deputy President, not quite up to speed. Perhaps the “medicine” he was taking from a hip flask had something to do with that. His eyes were fairly glazed as he asked the question.
The American Home Secretary shuffled his notes and pushed his glasses up his nose to rest more snugly on the bridge. He cleared his throat and began to read, ‘Twenty-first of May, two thousand and five. The report begins, “The corpse was discovered on the nineteenth of May, two thousand and five. Two Embassy guards breached the apartment after friends and relatives raised the alarm, since he had not been seen in two days. They found him lying fully clothed on the bed, clutching his chest. Because the heaters had been left on, the corpse had decayed quickly and relatives had to be called to confirm his identity. Initial findings suggest traces of the toxin ricin in his system, and that he was placed in the aforementioned pose to suggest that he died of a heart attack’. The American Home Secretary stopped speaking and glared accusingly at the Chinese Foreign Minister.
‘Blast it all!’ roared Bertie. He had a headache, and this was not helping.
The Chinese Foreign Minister looked at him quizzically.
‘Damn your eyes man, what are you looking at? You and your whole filthy, yellow-skinned, slitty-eyed race are to blame! We should just nuke you bastards and have done with you!’
The Conference ended abruptly in uproar as the representatives of every nation started quarrelling with one another.
~
Bertie opened the door of his room in the VIP suite of the British Embassy. It was dim, so he clapped his hand over the switch, illuminating the room. It was tasteful, if bare, the walls resonating with the lives of the hundreds of other people who had passed through the room before him. It was a room for temporary residence, and that was embedded in the very soul, the very core essence of the room.
He sighed and walked over to the drinks cabinet, where he fixed himself a stiff drink. Then he sat down on the bed, and a blood clot that had been travelling his body slowly all day lodged itself in his brain and he died.
~
The American Home Secretary received a call on his flight back to America.
‘Yeah… What?’ he asked.
‘Uhm, sir? The British Envoy has died in Brussels. Suspected heart attack.’ said an indistinct, androgynous voice on the other end of the phone.
‘Damn it.’ cursed the American Home Secretary, ‘Get me the President.’
The phone clicked and buzzed a few rings before the President picked up.
‘What is it, Jasper?’ demanded the President.
The American Home Secretary was momentarily taken aback by the use of his real name, ‘Uhm… Mr. President, sir? The British Envoy has died in Brussels, same MO as the Walters case.’
A brief silence, during which the American Home Secretary swore he could hear two breathing patterns.
‘Dammit, this requires immediate action! We’ve put up with their negative Communist influences for far too long. Send an order to Colonel Peterson. He knows what to do.’ said the President, then, ‘Mmmm… don’t stop honey!’ and a feminine gasping sound.
~
The prim looking young woman peered at the teleprompter in the corner of the room over her smart spectacles. The studio around her was neat and functional. She was sat at a desk shaped like a half-moon, and the man behind the camera counted down on his fingers. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. She looked into the camera and began her speech, ‘Good evening. I’m Jocelyn Barnstead, and this is the News at Ten. First up tonight, the war against China – the latest news from the front line. The UN forces have pushed deep into the south of China, but are meeting heavy resistance from guerrilla forces. Casualties have escalated dramatically on both sides as the conflict drags on.’
~
Their names were Zryx and Gryx. They stood at the observation platform of their space shuttle orbiting the planet MNG-3452, or “Earth” as the inhabitants so unimaginatively called it. They were both about four feet tall, with silver skin and large, shiny black eyes and they were both completely naked. Not that they had anything to cover – theirs was a sexless species and they reproduced via cloning, as it had been done for thousands of years.
They had been assigned to watch over planet MNG-3452, and ascertain as to whether the inhabitants were dangerous or not.
They both sighed and nodded to one another. Gryx keyed in the combination on a computer terminal on a wall to his left, and flicked a switch. They both stood in silence and watched as their ship emitted a thin beam of light. They watched it stretch down to planet MNG-3452. They watched it disintegrate a large patch of the atmosphere. They watched it strike the planet’s surface. They watched impassively as the planet exploded in a vast supernova. Their hi-tech ship was not even marked by the blast.
What Happened Afterwards:
Zryx and Gryx’s people, the U’zxylia, were attacked by the Intergalactic Peace Accord for illegal use of a planet destroying weapon. The U’zxylia were outnumbered and slowly wiped out. As the Intergalactic Peace Accord’s troopers stormed down the hall to capture the Emperor of the U’zxylia, he activated a device. It created a powerful singularity that folded the entire Universe in on itself and destroyed it in an instant.
Tom Bryer was unaware of any of this, as he had died in his sleep the same day he caught the fish. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to the sign, as if he had uncovered it he would have read, “NO FISHING, CHEMICAL PLANT OUTFLOW ½ MILE UPRIVER”.