368. Chaos, 7

(Rose)

Mushio and the girl helped us build parts of the future flying ship.

He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the extent of our use of magic, sorry, I mean T.I forms of energy. Knowledge of a theory is a thing, witnessing its uses is another.

He had never seen the anti-gravitational aspect before meeting us. And it was impressive.

Bleue has soaked a wide linen in the bacterial sludge. We would someday use it to catch the wind and sail.

Meanwhile, we had a floating drapery that was able to withstand the weight of a person for an hour or so.

They were able to experience the illusion of absence of gravity for a little while, lost in the middle of a light cloth.

We also showed them how I could throw planks through an end of the dry docks to Bleue on the other end since they were weightless.

We kept soaking more wooden plank, building our stock.

Bleue and the girl painted a few others. I dragged Mushio outside to cut and prepare more wood.

With his hood and gloves, afraid of the light, he looked frail.

He had a good smile though, with a light moustache and beard already white despite his age.

In a few days, we'll head to their home again, to learn more.

Bleue told me she had an idea for me. She's crafting something as a matter of a surprise. I'm really curious of what it can be, but she wants to complete it while I'm not around.

So I'm going outside without her for a week or so, whilst she works on her mysterious project.

After finishing the assembly of a few parts of the ship around the main frame we salvaged, we left Bleue and Ana by themselves and I went along with our two friends out there.

~

We camped along the pulsating river.

Its flow appears random to me, sometimes stopping entirely, sometimes strong enough to uproot trees.

Mushio calculated we would need to wait a day before it could be safe to cross.

So meanwhile, we just lazed, discussed and reviewed the fundamentals of trigonometry I hardly know.

I knew the value of π at least. √2 and √3 a little less.

A long time ago, my mother and tutors taught me these kind of things. My sisters went to a school in town, but not me. Old memories distract me.

I refocus, or attempt to. Mushio orders us to take a break seeing I can't focus well on mathematics right now.

I'm going for a walk.

~

My eyes can't see the flying ribbons and spores currently, but I can still feel their presence around a little.

I could force my body to change now, but I'd rather avoid it if I can. My hair still is mostly white from my last fight.

My body has been transformed and copied more times than I can count.

I still can feel unsure and insecure about it easily.

Though I learnt how to enjoy it, I'm glad I don't have that thingy between my legs anymore.

And speaking about missing penises...

As I returned from my walk in these woods, I stumbled upon a woman washing herself under a tree. But as we noticed each other, I recognised him.

The body was of a manly woman, and the head was of a man. But he was a she, by metrics usually beneath the clothes. It was a weird moment and embarrassing.

It was even weird after that to try discussing it.

I've been like a man for a while, but my face didn't change. Had something somewhat similar happened to him?

He tried to explain to me he had begun changing before the end of times. Now he couldn't finish his metamorphosis. He would never become a full man as he once dreamt of. Not that it truly mattered anymore nowadays.

That was so strange and foreign to me. Bleue might understand but I don't.

Dressed, I would never have guessed he was born as a woman. On the other hand, he still could hardly believe I was born in the 20th century. So the two of us are even with hard to understand weirdness. Not that it truly matters as I said.

We crossed the river when its flow was at its minimal for a moment, as predicted.

He was still able to decipher chaotic patterns after merely a few minutes of observation, and barely as long calculations to predict with surreal accuracy the future.

Following his advices in eating and resting, we travelled faster and in better health, energetic and swift.

At the old nuclear power plant, he resumed teaching me about the nature of atoms, radioactivity and particles from the standard model.

The table of periodic elements, bigger than I remember. I had seen it a few times, but now I was learning really about it. And even more abstract but Interesting, the table of elementary particles.

Because T.I according to his research and the one thesis he found, was essentially affecting elementary particle. It behaved as another.

It was a second Higgs field that shifted its standard value recently, when it all happened. It was at zero before. Now it was a matter of statistics, ranging from -1 to +1 like ripples.

As if a thin sheet of paper, flat for eternity, suddenly burnt and became full of crevices and hills.

At first, I couldn't understand anything. I couldn't grasp why matter was made of only a handful of baryons when hundreds existed. As if a hundred words existed but you only ever used only three of them, the same three always and for everything imaginable.

Why? Or rather, how? How come?

The more I learnt and tried to understand reality, the more I was lost.

Lost in the sea of particles.

~

There was one aspect of his science I could relate to. Chaos. Bleue believed in it the moment she was brought to this world. I don't have this strength of faith, but I can relate. I can see that instinct for patterns, recurrences and orders, arising for seemingly random events.

I can understand that things and their consequences are not linear in nature, that linear systems are oversimplified. That's intuitive to me.

So he showed me pictures called fractals. Turbulent events.

And best of all, how life already use it.

Many plants and organisms, or organs, already use instinctively fractal figures.

We're not mapped out essentially. Simple fractals and patterns build us. Branches and their leaves, roots, blood vessels, lungs.

It's the same everywhere.

It made me laugh, my friend didn't get why.

Because there is chaos in life, in more ways than one.

~