| The End Of The Beginning |
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The Times
It was deep into the Last Days when the messages began to appear upon the Matrix. The virus was raging in Africa, exploding in Asia, and had already killed more Americans than the Vietnam and Korean War combined. There were an estimated 14,000 new infections a day, but no one knew the real numbers. The virus was sweeping through the human species like wildfire. HIV had broken out of Africa and could now be found in every major population. It was within this cauldron of woe that the messages first appeared. The Matrix, at that time, was largely a toy for the bored and lonely. But those were not innocent days. Beneath the mundane ran a tremor of something dark. Erotica, which had driven the first cyberspace expansion, turned more profane, more degrading and raw. Discussion nodes on the Matrix filled with anger and derision. Shadows of dark mixed with the light - the Matrix was both the Changer and the Changed. The First Message The first message was written in the language of math. A new math that was barely as old as the Matrix itself. It was the math of Chaos - the study of rhythms. The math of Chaos is rooted in epiphany. A young wunderkind named Mitchell Feigenbaum, while playing with a cheap calculator, sensed something in the the seemingly random flow of numbers. He looked into the very core of our universe, saw something beautiful and changed the world. What Mr. Feigenbaum discovered was an undercurrent of rhythms. Rhythms in the Chaos. Rhythms that were not only mathematically pure, but that appeared to permeate every aspect of physical existence. It was as though he had discovered the fingerprints of God. He saw that Chaos was filled with perfect rhythms - too complex for mortal perception. Perhaps the most startling of these rhythms was the discovery that all orderly systems disintegrate into Chaos in exactly the same way. The locust in Africa - the oil flowing smoothly in a Siberian pipeline - and the drip of water from the tap, all change from order to disorder in exactly the same beautiful dance of math. The rhythm is so precise that it is expressed in a number (4.669) carried to four decimal places. Fittingly it is called the Feigenbaum Constant. Other rhythms have acquired similar names. One, which describes a complex dynamic system, is called the Strange Attractor. While the language of chaos is often oblique, the first message described an ancient rhythm, correctly identified it as a Strange Attractor, and listed several universal criteria with remarkable clarity. Words deeply rooted in the truth have a special kind of power. The whole of their influence extends beyond the thoughts expressed. Thus it was with the first message. It was called Futures |
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