The Chaos Function

by Jack Skillingstead

Olivia and company sat in a booth by the window. They ordered food and coffee, and the waitress left a silver carafe and four cups, one in front of the empty place next to Dee. The waitress wore a painter’s canister mask, which made her appear to be a giant dishwater-blond mantis. Olivia drank her first cup and refilled it from the carafe. There seemed to be only two people working the diner. An old guy in a filter mask manned the grill on the other side of the pass-through. Periodically he came out in his grease-stained apron to collect dirty dishes, his stringy, old-man muscles flexing on his forearms when he lifted the plastic tubs. The waitress covered the tables and counter and took care of the register.

  Olivia touched Brian’s hand. “Did you get through to your parents?”

  “No.” Brian looked troubled about it. “It rang but nobody answered.”

  “They’re probably all right.”

  “Yeah.” Brian picked up his coffee. “How about you?”

  “How about me what?”

  “Are you going to call Rohana?”

  “Later I will.”

  She waited for it: Brian’s push for her to do something she knew she was supposed to do but resisted doing anyway.

  This time, the push didn’t come, and Olivia felt obscurely disappointed. Maybe part of her wanted to be pushed.

  “Here comes Prince Charming,” Brian said.

  Alvaro entered the diner like he already wished he was exiting it—looking around impatiently, rubbing his hands on his pants. He crossed to the booth and stood there. “We’re wasting time.”

  “I got you pancakes,” Dee said. “They don’t have waffles. The thing’s broken. The waffle-making thing.”

  Alvaro said, “You’re all crazy,” but he looked hungry and slid into the booth beside Dee.

  “I need food,” Olivia said. “Before I try again.”

  Brian picked up the carafe and tilted it toward Alvaro’s empty cup. “Coffee?”

  “Yes.” Alvaro leaned over the table and said to Olivia, “I have the jai ba leaves. The wine was a mistake. Alcohol muddles your brain.”

  Olivia sipped her second cup of coffee. “It got me to the halo.”

  “And no doubt impaired your judgment.”

  She slurped down more coffee.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Brian said, and they all looked at him. “About what you guys are calling a probability machine.” He adjusted his glasses. “That’s right, isn’t it—probability machine?”

  Alvaro affected a bored look. “What could you possibly know about it?”

  “Nothing. But that’s mostly because I don’t believe it exists. A mechanical thing that can change destiny or something? I don’t think so. But when you think about the whole concept of probability machines, and if you grant that people are a kind of biological machine, then you could say we—all of us—are little probability machines that go around choosing different probabilities every day, if not every minute. All choices change the local reality, right?”

  Olivia topped off her cup. “Brian has a minor in philosophy from a not very good school.”

  “It’s a great school.” Brian placed his hand briefly on her shoulder, letting her know he wasn’t seriously disagreeing with her, or God help them, starting an argument. Sometimes Brian was too nice.

  “Except maybe not the philosophy department,” she said.

  “The probability machine is real,” Alvaro said. “I’ve seen it.”

  “You said that before.” Olivia put down her cup. “I thought you had to be linked to see the halo.”

  Alvaro, who still looked road-haggard even after sleeping, picked up his coffee cup. “Jacob is old. When the time for the migration nears, the current Shepherd escorts the next in line to the place under the Old City. Only the Shepherd and his chosen successor go. That’s why we were in Aleppo by ourselves. We got separated, and Jacob was captured. They must have tortured him to find out what he was doing in that place where they found him.”

  “What place was it?” Olivia asked.

  Alvaro shook his head. “Only the Shepherd and his successor can know that.”

  “I’m a Shepherd. That’s what Dee called me.”

  Alvaro seemed to think about it, then he shook his head again. “Not the same thing. Sorry.”

  “But you saw the probability machine,” Brian said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what did it look like, what was it made out of ? Did it have an on-and-off switch?”

  Alvaro said, “You can be a very irritating person.”

  “But it was an actual machine?”

  “Machine is not the right word, but it’s all we have.”

  “Why isn’t it the right word?” Olivia asked.

  “I can’t tell you any more. Won’t tell you any more. But it’s real. As real as this table.” He rapped his knuckles on the tabletop.

  The waitress arrived with food. While Olivia ate her eggs and hash browns, she took out her IsnGlas tablet and connected to Wi-Fi. IsnGlas security software paid granular attention to the incoming datastorm. Keeping the tablet on private 2D resolution, she accessed her message accounts. Helen’s last urgently flagged message sat there like a bright red crime-scene marker. Scores of unread messages populated her inbox. Many friends and colleagues were still in the heart of the Disaster, though it was becoming difficult to distinguish where the “heart” was located anymore. Almost lost in the avalanche of messages was a new one from Olivia’s stepmother.

  Dear Olivia,

  (You see? I use your grown-up name, since you are so unhappy when I call you Little Oh.)

  I am writing to let you know that I am still alive and all is well. Yes, I realize the world is falling apart. But the world is always falling apart. This is not something you learn from books or from your personal experience of very bad places, but from time. The cycle of tragedy is always with us. Of course, you think you know all about this truth and that I cannot tell you anything you haven’t already decided for yourself. Well, trust me when I tell you, Olivia, that the world will always go on even though we will not. And for now I am going on nicely myself. When these foolish travel bans are lifted, I hope you will come visit me. If you do, I will take you to my favorite market with your auntie who you never see.

  Love,

  Rohana

  Olivia clicked her tongue. Old resentments needled her from the inside, as if a puffer fish lived in her chest just waiting for Rohana to irritate it into puffing up and jabbing Olivia’s heart with its poisonous spines. Olivia didn’t want to be irritated, but she couldn’t help it. Which is what she always told herself. Her stepmother had a real knack for getting to her with the truth. You see? I use your grown-up name, since you are so unhappy when I call you Little Oh.

  Unhappy? If a fucking puffer fish had a right to protect itself, why didn’t Olivia? “Little Oh” is what Rohana started calling her when Olivia desperately needed her mother—her real mother—who would never come back.

  Alongside her inbox, news-crawl hyperlinks invited Olivia to read about the unchecked spread of variola across the globe (except parts of central Russia, where it appeared to be very much under control), civil unrest in Europe and, increasingly, the United States. And the escalating nuclear tensions on the South Asian subcontinent.

  Olivia picked up her IsnGlas and stood.

  Alvaro looked alarmed. “Where are you going?”

  “Getting the check. We’re wasting time.”

  * * *

  Back in their motel room, Alvaro produced a baggie, opened it, picked out a few brittle jai ba leaves, and dropped them into Olivia’s palm. They looked like tea leaves, or the veined wings of minute fairies. “You remember what to do?”

  “Grind them between my teeth for a while and spit them out.”

  “Yes.”

  She started to put the leaves in her mouth. Alvaro stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “Wait. Once you link to the probability machine, if you remain passive, you will find yourself confronted with the origina
l crisis point.”

  “I know. I’ve already been there, remember?”

  “This time you absolutely must surrender to Jacob’s probability.  You must choose it, no matter what your personal resistance might tell you to do. You understand? Choose it, or allow him to choose it. However it works. Since it’s not the highest end-point probability, it will cause you discomfort, but not at the level you’ve been experiencing it in your other choices when you deviated more wildly. But don’t turn away.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” Olivia felt impatient to get started. As much as she feared the power inside the halo, she was more frightened by the consequences of allowing the present situation to stand. At the same time, she was irked with Alvaro. He had never linked to the machine, had never felt the awesome power and responsibility.

  Olivia looked at the jai ba leaves. “Let’s get it over with.” She put the leaves in her mouth and started grinding them between her molars, releasing the dusty, bitter taste. She sat on the bed nearest the bathroom. There were too many people in the room. “I can’t do this with everyone standing around staring at me.”

  “Are you sure you should be eating those things?” Brian looked worried.

  “I’m not eating them. Don’t worry, I’ve done this before.”

  Dee crooked her finger at Brian. “Come on. Let’s get some more coffee.”

  Brian shook his head. “I’m not leaving her alone this time.”

  “I will be here,” Alvaro said.

  “I meant not leaving her alone with you.”

  Olivia lay back on the bed. The jai ba was starting to numb her tongue and lips. “It’s okay, Bri. He won’t hurt me.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “Bri,” Olivia said, “just go. Please.” She felt drifty.  There was some more talk, but she didn’t follow it. Distantly, she heard the door open and close. Alvaro pulled the chair over beside the bed. The lamp clicked off.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Spit them out.”

  She opened gummy eyelids. Alvaro was a shadow. He held his hand under her chin. She turned her head and spat out the jai ba leaves. A few flakes stuck to her tongue. She scraped them off with her fingernail. The room was dim, but inside, deep down a well of consciousness, a bright ring burned like holy fire.

  Olivia plunged toward it.

  * * *

  Her mind cleared. She occupied the white-fire center of the ring. Around her, the world’s billions swarmed like clouds of minute fireflies. Brian had suggested that humans were, every one of them, little biological probability machines. And now Olivia was about to bypass all their personal choices and make a huge one on their behalf.

  Variola.

  She found herself in the torture cell. Jacob lay bound to the table. Kerosene lanterns hissed. Three men stood over Jacob. The man with the trend-line scar bisecting his eyebrow said, I won’t allow this. Jacob’s eyes rolled up, already seeking a different probability.  This was the moment. Allow Jacob’s choice to prevail. It would be so easy. Just . . . let go. Let it happen. It wouldn’t even be as though she were actively doing it . . .

  And open your eyes in a world where Brian is dead. Where Jodee is dead.

  There had to be another way. She knew there had to be. It wasn’t wishful thinking, and she wasn’t a monster willing to sacrifice millions for the lives of one or two individuals she happened to know and care about personally. It didn’t make sense for the probability machine to exist if all it required of the human link was a default decision the machine had already determined. Shepherd Beekman had manipulated probabilities for profit, which precipitated a worldwide depression and the rise of fascism. Maybe it was a matter of degree and intention. Dee wanted to believe probability manipulation could deliver a better world, one that didn’t require crisis intervention. Beekman and Andrew’s faction wanted the machine to arrange a dragon’s vault of treasure. All Olivia wanted to do was to tweak the original crisis solution.

  She tried to turn aside, to go seeking her alternate path. A nearly irresistible force compelled her to remain focused on Jacob and the scarred man. Olivia strained and pulled until she broke free, back into the halo.

  Twenty-Two

  Around Olivia, the halo glimmered, and her perspective shifted. Like grinding gears clutching into the wrong slot. Resistance. And pain. Her deliberate turning away from the torture cell, the crisis point that the machine wanted her to focus on, created tremendous tension. Just as it became harder and harder to concentrate, the view through the halo cleared.

  A tan Jeep Cherokee rattled up to a checkpoint on the western edge of Aleppo. Not this again. What was she missing? The kid driving the Jeep looked anxious. Sweat glistened on his face. The Cherokee advanced. Whisper drones hovered in. Armed soldiers held their hands out in a STOP gesture. The kid applied the brakes and waited. Olivia focused briefly on the license plate number. Normally, she would have no trouble recalling the numbers. But would memorizing something in the halo work the same way?

  The commander, a middle-aged man wearing a side-slanting beret and thick mustache, directed his soldiers to search the truck.

  What, what was she missing? Maybe nothing. This might not be the place. Then why did the halo present it to her as an alternative to Jacob in the torture cell? This checkpoint and this Jeep had to be significant, had to be connected to the crisis end point.

  She swooped in like an invisible drone, a video fly tiny enough to go anywhere, see anything. Olivia minutely examined the Jeep while the soldiers, more clumsily, did the same. They failed to find anything, and so did she.

  The pain of being in the wrong place, of abandoning the torture cell crisis point, intensified. This was it, her second chance, and once again she was failing. She could make the kid hit the gas pedal again, and the soldiers would stop him, but she knew that wouldn’t change anything.

  The soldiers completed their search. The beret-wearing checkpoint commander approached the vehicle. The driver flexed his hands on the steering wheel. Sweat poured off him. Even in this little tableau there were a thousand choices any of these human probability machines could make. But which one should Olivia make? Power and pain rippled through her. Why had she thought she could do this? There was no alternative but to allow the gravitational force of attraction slingshot her back to the torture cell.

  Except . . . no.

  If she couldn’t figure out this checkpoint, if stopping the kid here didn’t work, she could stop him before he ever arrived at the checkpoint. She had done it with the guy who shot Dee back at Sanctuary. She’d found a decision point in his recent past and tweaked it to make him leave his gun at home—unarming him before he had the chance to pull the trigger and send a bullet ripping into Dee’s leg.

  She could do the same with this kid.

  Using the checkpoint as the landing spot, Olivia traced a single probability thread backward and found the boy arguing with a woman who could be his mother. The argument took place in a kitchen filled with hot sunlight. The mother stood with her arms crossed, her lips a stern line.

  The boy spoke, a pleading look on his face.

  His mother, if that’s who she was, shook her head and replied.

  A key lay on the table, where two plates and two glasses attested to a breakfast recently consumed. The mother unfolded her arms, eyed the key, rubbing her thumb over her fingertips, hesitating. The boy wanted the key, too. He started to reach for it.

  Olivia pushed.

  The mother snatched up the key and put it in her pocket—to the boy’s apparent outrage.

  And Olivia fell back into the ring of white light, too strained to follow the consequences of her simple move, knowing only that the boy would not drive the Jeep through a particular checkpoint at a particular hour, and that this could make a crucial difference. How, she had no idea, since the variola had not been hidden in the vehicle.

  A siren reeled her out of the halo and into a world of pain. A blizzard of white stars swirled behind her eyelids. Olivi
a’s head felt like a pain balloon, swelling and contracting. She rolled onto her side. “I feel sick.”  The jai ba leaves left a bitter aftertaste on her tongue. The stars faded, and she opened her eyes to slits. Except for the daylight seeping around the edge of the curtain, the room was dark—just as she remembered it being before linking to the probability machine. But something was very, very wrong. The tip of a cigarette glowed, revealing Alvaro’s face. She had seen him smoking in the alley across from her hotel in Aleppo, but not since. That detail bothered her.

  “Well?” he said.

  Olivia sat up and put her feet on the floor. It was hardwood, not the high-traffic industrial carpet of the motel room. “Sick . . .”

  Alvaro leaned against the wall, watching her. The smell of his cigarette smoke added to her nausea. She was grateful for the dark. It offered some slight relief from her post-halo migraine. But it was unnerving, too. The changes were all around her and she urgently needed to know what they were. And why didn’t someone shut off that goddamn siren? “What’s happening?”

  “You tell me.” He sounded different, his voice rougher, exhausted in a way it hadn’t been before she closed her eyes and descended into the halo. As painful as it was bound to be, she needed to see. Olivia reached for the lamp, which was on the wrong side of the bed, and almost knocked it off the table. She fumbled for the switch and pushed it. Nothing happened.

  “It doesn’t work,” Alvaro said. “You know it doesn’t work. Wait—you don’t know, do you? Goddamn it.”

  Of course she knew. The knowledge was right there, part of the new memory scaffold rising out of the murk. The shock wave from the nuke had knocked out half the grid on the Eastern Seaboard, causing cascading failures deep into the Midwest and, for all she knew, all the way to the West Coast. Major cellular networks had crashed. Phones and tablets scanned uselessly for signals.

  She pushed herself off the bed and stumbled across the darkened room. It had become an obstacle course of shadowy furniture that hadn’t been there before she altered the probability stream. A million changes, small and large, might have flowed forward from the Aleppo crisis point. She reached the window. It wasn’t a curtain covering it but a heavy blanket nailed to the wall. She yanked it loose from the top corner, ripping it down so it hung like a flap of animal hide. Daylight flooded the room. She put her hand up, shading her eyes. Woods crowded the back of the cabin—the cabin on Rock River, still a couple of hours out from Elmhurst and Najid Javadi’s bunker.