Starstuff

by Kaylim

small enough to form such details. Yallie would know, probably.

  An equation blinks on the screen, indicating that she is running out of time to answer the question. She sighs and waits for it to pass by. She doesn’t know this one, but the Instructors keep expecting her to answer it. xk+1 = fr(xk). Blink blink blink. xk+1 = fr(xk).

  Pushing away from her kiosk, she watches the other Students as they finish their Exams, faces pinched with concentration.

  “Student, you must focus on your own work.”

  Ajita looks back. The Instructor, who had spent the last Lesson avoiding her, now stands behind her.

  “I do not understand what this equation is,” she explains.

  “Then you must pay attention during the Introduction,” he answers, “Looking at other Student’s work is not permissible.”

  “I was watching them, not their answers.”

  He never seemed to mind when the other Students looked at her. Then again, they knew the answers already.

  “Please continue with your Lesson,” he responds curtly, stepping back.

  “Do you know what this equation means?”

  “You must learn for yourself, Student.”

  “I have tried. The Introduction does not explain well. I am in need of assistance,” she thinks this must be the longest conversation she’s ever had with an Instructor.

  His eyes shift left to right, “You are not allowed to receive help during the Exam portion of the Lesson.”

  “Then tomorrow, during the Introduction, you will assist in explaining the equation?”

  “You must wait until Tutoring.”

  She swivels around in her seat to face him head-on, “I am rarely scheduled to be in Tutoring.”

  Although, her Instructor for Tutoring never seemed to care that she missed answers, either.

  “I will see to it that you are scheduled to be in Tutoring,” he says, before walking to the other end of the room at a brisk pace.

  Ajita turns back to her kiosk, but most of the questions have already passed by.

  When it is time to endure more of the Diet, she is careful to not swallow all of her food.

  She enters the scanner room and notices that someone cleaned up the drawing she made yesterday. Turing slowly in the spot where Rasjaurom had once been, she scrutinizes the shiny grey floor. Her shoes squeak loudly against it. Ajita supposes it must have been Yallie who cleaned it up. If an Instructor had found it the next morning, they would have pulled Ajita aside and scolded her. Yallie may not want to see her anymore, but she is not like an Instructor.

  Ajita sits down on the floor, surveying the expanse of grey, and she liberally applies the cleaning solution all around her. She creates several puddles, tiny little messes, and then leans over one. Her reflection ripples, made misty white like the cleaning fluid, and then she opens her mouth and spits.

  The white blooms blue.

  Her smile, blue and a little bubbly, smiles back up at her. With a finger she mixes it, creating a large expanse of blue-tinted cleaning fluid. She then takes the bottle of solution and carefully squeezes out tiny misty white drops over the large blue puddle. She watches with frustration as it blends together.

  Clink. Yallie stands in the doorway, as still as any sleeping scanner.

  “Hello,” Ajita says.

  Yallie’s mouth opens, her eyes darting to the mess and then to Ajita’s fingers, stained blue and slick with the cleaning solution and her spit. Ajita shrugs.

  “I cannot understand why you leave messes for others to find,” Yallie moves no closer.

  Her voice sounds a little higher than normal.

  “These are not messes. They are drawings,” she explains.

  “Why are they blue?” Yallie bursts out, confounded, and then sharply closes her mouth.

  “I wanted to make different colors.”

  Yallie’s nose wrinkles, “You used your food.”

  “The tube from the Diet contained blue liquid.”

  Yallie looks like she might retch as she observes her spit-puddles.

  Ajita sits up straighter, “I wanted to draw the stars in the night sky.”

  She couldn’t match the texture of the drawings on the ceiling though, the thick liquid that left strokes of bold color.

  “I do not see any resemblance,” Yallie says and her tone is dry, but she takes a step closer.

  With hands behind her back, she tiptoes around the puddles, leaning over them as if cataloging their different shades.

  “I created the background of the night sky, but I couldn’t make the stars. The white mixed completely with the blue,” Ajita laments. She can’t help it if her shoulders droop.

  Yallie just paces around, head tilting this way and that.

  “But you researched art and drawing. Tell me, what are such things made of?” Ajita asks.

  “I do not know.”

  “Then we must find out.”

  “Why must we find out?”

  Ajita’s hands clench in her lap. She stands up and says, “You are the one who was so curious about art and drawing and humming and bears and star charts. Why did you find out about all that?”

  Yallie pauses and looks aside. She doesn’t answer, but at least she doesn’t briskly walk away.

  Eventually she takes a deep breath and answers, “What would be the point of conducting more research? This art seems to be a rather pointless endeavor. I do not see how drawing with saliva and food can create anything of worth. It is best to concentrate on matters that have immediate importance.”

  “You did not seem to find it so unimportant a few days ago when you took me out of my Lessons.”

  “That was for the purpose of research. That research led to my current conclusions.”

  “Are you afraid of what the Instructors will say?” Ajita asks, “I was afraid of them finding out about my drawing on the floor from yesterday.”

  Yallie snorts, “I am not afraid.”

  “Then help me. You may find it fruitless, but I see worth. Perhaps I can change your mind.”

  “I have many other things to do,” Yallie says.

  Ajita kicks at her drawings, sending some of it splashing at Yallie, “I asked an Instructor for assistance today. I always have trouble understanding numbers and equations; he said he wasn’t allowed to help me…that he couldn’t. That he wouldn’t. I am always behind, and they never care. Why is it that none of you care?”

  “I am not an Instructor, it is not my—“

  “They make me do Lessons and admonish me for not understanding them, but never do anything to help. When I discover something that I have interest in, you brush me aside as well. Why does this not have worth? Because it does not have numbers or equations on a kiosk?”

  Yallie’s face is carefully blank, and then her gaze drifts to the runny drawings on the floor.

  Ajita heaves, her breath coming fast like it did when she trained, and she has never experienced this flush in her stomach before, this odd heat that makes her hands clench tight at her sides.

  “What in particular do you not understand?” Yallie asks, still looking at the floor.

  Numbers! Ajita wants to shout at her, but her throat already hurts from her previous speech, and she feels as if an Instructor will swoop in and rebuke her for talking so much.

  “There is one equation that I always have been unable to understand,” Ajita says slowly.

  Yallie raises her head and their eyes meet for a split second, then Yallie turns towards the exit.

  “Come with me,” she says.

  They are back at the science kiosk, and Yallie is using the pointer to pull up the equation. xk+1 = fr(xk) hovers in the air, and Yallie asks her to sit down. Ajita doesn’t want to, it feels too much like she is in a Lesson, but she’s afraid Yallie will stop and walk away, so she sits. Immediately, paragraphs of long words appear under the equation. It looks like an Introduction. Ajita crosses her arms and slinks down in her seat.

  “This is an equation that is use
d in creating fractals,” Yallie summarizes as her eyes scan over the document.

  “What is a fractal?”

  “It is an infinite pattern.”

  The equation looks awfully small to create something infinite.

  “So a fractal is something that is very large?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “It is something that is infinitely small?”

  “No it is an infinite repetition, or iteration, of self-similar shapes.”

  “So it is something that is visual?”

  She wonders where one could even find something infinite.

  Yallie uses the pointer to expand part of the document, “Yes. It occurs in nature but can also be generated.”

  “Show me one.”

  “I do not know how to create one.”

  “Surely the Introduction includes an example?”

  “There are numerous equations for different types of fractals. I shall explain to you what each variable means.”

  “Can you explain while you show what parts of the fractal each variable affects?”

  Yallie tosses an aggravated glance her way. Ajita is sure Yallie has never had to do so much explaining before.

  “The numbers speak for themselves,” she says.

  Ajita wrinkles her nose, because numbers probably do many things, but they don’t speak any comprehensible language Ajita understands.

  “Watch,” Yallie says and clicks on various equations.

  They expand until the numbers and letters float around the room, and Ajita feels trapped by all the equations surrounding her, filling the room and lighting it with their electronic glow. Yallie, her face awash with the whitish shine from the numbers, is no longer frowning or glaring or raising her eyebrows. Her lips are curved upwards, an unusual thing to do with one’s mouth.

  She brings forward the original equation Ajita had trouble with.

  “This equation allows one to find the fixed point, or an attractor, of a fractal using the iterated function system.”

  It’s gibberish to her.

  “You will have to explain those concepts,” Ajita says crisply, “because equations do not explain themselves.”

  “Equations explain how everything works, from the smallest particle to the largest star. Math is the language of the Universe,” Yallie says, her tone supple and suspended.

  Ajita’s eyebrow ticks and she quickly presses her hand over it, glowering at Yallie and her eyebrows. Yallie doesn’t seem to notice.

  She clicks the equation again, “This is called the Chaos Game method.”

  Different parts of the equation glow, and text ripples into the air. Yallie’s mouth drops open a little, and Ajita wants to know what she’s learning, what she understands that Ajita can’t. She grabs the pointer out of the blonde’s slack grip, and Yallie’s eyes snap out of their glaze. Ajita shoots to her feet, right into the hazy forms of the equations, and the numbers splay over her face, her hands. Click. Click. She shoves the pointer against the equations, causing text after text to pop up, a constant clickclickclickclick noise filling the room.

  “Stop!” Yallie says, but Ajita can’t really hear her over the clickclickclick.

  Diagrams, curious black and white things, begin to pop up as the kiosk empties out its knowledge, going into the depths of its memory banks; a male’s voice, deep and croaky, begins to narrate, and various recordings run over each other as each equation starts to play some sort of explanation.

  And just when she thinks the room can’t hold anymore, when she thinks the kiosk must be close to empty, when she feels Yallie stand up next to her in agitation, it all stops for a breath.

  Then the room bursts with color.

  Beautiful prickly spiral shapes spin out of each equation, expanding so that the texts, the diagrams, the numbers, fade into nothingness. Yallie’s ascent is slowed, softened, as she gapes at the room. The clickclickclick stops, the narrator’s voice gradually peters off, and they’re left in a room with luminous shapes, shapes that start large, and then curl in on themselves, creating delicate, impossibly infinite edges. They come in vibrant shades of so many colors, from green to purple. A large red one hangs over Yallie’s shoulders, flickering over her blue training suit.