Butterfly
Tari Fallasion
Prologue
A butterfly flaps its wings and, far away, a mighty hurricane suddenly begins to twist into existence. This is the chaos theory, or to be more exact, the butterfly effect.
Most people limit the scope of the theory to merely the Earth, but in reality, the butterfly could flap its wings in Mongolia and spawn a sandstorm on Mars. The smallest of things cause the largest of changes, sometimes overturning whole societies in but days, sometimes destroying worlds.
This story begins not so long ago, but in a world where a butterfly flapped its wings... and was noticed.
A computer quietly hummed, tracking and recording critical junctions and probable outcomes in the timeline. The screen provided the only source of light in the small, cramped room, its soft light revealing a young girl slumped backwards in a swivel chair, drool trickling from the corner of her mouth.
The girl's black hair hung messily across the back of the chair, nearly long enough to reach the floor, where a coffee cup lay overturned, its contents spilling out and staining dozens of the datasheets scattered across the floor.
The computer let out a soft beep as it finished its first task and moved onto its second one. The girl's hand twitched, and for a moment, it seemed as though she would wake, but exhaustion had well and truly claimed her. She shifted into a more comfortable position and continued to sleep.
Four million, six-hundred and seventy miles away, on a planet yet uncharted by scientists on Earth, a butterfly, or something similar to it, flapped its wings.
The computer begin to emit a whine that quickly grew louder as data windows began scrolling information at speeds that made it impossible to read, each one generating more and more windows of data and code until, suddenly, everything stopped.
The computer made a loud screeching noise, then everything quieted, and the hundreds of windows on the computer screen suddenly vanished. A single red window appeared, centered in the middle of the screen.
Only one line of text was printed in it: "Error. Junction A72.34-582.e2 branching on null probability set. Examine further (Y/N)?"
The girl groaned, and her hand automatically went to her mouth and wiped the drool away. Her other hand rubbed at her eyes, and she let out a tired yawn. She blinked blearily at the screen a few times, then narrowed her eyes. She scooted closer and re-read the line for a fourth time, disbelieving in what she saw.
"That's... impossible," she muttered, slowly standing from her seat. She stepped back to where the coffee cup lay and fell to her knees, sifting through the piles of paper. "Junction group A72.34... Here we go!" She pulled a single, slightly browned packet of paper from the bottom of the stack and quickly scanned over it. "Section 582, point e2... that's, hmm..." She flipped through the packet, finally stopping on a page near the back, her eyes widening.
She tossed the packet to the side and quickly moved back to the computer. She re-read the line on the screen one last time, then brought her finger down on the keyboard. The computer chirped an acknowledgment, and the girl sighed. There was a flash of light, and then she was gone, leaving the room in silence once again.
Author's Notes:
A quick prologue to something that I won't be continuing for a while. AMSR comes first, and I might pick up Rollback again, though I'll hopefully be re-titling it. I also have outlines for crossovers with mostly untouched series (Nanoha, Grenadier, Full Metal Panic, Black Lagoon, Shana, and Muteki Kanban Musume), but those are being set waaaay on the backburner for now. I'd like to finish off AMR and possibly Smarter? before continuing any new stories. I also still have Sprinting Home and A Journey to work on, though the latter of them is a whimsical project.
Apologies for not updating anything recently, but I was busy for most of the summer. Hopefully, once classes start up in a week or two, I'll have time to write again.
I know it seems weird to be relying on college for free time to write, but I can't work up the energy to do any writing during the summer. We'll see. Keep your fingers crossed. :P
-Tari
P.S. Sorry 'bout any spelling errors. I still haven't installed Word or any decent text editors, so I'm working with the tried and true Notepad. I'll probably install one of the programs that were suggested to me sooner or later, though.
(Revised: Thanks, Tama Saga, for pointing out that I was idiotic enough to write Jupiter.)