Thanks to all the ones who are going to read this story, especially to those who have already read my last one. You're brave, guys!
Unfortunately, I still didn't find a beta. Poor you. 'Cause this is not the way you're going to prevent me from writing. Nevertheless, I know that my English is rather... well, it deserves ameliorations. So if there's anybody out there...?

This story won't be long, only four chapters. So don't expect too much.
Again I have to admit that I don't own Numb3rs. But maybe one day...

C H A O S

0 = 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5 - 6 + 7 - 8 + 9 - 9 + 8 - 7 + 6 - 5 + 4 - 3 + 2 - 1 = 0

"Hey, Charlie, there's a problem with your search algorithm. Can you come over to the office?"

Search algorithm? Which search algorithm? Oh that. "What a problem?," Charlie inquired via cell phone, letting his eyes fly hastily through his office. Where was this damned book?

"The whole system isn't really clear to us," Don answered and Charlie rolled his eyes. Thereby, they caught a glimpse of the spine of a mathematic disquisition. Well, there you are. As if his office was messy.

He pulled at the book lying under a pile of other books, booklets and loose sheets that – of course – promptly started to slid and spread upon the already cram-full desk.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah… wait a minute…"

A glance at the clock told him that he had exactly thirty seconds until he would be late. Since the pile was still remaining on his desk, the friction force would probably hold it there for the next one and a half hours until Charlie would be back, he figured. So with one hand, he grabbed his laptop and his papers that – of course – immediately glided onto the floor, spreading all over the room.

"Damn!" Charlie cursed and began to collect the papers.

"What's up?" Don asked and there was a bit of impatience in his voice that didn't abate when he didn't get an answer. "Are you coming now?"

"I already explained the thing to you once!" Charlie flared up impatiently.

"But it doesn't make sense. Maybe you've made a mistake."

For an instance Charlie held on with his collection. "I am supposed to have made a mistake?!"

"Well, it's possible, isn't it?"

Charlie would have liked to answer that that was by no means possible. He knew, however, that humans made mistakes and that he was a human being. Logical deduction: it was possible.

"Okay," he moaned, displeased. "I'll probably make it to you in about two hours if I hurry."

Don thought he'd understood wrong. "Two hours?! Why not at once?"

"Because, at once, I've got a lecture. By degrees you could at least try to know my schedule."

"Can't you skip the lecture?"

"Are you serious? Do I ask you to refuse to go to an assignment?"

"That's different!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. In my job there are people at risk." Don paused for a second to give his words affection, but Charlie just rolled his eyes again. Don had always the same reasoning, no matter if he said it aloud or if Charlie told it himself.

"But if you prefer to lecture…," Don continued, yet not finishing the sentence, but making it followed by a quite cynical one: "You know, actually you could do that, talking to the widow or the widower or the half-orphans of a victim..."

"I have to go now," Charlie retorted, partly because he couldn't think of an adequate answer, partly because it was true. "Bye."

"Okay, but-"

Charlie didn't hear the rest of it. He had already shut his mobile and tossed it on the desk. He grabbed his laptop and the papers and flounced out of his office.

The door slammed shut behind him, maybe a bit too fiercely. He was late, of course. But it seemed to be also the sizzling feeling in his gut that had made a contribution to the energy that had nearly shattered the door to his office. A pity that it hadn't got broken. He could have sent the bill to his brother.

What was Don thinking, actually? As if Charlie hadn't better things to do than to be in preparedness until the FBI needed his mathematical skills!

Soon afterwards he stood at the professor's desk in the auditorium. He had really made it to be there with only four and a half minutes belatedness. That was even acceptable. Next time he'd be punctual. And he'd prepare the lesson extra-thoroughly. There was nothing you couldn't fix.

The guilty conscience had forced a smile on his features. At least his students shouldn't endure a grouchy professor for the remaining eighty-five and a half minutes. With the grimace, gradually changing into a more and more genuine smile, a thought had been tiptoed into Charlie's mind. He would probably knock his introduction on the head on short notice.

"What's that," he wanted to know from his students, banging his papers on the desk in front of them. You could tell from their look that they had been lying on Charlie's office's floor.

"A chaos, I'd say," a female student in the second row said quietly, grinning.

Charlie was grinning, too. It worked. "Exactly. And how was this chaos created?" He looked directly at the student, Elizabeth O'Rien, who now seemed rather confused about her professor's interest in her careless answer.

"Well… I suppose…" She hesitated and suddenly seemed to see daylight. "I see!" she moaned. "Chaos theory!"

Charlie's grin widened when the rest of his course moaned as well. "Miss O'Rien is right, although you have to be careful not to confuse the mathematical term 'chaos' with the colloquial one. Well, let's look if the basics are still there. What exactly do we understand under chaotic behaviour?"

There went some hands up already while Charlie grabbed the chalk. "Yes?"

"Chaotic behaviour is on hand if the deterministic behaviour of an object with changed initial conditions shows intense differences towards the initial behaviour at a later moment being within the temporary conditions of watching."

"Correct," Charlie smiled at the student from the third row, scribbling the main facts on the board. "That means," he recorded for them all, "this is about the temporary behaviour of objects. Thereby, even the tiniest alteration of the initial conditions can cause intense differences in the dynamic. Now, before we talk about the calculation, I'd like to know from you in which domains the chaos theory is applied."

Giving the several students their turn and scribbling their answers on the board, Charlie sensed his bad mood evaporating step by step. His students contributed to the lesson and were fully concentrated. Okay, Charlie thought, maybe that's because they have figured out that it's only a couple of weeks until finals.

But there would make it. Except one or two of them his students had worked very well in the past semester und if the other few put their shoulders to the wheel also they were going to pass the exam. And then, sooner or later, they would stand on their own feet and change the world with their skills. Oh yes, Charlie loved his job.

In the middle of the lesson the door to the auditory was opened with a jerk and a voice floated over to him: "Good morning, professor Eppes."

Charlie turned. Then the shots banged.

0 = 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5 - 6 + 7 - 8 + 9 - 9 + 8 - 7 + 6 - 5 + 4 - 3 + 2 - 1 = 0

Don looked at the receiver. His gaze was rigid, with incredulity as well as with anger. Charlie had hung up. He had really hung up, in the middle of Don's sentence! Don couldn't believe that he and Charlie had really both had the same education, an education in which the polite acquaintance with one's fellow men had been playing a decisive role.

Well, sometimes he was being a bit harsh himself, but it was always kept within a limit. And gradually Charlie should have acclimatized to it! And besides, Don's anger was justified! Charlie had no right to polish him off like this. And it was important; they needed him here!

Don grimaced. He became aware that his negotiation tactic hadn't been very clever, arguing with someone whose help he wanted to access. This would have never happened to him in an interrogation room. His brother, however, had sometimes the annoying talent to throw him a curve.

Nevertheless, Don was sure of one thing: Charlie couldn't stall him like this. The FBI still paid him for the cases he helped them with. Okay, he wasn't salaried, but still… And aside from that Charlie couldn't bemaul him like this!

Don downrightly hammered on the redialing key and waited until the free line signal would stop and Charlie would pick up the phone. But Charlie didn't pick up.

Don banged the receiver on the cradle. This was going to be followed by consequences; Charlie could bet his ass on it. When Don called him about something that important, Charlie couldn't play the defiant child.

A sentence his father having told him much too often and also running through his thoughts when Alan wasn't nearby came to Don's mind: Charlie isn't an agent of yours, you know that…

Of course Don knew. Charlie was his brother; that was the problem! He simply didn't consider it necessary to follow Don's orders! Don hadn't any authority, no influence upon him! Charlie thought he could do anything with him! But he couldn't!

"So, is Charlie coming?"

Don turned his head. Megan was standing behind him, looking at him expectantly.

Don succeeded to slacken his angry hissing into snorting. "What's up?" Megan asked, frowning. Usually, she would have sounded sympathetic, but the current stress in the Bureau reflected in her as well and so there was an unmistakable dose of impatience in her voice.

"In two hours. He's coming in two hours, because he has such an extremely important lecture," Don repeated Charlie's words with the same acidity as yonder.

"Well, there you are. What's wrong about that?"

"What's wrong? What's wrong? I told him to come and he acts as if he doesn't give a damn about it!"

"Why? He's coming, isn't he?"

"But not now!"

"Well, I mean, it's his job to have these lectures, isn't it?"

For an instance, Don struggled with himself. He didn't want to say something demonstrating his feelings too much, especially not towards a psychoanalyst, in the end, he still said it, though: "But the point is that he would have come for the NSA at once."

"Well, there's a difference between the NSA and the FBI. Besides, they would only come to him if they've got something really important."

"So this body that has disappeared isn't important?"

"Of course it is. You have to admit, however, that you ask for Charlie's help more often than any other investigation bureau."

"That has no bearing on this! The reason for all of it is that I'm Charlie's brother. He just thinks he can get away with murder if it's me!"

Megan laughed briefly. Don stared at her. He couldn't think of anything being particularly funny. "What's up?" he demanded to know, bemused.

"Come on, Don, you aren't seriously thinking Charlie believes he could get away with murder if it's you? In contrary, especially while working for you he tries to do his job perfectly."

"Yeah?" Don growled. He wondered briefly about the truth in Megan's words, but he wasn't willing to let go his anger that easily.

"Shall we go on checking these plates now?" Megan said, pushing, and it wasn't a question.

"If Charlie got off his butt and came over here-"

"Oh, let it go, Don. We're all in a bad mood, we really don't have to get each other on our nerves."

Damn it, again she was right. Was the whole world ganging up on him? Their boss had given them an unpleasant case, a body that had disappeared. That meant that they would again come far too late to change anything. Don had already wondered if his boss had done it on purpose, as a punishment. Their last case had been a disaster: a kidnapped child, two suspects whose guilt they weren't able to prove, not even with Charlie's help, parents having gone to the police too late, and a body in a child's coffin in the end.

Somewhere Don knew that the death of the kidnapped child wasn't their fault, but what was the use of it? They hadn't been able to safe it; that was what mattered. And now they had to dig out bodies in order to convict some guy anywhere and in order to give his widow a body to bury. Where was the sense?

To perfect the situation, last week Terry had sent him an invitation to her marriage. Alan had noticed it somehow and this morning at breakfast had got on Don's nerves telling him how deeply his wish for grand-children was. And as if this wasn't enough, it was raining outside. Another power conspiring against him. And now Charlie got on his nerves, as well. It really couldn't grow much worse.

How gravely Don was wrong.

0 = 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5 - 6 + 7 - 8 + 9 - 9 + 8 - 7 + 6 - 5 + 4 - 3 + 2 - 1 = 0