LIFE ON THE EDGE
'Researchers discovered a simple set of three equations that graphed a fern. This started a new idea - perhaps DNA encodes not exactly where the leaves grow, but a formula that controls their distribution. DNA, even though it holds an amazing amount of data, could not hold all of the data necessary to determine where every cell of the human body goes. However, by using fractal formulas to control how the blood vessels branch out and the nerve fibers get created, DNA has more than enough information. It has even been speculated that the brain itself might be organized somehow according to the laws of chaos.'
Ian Malcolm put the article down. People treated chaos like it was a tool, wheedled it like a knife, but, in fact, it was a simple theory; an idea. Well, perhaps calling chaos simple was like working with fractals; the more general you get, the more the idea broadens. You can twist an idea or theory beyond recognition. It's easy. Just look at The Butterfly Effect. A goddamn movie about time travel! Chaos may be a pretty word, but people have to stop treating it like that's all it is.
Ian Malcolm's cell phone rang. He punched the 'send' button, and put his mouth to the receiver. Looking over at his bed table alarm clock, he saw 2:00 AM in bright red letters. Damn, Malcolm thought.
"Who dares disturb my slumber?" pondered the thirty year old mathematician, into the phone.
No answer. And in a second, Malcolm heard a dial tone.
Oh, well. That was the thing about life. Life on the edge of the giant cliff of chaos. Everybody keeps falling off.
MONTANA
Grant was not obliged to stay at the meeting this particular Monday, as he had quite a bit of work to do back at the dig. So he decided to skip it altogether. Once a month or so, Alan usually took a trip in his old Chevy truck, (called 'Le Truck' by graduate students because it broke down every few miles), all the way around the dig site and surveyed any damage unknowing students might have done. Usually there wasn't too much; sometimes nothing, but it was necessary work.
One time, a couple of years ago, Grant remembered coming across the excavation of a hadrosaur nest where one of the students had made a mistake. There was a fracture in the bone, and it had been unattended. (This may seem mundane to the untrained paleontologist, but when fossils like that are unattended, the consequences can mean going from a complete skeleton to a fractured one.) When you came across a fractured bone, you were supposed to apply adhesive immediately (there were special pastes, but Grant swore by Elmer's Glue). It had annoyed him that one of his post docs had made such a horrendous mistake, and the said person was quickly quitted from the student body.
Grant climbed into the old Chevy, and put the key in the ignition. The vehicle hummed, then died. Grant sighed and tried again, with more success. He hit the clutch and put the truck in first, jolting off of the dirt driveway and into the parched Montana earth that constituted as a road everywhere in the Badlands, making all drivers out here be extremely careful.
Grant drove all the way around the sites close to the trailers before going out to Sites E and F, about five miles from there, on the side of a steep dirt ravine. They'd wanted to flatten the space out, and give themselves more working room, but the damn ecologists said it would be far too damaging to the earth around the area, causing erosion and chaos.
Alan Grant approached the ravine, about twenty feet away. He moved off of the clutch to press in the brake. Nothing happened.
Ten feet away, Grant could see the ravine, an open hole waiting to suck him in. Damn this truck! He swerved sharply to the right, away from the ravine.
The truck was still. Grant let out a long breath and moved to open the door and get out of the truck. Then he felt the truck move. The dirt was giving way. Grant tried desperately to get out of the vehicle, but he felt another jolt, as the truck slid farther, this time on such an incline that Grant fell backward, knocking himself against the passenger window. His face pressed uncomfortably to the glass, Grant could see the menacing sharp rocks below, at the bottom of the ravine. He braced himself as the dirt completely gave way, the truck spiraling down to the sharp rocks. Grant covered his head for the impact.
Then the world became totally dark and silent.
