Chapter 7

Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?

"I didn't know it was physiologically possible, but this both sucks and blows," Cloud informed the bathroom attendant. "Fortunately, I learned how to handle delicate social situations from a little TV show called Three's Company."

The delicate situation in question was this: Tifa had insisted Cloud go on a date with her. This was normally not a problem, but this time it was, because Lady Luck seemed to be on vacation. Of all the times for Yuffie to insist on going on a date, she had to pick the exact time Tifa chose. Obviously, Cloud wasn't about to ruin either date by letting one of the girls know the other was there. Tifa didn't even know about Yuffie, and Yuffie was under the impression that Cloud hardly spoke to Tifa anymore. At least he had managed to book reservations at two different restaurants (both in the Gold Saucer) so his time with each girl would be spent far enough away from the other so as to avoid being caught in a compromising situation.

"Your towel, sir." The attendant didn't seem to care about anything other than his duties. That sentiment was common enough among those working on the more glamorous careers, but it was strange to find in someone whose job was standing around in a bathroom and being polite to smelly people. Some people out there sure had some strange passions.

Some passions were stranger than others. Cloud once knew a guy whose primary reason for living seemed to be counting piles of pebbles. Every day, he's gather a new pile about a foot deep, plop it down on his desk, guess how many pebbles he'd picked up, and then count them to see if his guess was right. After he finished counting, he'd throw the entire mess away, clearing space for the next day's work. Cloud wondered if the guy ever got the number exactly right, and if not, what would happen if he ever did.

There was another guy Cloud once met who was everything one would expect from a boxing enthusiast, except the guy never learned how to throw a punch. He'd go to the gym every day to work out, and each day, he'd take home another pair of boxing gloves (Cloud suspected he stole them), but he never put them on. He just hung them in his closet. It turned out he was the same way with golf and baseball. He never played any of the sports. He just collected the hand wear. He was, one could say, addicted to gloves.

Cloud used to know a half-artist. That was what he called himself, anyway. He was a painter, and a fairly good one, but he never finished his paintings. He always did portraits, and he always painted from bottom to top on his canvas, but he would stop painting when he got to the subject's chin. As it turned out, he was less a man passionate about art and more a crazy guy who was later arrested for decapitating several people, but that didn't make his paintings any less interesting. On the contrary, Cloud, among others, viewed his portraits' headlessness as a product of more than just laziness once word of the murders got out.

One of the more bizarre passions Cloud had encountered was enthusiasm for Rock Paper Scissors. For some reason, enthusiasts of that particular game (most of whom were not above inventing pretentious acronyms and other assorted jargon just so regular people would be left in the dark when confronted with terms like "RPS" and "Roshambo" -- those in the know would refer to the practice as "freaking the mundanes," which sounded cool enough to them to distract from the fact that they were devoting amazingly large chunks of time to playing Rock Paper Scissors) derived pleasure from pretending there was some element of skill involved in making funny shapes with their hands. Cloud could see how computer scientists and mathematicians interested in game theory could enjoy computer tournaments where programs would compete over a thousand iterations of the game. He could especially appreciate how nonoptimal play (i.e., not choosing at random) was the only viable strategy for winning such a tournament, since a field full of programs choosing rock, paper, or scissors at random would all finish close to tied, while programs designed to observe nonoptimal play and then tailor a nonoptimal strategy to exploiting that could far outplay their peers. Humans, or course, couldn't do any of the number crunching necessary to make the game interesting, so they had to resort to imagining that the game was something psychological.

Cloud had no need for imagined psychological issues to go along with the real psychological torture of having to date both Tifa and Yuffie on the same night. Quite fortuitously for him, one of his old soldier buddies had agreed to help him out, lessening to the stress somewhat. Raul Panucci, former SOLDIER 2nd class, was now the chef a The Grumpy Snail, the Gold Saucer's only six-star restaurant. His job for the evening was to make sure Tifa's dinner suffered from as many defects as possible. Cloud could then use the poor service as an excuse to walk back to the kitchen to complain, and he could sneak out the kitchen's back door and rush over to Pirate Jack's Seafood Emporium to check on Yuffie.

Cloud had chosen Pirate Jack's because he didn't know any other chefs; it was, then, important to take Yuffie someplace where he could be confident that things would go wrong with the food. Otherwise, he'd never get back to see Tifa, and that would be awkward.

Cloud took a deep breath as he left the restroom for the main dining area of The Grumpy Snail. He looked around for Tifa, who sat alone at a small round table. He finally spotted the reflections of the table's candles on her silky, shimmering evening gown. Cloud waved.

"What's going on with the food, anyway?" Tifa sounded less annoyed than she should; she seemed more interested in making eyes at Cloud than in anything having to do with the food.

"It'll be ready in about ten minutes. It was, uh, overcooked."

"Overcooked? Wouldn't the bugs have been dead had it been overcooked?"

"Undercooked, I mean."

"You're so cute when you say the wrong thing."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Give me a smooch, Pooky."

"I told you not to call me that in public."

"We're on a date, Cloud. A date."

"So?"

"So, we're supposed to be mushy and romantic and happy and blissful."

Cloud leaned across the table, made a valiant attempt at puckering his lips, and waited. Tifa grabbed his face, held hers next to his for much longer than was appropriate for a public setting, and left Cloud gasping for air.

"You're certainly in the mood tonight," Cloud said.
"Of course. When was the last time we did something romantic like this?"

Cloud thought for a bit, finally deciding he ought to play along with the mushy theme of the evening. "I remember. It was four months ago. We took that trip to Icicle Inn, along with all those scented candles and the romantic movie collection. We spent the afternoons skiing, and we had an entire week of beautiful nights curled up next to the fire. Candles burning, movies playing. No one to bother us. It was really nice. I seem to remember you spent the next two months worrying that you were pregnant."

"Are you feeling okay, Cloud? I don't remember any of that."

Cloud nearly choked. Darn it, he thought, that was with Yuffie!

"Really?" Cloud didn't have to fake looking pale. "I remember it so clearly. You had your hair all done up and everything. I think maybe the food gave me Mako poisoning or something. You know how it is with my memory."

"Oh, Cloud."

"I think I'll go have a word with the chef."

Cloud left his seat before Tifa could protest.

XXX

"What took you, Cloud?" The sauce Yuffie had liberally dumped all over her appetizer shrimp, more of which ended up on her face than in her mouth, effectively shielded her impatient expression from view. Her tone of voice was not so lucky.

"Just felt a little sick after the wrong thing came out of my mouth."

"Raw octopus made you throw up again?"

"More or less."

"You're such a wimp, Cloud."

You're the one who can't so much as think about an airship without horking all over yourself, Cloud thought. "I know, I know."

"Now kiss me."

Cloud had no trouble obeying, but twenty seconds later, something caught his eye.

"Nice dress, Yuffie."

"Thanks."

"Looks expensive."

"It was a bargain."

"I'll bet. Where'd you get it?"

"Tif—Tiffany's. Tiffany's Closet."

"Where?"

"New store. Fabulous cocktail dresses for all occasions. I love it already."

"I like the dress."

"I aim to please."

"Looks just like one I got for Tifa a while back."

"I don't think so. Tifa's dress is azure. This one is cerulean."

Cloud considered this for a moment. "Okay. Uh, back to kissing?"

"Sure."

"But, uh, when did you see Tifa's dress?"

"When I was going through her closet."

"You didn't take anything from there, did you?"

"No. Just this, uh, no, nothing."

"When was this, anyway?"
"I forget. I just know I've seen a pretty azure dress in Tifa's closet."

"And when did you get your dress?"

"A couple of months ago."

"Tifa's azure dress disappeared a couple of months ago. She made a big fuss over it, too."

"Azure went out of style long before that; it's just like her to wear something tacky without realizing it. Why do you think I picked out something cerulean?"

"I couldn't tell the difference."

"That's because you're a guy. Guys don't know these things."

"I guess you're right."

"Back to kissing, then?"

"Okay."

"But wait. I think I've got something in my teeth. If you'll excuse me…"

XXX

"Tifa!"

"You're back. What did the chef say?"

"He said to check back in fifteen minutes, when he's not so busy, and… wait, what color is that dress you're wearing?"

"Blue. Why? Are you going blind? Are you poisoned?"

"No, of course it's blue. Is it azure or cerulean?"

"What's the difference?"

"That looks a lot like the azure dress you lost a while back. I thought you lost it, anyway. Did you find it?"

"I bought a new one."

"Oh. Well, that answers that." Cloud lifted a spoonful of snails to his mouth.

"Cloud, you shouldn't eat that!"

"I paid for it, didn't I?"

"Yes, but wasn't it making you sick?"

"Oh, yeah." Cloud set the spoon back on his plate and watched as one of the snails crawled off and hid under some lettuce.

Tifa frowned. "This meal sucks. I've had better dog food."

"When?"

"It's just an expression."

"Oh."

"And I'm not really hungry anymore, anyway. Let's blow this popsicle stand."

"For where?"

"Let's go home. I'd rather have you cook something nice and romantic for me, and then we can spend the rest of the night playing kissy face."

And Yuffie will spend the rest of the night wondering where I am. That won't do. So, how do I get out of this? I need to buy some time. Cloud nibbled on his fork. "Let me go tell the chef."

"I'll be waiting for you, Cloud." Tifa dipped her head, leaned forward, and made a kissing gesture with your mouth. She then grinned like a lion about to devour a gazelle. Her display was enough to make even Cloud blush.

XXX

"Are you done with your dinner yet, Yuffie?"

"Almost. Why, you have something else planned for us?'

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"Ooh, what?"

We're going somewhere closer to the hotel district, Cloud thought. "We're going to the movies."

"That's so sweet of you, Cloud. What are we going to see?"

"I thought I'd let you choose."

"I've been wanting to see something romantic. Something sentimental. Samurai Ghosthunters III, maybe?"

"This evening belongs entirely to you, my sweet."

XXX

Square World Theater was busy. Extremely busy. Moviegoers packed nearly every square yard of the building, with about half of them standing in line for tickets, half of them waiting on someone else standing in line, and all of them making one heck of a racket. It was one of those crowds that seemed almost designed for losing people.

It only seemed that way, of course. Too many people in those days held on to archaic notions of design whenever some complicated system could work to some purpose. Those people would confuse function with purpose. Had those people merely studied complicated systems a bit more, they might have noticed that complicated functions could indeed arise from simple rules.

The simplest example of this phenomenon would have to be cellular automata. If one takes an n x m grid and assigns a function to each square of the grid, one can achieve a sort of order after many iterations of the function on each square. The function for a square takes as an argument the states of the adjacent squares, and it returns a new state for the current square. For example, suppose each square could be either black or white. Then the function for a particular square could set the square's state to black of at least five of the neighboring nine squares are white and to white if at least five of the neighboring squares are black. When the functions of all of the squares are taken at the same time, the whole picture evolves in a hypnotizing Markovian dance of pure mathematics.

Mathematician Stephen Wolfram used computers to model one dimensional sets of cellular automata, plotting them against time as a second dimension. He found that certain functions would produce very pretty and very orderly designs after a certain number of iterations. Wolfram went so far as to postulate that perhaps everything in the universe could be explained as the result of some simple function acting on particles as if they were cellular automata. The hypothesis was, of course, impossible to test, but it certainly demonstrated that any religious appeals to order do not imply any design.

Biology, too, suggests mechanisms for apparent order from nothing even when a cursory glance suggests design. Protein folding works like this. A polypeptide strand's final tertiary structure depends on its sequence of amino acids, but it has to go through a folding path to get to its final shape. With each step, the protein moves to whatever next step is most favorable (assuming, of course, that the environment makes folding itself favorable), and the chain of favorable changes forms a folding path. The process is probabilistic; it fails some times, and the mistakes are discarded. In the end, you get something as complicated as the three dimensional structure of a protein using nothing other than a few basic kinetic principles.

Proteins themselves turn the way they are over many generations because those that work get selected for through natural selection. In this way, the protein folding process is a microcosm of evolution itself. At any stage of the way, the environment directs the next incremental change, and the end result is something fit for the environment. A good analogy for the process is a puddle of water. The water's shape appears to be made just to fit that puddle, but really, the water adapted (and not through any Intelligent Design process) to fit the puddle.

The same went for the crowd at the movie theater. The crowd density was a result of there being popular movies playing, and the crowd location was a result of the location of the ticket line, the need of the customers to get tickets, and the location of the concession stand and video arcade. The crowd did not need a leader to tell them where to stand to make them a good place for Cloud to lose Yuffie. That was merely result of unplanned, undirected processes. Those who would see design in the relevant function of the crowd were the same people who would think they could find hidden messages in their Alpha-Bits cereal.

Cloud cared little about the teleology of the situation. "How about if you wait in line for the tickets, and I'll go get some popcorn?"

"Don't get lost out there, sweetie."

"I'll try not to."

XXX

"You mean we're not going home yet?" Tifa crossed her arms. "I really wanted a romantic evening."

"I wanted to surprise you with this, but I guess I'll let you know now. I got us reservations at a nice hotel."

"The Ghost Hotel?"

"That's the one."

"I like it. You can hold me tight to keep me safe from the ghosts."

"It'll be like that date we had way back in the day, when we were hunting Sephiroth. Remember, we acted in that stage play, and almost kissed while watching the fireworks? That was wonderful, wasn't it?"

"No, I don't remember that."

Darn it. Was that with Yuffie, too? Or was it Aeris? Barrett? Ick, why would I even think that?

"I think I'm still woozy from the food poisoning."

"I'll hold your hand and make you feel better, then." Tifa attempted a seductive smile.

"Thanks, Tifa."

"And maybe I'll run out to get us some dinner while you prepare the room."

"I had backup dinner plans, believe it or not," said Cloud with an amazingly straight face. "I'll bring some food back to you. Just wait until we get to the hotel, then make yourself comfortable."

Cloud could almost breathe a sigh of relief. Three was a crowd, not company.

XXX

Ninja Frogman Martians was just Yuffie's kind of show. Every major character shed at least a pint of blood per hour of screen time, the villain had a hilarious evil cackle he used every time he ended a sentence, the music was an incessant presto with heavy percussion backing, and the characters mouths continued to move every time one of them finished saying a line. She was in heaven.

Where is Cloud, though? I could have sworn I told him to meet me here. Here at… D'oh! I didn't tell him which movie!