Things I do not own:

Digimon and associated characters and concepts including Izzy, Tai, T.K., Matt, Palmon, Lillymon, Digimon, Digiworld, and anything else known as "Digi-" are © Akiyoshi Hongo Toei Animation; © Bandai

Kitsune is based on the Animated Lust (rated PG!) forum participant known as Lord Kitsune and, as such, is copyright to himself, and used with permission

Things That Come in Threes

Back in the real world Izzy was on the phone to Tokyo – he needed to bounce ideas off Tai. Of course, it was another expensive conference call that included everybody, but most of the conversation had been between himself and Tai with the various Digimon joining in and Kitsune offering the occasional comment based on the information he'd pulled up.

"Well, if the balance between data, virus, and inoculation programs has been disturbed –" Izzy was saying.

"Gone wacko, you mean?" Tai interrupted.

"Yeah. Theoretically, what would happen?"

"Theoretically? Well ... the Digiworld would go wacko, too – or at least more wacko than usual. You gotta admit, it's always been rather wacked at the best of times..." Tai was thinking out loud – brainstorming really – and as such there was a stream of consciousness feel to his conversation. "But can it get unbalanced to begin with? Out of sync? Wouldn't it just spit out more evil Digimon – or more good ones – instead?"

"Well, theoretically, it should be a self-regulating system – too much virus and it'll produce more vaccine programs to fight them – that's why our Digimon appeared and hooked up with us after all. Too much vaccine programming and not enough virus software, the vaccine will have nothing to eat, so to speak, and die off..." Izzy was also thinking out loud. "It should keep itself in balance – it shouldn't be able to go out of sync."

"Wait –" T.K. had snagged an idea. "– It's the Gaia theory – well, sorta – not exactly..."

His statement was met with blank looks in Tokyo and blank silence in New York.

"Look, the Gaia theory holds that the earth itself is a living organism. If it got sick – say from pollution – it's going to send something to destroy what's making it sick – people for instance – in order to be healthy again, the same way your body sends white blood cells to fight off infection. So, yeah, the idea is that the world can get sick, but it's also going to try to get healthy again – your self-regulating system. See, the one doesn't necessarily exclude the other, so it follows that the Digiworld could get out of balance but that it'll also regain that balance. The ratio of virus to vaccine will keep each other in check because one can't survive without the other."

"So this could've come about because the Digiworld is seeking to rebalance itself?" Izzy wondered.

"Maybe..."

"Where does data fit into this then?" Izzy asked. "That's a big part of the Digiworld, too."

"Only a whole third of it," Palmon interjected. "I should know – I'm data. Even as Lillymon I'm a data Digimon, not a vaccine. You're thinking of a teeter-totter – a see-saw – but it isn't, it's a triangle."

"Of course!" Tai slapped his head. "Three point are always in one plane. I remember that!"

"Huh?" – it was a lot of "huhs" at once from a lot of different voices.

"Matt, you were in geometry with me – surely you remember the teacher cramming that down our throats," Tai continued; but it was Kitsune in New York who got it.

"Oh, duh! That's why a camera sits on a tripod. I knew that – I knew it! What was I thinking?" It was his turn to get blank looks.

He tried to explain by saying, "Look – if you have two points, you have a line and – well, in theory it has no width – but forget that for a moment. Think about trying to balance a sheet of paper on edge – it's going to tip to one side or the other. And with four points, think of a four-legged chair and how often you've sat on one that has a slightly short leg so it keeps wobbling back and forth. That's because the points where the legs touch the ground aren't all in the same plane. But with a three-legged stool all three legs are always in contact with the ground, no matter how long or short each one is. Or how uneven the ground is for that matter. The three points are always in one plane – they can't not be. The plane may tilt, but it always accommodates all three points. So cameras are always mounted on tripods because a tripod is the most stable base there is."

And T.K. in Tokyo responded, " See, it is a self-regulating system – it can't get out of balance."

"Except, of course, that it has," Matt said with a cold dash of reality. "Sorry, little bro, but something threw it off."

And Joe, who'd been thinking the whole time without saying much, suddenly had an epiphany. "Unless one leg of the tripod disappears... What if it goes from three to two? We're suddenly trying to balance that paper..."

"What if all three are necessary to the continued existence of the Digiworld?" T.K. wondered aloud. "I mean, we've always thought of the virus type of Digimon as just bad-ass troublemakers, but what if they're a necessary part of the whole. I mean, if it was created from data, virus and vaccine, maybe it stays in existence due to all three as well..."

And Joe made the connection. "Brahma, the creator. Vishnu, the preserver. Shiva, the destroyer. Vaccine, data, virus."

Into the echoing silence, Kitsune said, "Energy is neither created nor destroyed – its state is changed, right? I read that somewhere – it's neither created nor destroyed, it just has its form changed. Like electricity is converted to heat or light for instance..."

"It can be stored: preservation," responded Joe. "It can be transformed – one form is created and another is destroyed. Brahma and Shiva continually dance the creation and destruction of the universe, but the universe continues – and energy itself isn't destroyed, only the form it's in. ...It's the second law of thermodynamics," he added.

"So where does that get us?" said Tai, bringing this metaphysical discussion back to earth. "Exactly nowhere."

Kitsune threw his head back against his chair, closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache coming on. He was a writer, not a physicist, and he felt like he'd absorbed more science in the last twenty-four hours than he had in the previous sixteen years.

"It means they still exist somewhere," Agumon said.

Kitsune looked up.

"Yeah..." he said.

And then more hopefully, "Yeah. They do. We just gotta find them."

Richard Feynman was a genius -- not only did he invent Feynman Diagrams and figure out why the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in the early eighties, his book Six Easy Pieces actually explains the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in language that I can understand! And if you think of scientists as stodgy, button-down types, read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman -- you'll never look at scientists the same again.

The idea of the universe being danced in and out of creation comes from both The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav. Shawn, it's your fault I have half the public library's quantum physics section checked out and have had for months...