Jafar's Math Curriculum Proposal to the Sixth Slawkenburg Council on Education (Lesson 2)

#Part 2: The Chaos Game!

Every citizen of Slawkenberg is familiar with the Hab Block. 80% of our citizenry, including myself, have called the imperial, straight-edged brutality of the hab block 'home.' While Liberation is slowly liberating us from this dominating imperial form into far more appealing, human, and humane complexity, we can still use our familiary with our excessively simplified Imperial architecture to create a solid launching point into the wonders of chaos.

As we all know, an imperial Hab is a cube of cube of cubes. Every room is the same, except for such markings and grafiti as we humans, in all our glorious, changing differences, mark on the unchanging sameness of rockcrete walls.

I myself grew up in the cubic brutalism of the Hab, and, like most Hab children, was gifted a simple name. Jaf. It is the kind of name a mother can yell in a hurry, to make you freeze before you get run down by an indifferent servitor, to make you pause before you teeter off the edge of an abyssal shaft. The kind of name you can hear over the sounds of a hundred human screams. Jaf! Get down! Jaf! Run! Jaf! Hide!

In less pressed circumstances, my mother would call me 'Little Jaf', as we sheltered in our room. In a tragedy I share with far, far too many of my generation, I barely knew my father before the evil Giorbas took him. My mother, a ruthlessly loving, powerful woman, vastly overmatched by her circumstance, taught me. She what every parent does in such circumstance: Taught me to be wise, and clever, and sly, all the basic skills to survive the monstrosity of unlivable sameness.

And the first spell, the first ritual she taught me, was the secret knowledge finding my way home.

It is a spell every slawkenberger knows. The magic of a home adress. But the upspire rulers knew not the rites and rituals the squarefolk in the hab used to pass this essential information on to grow the hopes and ambitions of the next generation.

She, like so many of her generation, taught me with care, and guidance, and as small but necessary amount of blood. Markers can be rubbed off by slavers snatching children. Jewelry, no matter how cheap and tightly embedded, can be cut or prised or yanked of a tiny limb. But a scar- a scar has no value, no sale price. And a scar is forever.

So my mother, like millions of habbers before her, carved my home address into the meat of my hand, in a ritual as old as the brutal cube in which I lived.

As children know nothing, but are curious, hungry, ravenous, in fact, for the knowledge of the wider universe and the power that means protection, this ritual is thoroughly practical. It is a rite of passage, a way to make a game of life, in which the skills necessary for living become badges of earned honor symbols on our skin.

And so, with sacred knife made from a shard of food tin, dipped in the holy counterseptic of amasec, my mother carved my first number into the ball of my thumb. Number nine. The number carved into the door of the cubic room in which we and the ghost of my father's memory lived.

It hurt, yes. It held no magic of the emperiyan, but in a very real sense, it held the power of a spell. A homecoming spell.

It carried the components of every useful, practical spell.

9- A spell of community- This child has people, who will come looking.
9- A spell of belonging- this child has a place, a right to a room, and may not be safely taken
9- A spell of protection of the ignorant- this child has no other number, and has not earned the knowledge to stray further. You, neighbor, as you wish to have your children guarded, gaurd this child, and always bring it home to nine.
9- A spell of hope and change for the future- one number now, and space for the rest later.

And as with all practical spells, it worked- it worked to tilt the odds in my favor that that I would live to grow in power and maturity.

Did it have any magic of the Empyrian? No. Most spells, in fact, do not.

We all know the rot and corruption of Slawkenberg before the Uprising. But I, as a child, had no idea. All I had was a brave, clever, ruthless mother- one who cast the spells she did could to buy me the best chance at growing to adulthood.

She carved a 9 on my hand- but I, a tiny child, had no idea how to use it. I didn't have the words. I didn't know the numbers. I didn't know the many changing paths back home. And that was the second part of the spell- the skills my mother taught me, spells that still, today, are my guidepost as I navigate the ever-glorious changing complexity of the Empyreon.

She taught me that the name of the cube in which I lived, the name that, until that moment, had been hidden by ignornce. It's name was 9.

It was the first time I conciously felt Change, as a hidden name was revealed to me.

It would not be the last.

I first knew it was my room, and then knew it was Nine.

My mother warned me not to stray from 9. It was our hold, our protection, and she left me what knowledge and comfort she could each day before barricading the door carefully behind her. She told me never to go far from 9, and I, though curious, did not. I knew even then of danger. And so I stayed in 9, while my mother went out for seeming eternities, leaving me with nothing but a red bundle of feathers to hold to comfort me, and a dim, hand-cranked luminator. I did not know what servitude, or work, or 'day jobbing' was then, but I did feel her absoence. But every morning she cranked the luminator until it glowed, and she promised to be back before it, quite, went out.

I do not know what feats of heroics she pulled off to keep that promise, though, knowing of Slawkenberg now, I have many guesses.

Still, her absence was a massive, empty void. And in that void, I quested to fill it with knowledge.

I began to desire change, as all children do. I began to explore.

The day my mother came home, and caught me taking my first tentative steps into the outside of 9, she said, was the day I must learn the word 'Plex.' and the day I must start to learn the many paths to home. My world grew.

My mother forbade me from going past the plex until I had earned my next number. Until I had won enough knowledge to explore.

And that day, she brought me Aunt. Aunt was an old, withered crone, dying, but still able to take on the task of teaching knowledge to the needs of the new in exchange for a handle of amasec to comfort the pains of the old.

In my mother's absence, from Aunt, whose breath smelled like rot and alcohol, I learned that room 9 was the ninth room in our plex. Aunt brought wooden mag blocks to play with, and all that day aunt had me build the shape of the plex. She showed me the numbers of the room, and the numbers on the block, and we played and played. Then she took me walking. I toddled after her as we shuffled slowly down the corriders, finding the numbers that went with each block. I learned that our play had built a plex, and i learned from the inside what a plex was.

I did not know then the high cost my mother paid for those lessons. She could only afford two days, and after that, Aunt was gone. But the introductions were made. I was known. I was allowed the freedom- and the danger- of roaming the plex, but no further.

My legs were tiny. Her legs were ancient and slow. and yet the spigot of new knowledge sprayed from her like a broken fire-fighing pipe, and I drank it in like a wet-vac servitor set on 'high.' My world grew to twenty-seven times that day, as I learned the rooms, the corridors, the shafts and the ceilings of my plex. and, for the first time, I learned North, South, East and West...the gated doors to th plex. And I was introduced to those who watched and guarded those doors. Those guards were fearsome to me. Withehred. Missing limbs. Missing eyes. Missing teeth grinning at me. Ragged, and wretched and yet still able to watch and bar the door.

The doors are locked. sealed. The watchers guarded the gate- and charged to open it. I did not know then that it was a tiny toll, a pittance spared by those forced to leave and toil elsewere to form a retirement hobby for those lucky enough to be elders, and to buy better odds that their children would still be there when parents returned from work It was, I was to learn later, a pitiful barrier, only fit to contain toddlers.

"Earn your numbers." they would say, every time I tried. "Earn your knowledge, and your right, or stay right here tonight."

I saw was my mother going through the gate- of those taller going through the gate. And I tried to go through the gate, but couldn't pay the price.

It was the first I learned of prices, of fees.

My mothere explained I hadn't paid the price to range further. The price of knowledge, and the price of coin. The other price, the price of blood, I did not and would never have the power to pay.

And so I set out to pay the price ot knowledge and coin.

I learned to run from other children. I learned to fight other children. I learned who to flatter, who to avoid, who would give treats and who would give blows. I scribbled numbers on the walls, and learend they had an *order.* 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. I learned the north entrance, the south entrance, the east entrance, and the west. I learned the upwell shaft, and the down shaft.

The day I recited it all to a doorman, that I had learned every name, every door, every path to and from nine...he laughed, adn told me to tell my mother it was time to to give me my first coin.

I remember her face when she came home to 9 that day. Her eyes were wide, with pride and fear. Her mouth was stern with ruthless truth. She gathered the knife she had used to carve 9. She gathered a tiny bottle of amasec, barely enough to work as a counterseptic on a toddler hand. She gathered a coin, and handed it to me to carry.

"It is time." she said. "for your next number. You have earned it."

She gave me a coin. The first coin I ever held. I held it so tightly it left a mark on my palm. We walked to the North gate. With a palm shaking with excitement, I handed it to one-limb Totter. He took it, and unbarred the way.

Beyond the threshold was...a hallway. Exactly like the one I had learned, but new all the same. My mother turned me aroud, as Totter closed the gate again.

"We live," she said. "In complex 13."

She knelt, and commanded me to hold out my hand. And so my mother carved a 13 into my palm- below my right index finger- the first finger.

"You will go forth, to the hab block." She chanted, "You will go forth, into greater knowledge, and greater danger." She poured the amasac onto a clean, worn cloth, and cleaned out the blood.

"You will be hurt." She chanted. "But you will prevail."

She tied the bandage tightly. "You will range." She chanted, "And you will always come home." She squeezed the cut in desperate blessing. "Where now is home, not-so-little Jaf?"

"Home is 13-9." I said, my eyes shining with pride.

She knocked, and Totter unbarred the gate.

We went home.

I was still not allowed to roam freely. Every time the threshold was crossed, I had to pay the price.

My mother did not often have a coin. She gave me what she could, because she had to buy me the best chance to learn she could. But it wasn't enough. And Totter knew a way that was. I had learned quickly. I was clever. I was fast.

And so I, like so many of my peers pre-liberation, got the job. I became a plex messanger, and apprenticed myself to a block messanger.

I learned that Plex 13 was one of twenty plex cubes in a block. I suspected the block had a number as well, but my mother said I hadn't earned it yet. So until then, my palm held only two numbers. 13-9. Numbers that said to the world I belonged to plex 13, room 9. Numbers that would not let me freely range, yet, because they declared I did not know enough to venture futher than the edges of the block.

I was a fast learner. You have to be, to safely roam a block. 400 rooms, split between twenty plexes, is more than enough territory to for even the cleverest three-year-old to learn.

The numbers on my hand would lead me home. I learned it was called my address. plex 13, room 9. One room of the four hundred rooms in the block.

As a messanger, I learned other numbers lead to other rooms. And, knowing the numbers, I could find them.

I learned that some plexes had door guards, like plex 13. Some had none. The ones with guards were generally safer, but you had to pay the price. I learned some messages were worth more than others.

I learned that, as the smallest, and youngest, no older messanger would let me poach thier routes. I couldn't make enough to pay the Totter's price often enough to be a reglar.

"Make friends, little Jaf." My mother advised. "Make allies. Friends that will watch your back as you watch theirs."

So I began to make friends. Only from those who would pay *my* price. I traded a favor. Those who traded one back to me, I kept. Those who betrayed me, I left. Those who gave freely to me, I exploited until they'd spent themselves dry, and couldn't pay their own prices to come back. I even came to call them friends. Block plex 13, room 4 held the twins, before the bloody cough carried away that whole corridor. Jenzo, plex 5, room 9, another niner like me, twice my age, who had earned another syllable. Viz, who saw useful things nobody else did. Elc, the tallest. We befriended and fought and ran messages, and learned.

Nobody had taught me the abacus. Nobody had time. But in the brutal corridors of the hab, in the calculus of coin, in the space where i was running and learning...I learned to count.

More than that- I learned to see the flow of coin.

And I saw our opportunities, from a height only a junior, overlooked, wildly clever three-year-old could be excpected to see. I I traded this knowledge with my friends, who saw other things and trade it back.

But I also learned of loss.

I lost my first set of allies quickly, to all the usual Hab hazards. Disease. Falls. Starvation. Once a murder. Through it all, I was able to find my way home.

I didn't understand why or how and wouldn't truly *know* the causes of it all until I grew to my full power. But I felt those absences, went looking to fill them with *knowledge.*

I went looking. Because my mother taught me addresses, I went looking at every number. Plex 16, room 10 taught me terror. 16-4 taught me caution. 8-1 taught me courage. 9-3 taught me subtlety. In less than a year, I knew them all. I ran my messages quickly, carfully, learning the people and places and dramas and threads fostered in the block.

And I earned my third number, and the knowledge needed to risk ranging further. My mother prayed over me, as do all good parents, and gifted me with the second part of my name.

"Little Jaf." She prayed, pressing amasec in my hand as a counterseptic and bandaging it tightly with the only clean cloth in the room. "You shall go *far.*" She carved 19, the third and final number of home, into my palm.

I was four.

The four hundred rooms of my block I had learned were merely the twentieth part of the hab, and my search for knowledge had caught the eyes of those who both prey upon young wisdom, or seek to shepherd it into further maturity. By the time I was 8, and formally initiated into the mysteries of both the Lord of Change and apprenticed to the Adeptus Administratum. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I knew that some rooms were more equal than others. I alreday knew that some plexes were more equal than others.

And with my third number, I learned. Every Block 19 has a reputation.

The Sunless Block. The shade block.

Block 19, the block furthest from the sunward face of the hab. Block 19, where natural light never reaches, no matter how many mirrors are positioned in the sunwells. Block 19, the hotbed for the fastest, cleverest, most ruthless messanger boys for the entire hab- because our parents were sly, and our parents were wise, and taught us how to hide in plain sight, to make ourselves useful, to be overlooked and subtle and yet wise, because otherwise thier children will live and die in the grinding misery of total shade.

Freshly named, address in hand, I ranged toward the sunward side, and saw sunlight for the first time. It was beautiful and terrible, for with my first glimpses of sunlight came the certainty and safety of shadow.

And as I ran, I began to picture every room in that hab as glowing with the light. The light of *knowledge.* The light of *discovery.* the light of *change.*

I delivered messanges all over the hab. As I did, each address lit up in my mind- a beacon of knowledge and shining complexity where once was simplified ignorance.

As I grew, I made it my mission to discovery *every room* in the hab. All 8,000 of them.

By my 8th name-day, that number so sacred to the architect of Fate, I had succeeded.

The process was chaotic. I visited many adresses because I had an official message. Sometimes I would be sent to a place with an official parcel and a legitimate errand. Other times I created an errand.

Sometimes, I would bring a clipboard and knock on doors, claiming to be a surveyor. Sometimes, I claimed to be mistaken, and used my youth as a shield against retaliation.

Others, I had to make friends, and scheme, and trade favors. Still others had the door marked with a simple price to pay to get in.

But, many times, I simply...rolled a twenty-sided dice. If it turned up 4, I would visit block 4. Then I rolled again- if it turned up 6, I would visit plex 6. I rolled again, and found I would be visiting room 14. And I would find a reason to knock on the door- and discover what ranged inside.

You see, I discovered that it didn't actually mattter what order I visited the rooms in. And if simply...rolled dice to see which one i would visit...every number comes up eventually. Fate will always find your number, given enough chances.

But long, long before I checked every room, my mind was filled with the treasures I discovered. I had a visceral sense of the space. I had a visceral sense of the people. The Hab itself in all it's complexity sketched itself in my mind and a whole, unified, complex, *shape* whose bones stayed the same, but posessed an astonishing variety of detail.

And in this way, I turned the grey unknown of my ignorance into the brilliance of discovery.

By my 8th name-day I had visited every room in the hab block at least *once*. Where once was a mere blank in my mind, an unknown, empty spot on my map, I had filled with the treasures of knowledge and discovery...and I did it without any particular order in mind. I didn't search block by block. I didn't go door to door. In fact, there were places where it was only safe to dash in, take my peek, and rush away at my full speed.

It was dangerous, yet so is life. It was exhilharating. As is life. It was full of treasure. As is life.

And I disovered them all. And carried that knowledge home with me.

That was my first experience playing the Chaos Game. One I learned that one small, boy, randomly visiting rooms as chance decides and circumstance decide, can learn the entire shape of a hab, can fill the empty spaces in his mind with the painted complexity of knowledge.

In these days of liberation, we need not send toddlers to work, on dangerous missions to earn pitful amounts of coin. Knowedge is freely available, yet we must create spaces in our minds to accept it- the same way I used the space of the hab to create space in my mind for the entrancing complexity of humanity.

How can you create such a space in your mind, without the rituals of my mother, without the community of a plex, without the need to scrape for coin and forge alliances?

Here is the first of Tzeenches hidden, changing truths.

The rites of my mother, my coming of age, the guardianship of the door watchers and Aunt and making friends...all of that was a game. All of that was a game designed to set aside the hideous nature of the hab, and encourage my growing brain to play.

Liberation has destroyed the hideous hab, and all of it's materium horrors. What is left is...play.

So let us play!

Next lesson: playing with chaos.

Author Notes:

Yes, I decided Jafar needed a horrible, adorable, NERRRRRRRRD backstory.

Because, for all his slick political schemeing, Jafar is a NERD.

Lest you argue that Tesilon-Kappa supplies the NERD in the Council of liberation, hah. I say again. HAH. No, no, dear readers, Tesilon Kappa is the Council's GEEK.

Also, my headcanon says Jafar totally blew up his own home hab the instant the opportunity presented, because screw habs. Their stark simplicity is an offense to the Architect of Fate and the Creed of Change.

And yes, everybody who ever had anything to do with that Hab was there, cheering. In my headcannon destruction of Hab slums and replacement with the brainchildren of Jafar's ever growing ranks of architects ranks right up there with the cheering crowds attenting the controlled demonlitions of the cathedrals.

Will this exceedingly complex mathematical backstory continue?

Dunno, depends on whether I get bored. But truly, who could *possibly* grow bored of the of the fractal nature and ever-shifting patterns of the empyrian?