Fractals

Peter Watts. Fractals

Trespassing? Trespassing? You arrogant slant-eyed alien motherfucker, I used to live here!

***

How long have I wanted to do that? How many years have I hated them, dreamt that my fists were smashing those faces into shapes even less human? I can't remember. The anger is chronic. The anger has always been chronic. And impotent, until now. The pain in my knuckles throbs like a distant badge of honour.

It's cold.

The rage is gone, absorbed somehow by the mud and the unlit piles of lumber and masonry scattered around me. I can barely focus on my surroundings. The shapes keep changing, hulking angular monstrosities shifting on all sides. Only the sign at the front of the lot, the sign he kept pointing at, refuses to move.

I can barely see him in the dark. He's just a few meters away, but the shadows are so black and he doesn't move at all. What if I killed him? What if I—

There. He moved a bit. It's okay, I didn't kill him, he's not dead—

Yet. What if he dies here in the mud?

(So what if he does? Lots more where he came from.) No. I don't mean that. I can't believe I ever did, I mean, what if I, what if he dies here, what if—

What if he lives, and identifies me?

A couple of steps forward. A couple more. Okay, he was about here when he saw me, and then he moved over there and started shouting—

He couldn't have seen my face. Even when he came closer, it's so dark he'd only have seen a silhouette, and then he was right in front of me and—

I can get away. I can get away. Oh Jesus God I can't believe I did this—

Okay. This is a construction site, after all; my car will only leave one set of tracks in a muddle of hundreds. And the nearest house is over a block away, this whole end of the road is unlit.

Lucky me: no witnesses.

The car starts smoothly, without a moment's hesitation. I descend toward the city.

It was as though I had planned it all, somehow. In a way I feel as though I've been rehearsing this forever. I have been purged.

It's such a relief not to burn, to unclench my teeth, to feel the hard knot of tension in my stomach easing away. Somehow, I'm free. Not happy, perhaps. But I have acted, at last, from the heart, and in some strange way I'm finally at peace.

(What if he dies up there?)

I'll stop at the next phone booth. Ambulances respond to anonymous tips, don't they? In the meantime, I've got to be careful to keep my shoes on the mudmat. Just in case. Joanne might still be awake when I get home. I'll stop off at a gas station and rinse everything clean on the way.

***

It's a nice window; nice scenery. I've always liked forests, though I've never seen so many squirrels and deer and birds crammed into such a small area before. But hey, who am I to complain about realism, I'm twenty floors over Robson Street looking out at a rainforest so why worry about details? Besides, it's not a rainforest any more. It's an alpine meadow. She touches a button on the windowsill and the whole world changes.

I walk across the room; rocks and heather come into view, cross the window, fall into eclipse at the other side. I move closer and the field of view expands. Nose against glass I can see one hundred and eighty, three-dimensional degrees along all axes. Just outside, an explosion of flowers stirs in a sudden breeze.

But now she fingers a switch and the world stops, there's no window at all any more, just a flat grey screen and a fake window sill.

"That's incredible," I say, distantly amazed.

She can't quite keep the pride out of her voice. "It's a breakthrough all right. There are other flat monitors around, but you can see the difference."

"How do you do it? Is this some sort of 3-d videotape or something?"

Her smile widens. "Not even close. We use fractals."

"Fractals."

"You know, those psychedelic patterns you see on calendars and computer posters."

Right. Something to do with chaos theory. "But what exactly are—"

She laughs. "Actually, I just demonstrate the stuff. We got a guy at the university to hack the software for us, he'd be able to tell you the details. If you think your readers would be interested."

"I'm interested. If I can't get them interested too I'm not much of a journalist, am I?"

"Well then, let me give you his name," she says. "I'll tell him to expect you. He should be able to set something up within the next week or so."

She jots a name on the back of her card and hands it to me.

Roy Cheung, it says. I feel a sudden brief constriction in my throat.

"One last question," I say to her. "Who's going to be able to afford something like this?"

"Bottom-line models will retail at around thirty thousand," she tells me. "A lot of businesses want to hang one in their lobbies and so forth. And we also hope to sell to upper income individuals."

"If you can find any nowadays."

"You'd be surprised, actually. Since the Hong Kong influx started there's been a real surge in the number of people who can afford this sort of product."