| Contributed by
Vijay Fafat
Katie is a highly gifted girl of Chinese descent. Her father is “a physical manifestation of Order and Chaos […]… is too skilled and too practiced at manipulating order and chaos for any other outcome.”. He has a habit of giving her weekly problems about which he is fairly insistent, demanding that Katie finish those on time even at the expense of some of her regular studies.
| (quoted from Probabilitea)
“His problem sets are always these abstract puzzles where she has to manipulate one probability distribution function to another using only an arbitrary—and, in her opinion, unfair and generally unhelpful—set of mathematical transformations.”
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It turns out that Katie herself has the ability to manipulate Order and Chaos [e.g. she had unintentionally stacked three mahjong tables’ worth of hands when she was ten. She can also play with the interaction of air molecules to redirect sound waves] As she is growing older, she realizes what her father has been training to do:
| (quoted from Probabilitea)
“Now that she thinks about it, though, most of his exercises have been to make sure she never changed the probabilities of anything by accident. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t get some sort of reminder not to manipulate order and chaos in ways that matter to people’s lives. That all seems the opposite of what manifestations do.”
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Jackson is a fellow friend who “is the manifestation of Life and Death who would be deadly anyway.”. [He had killed all the pets on his block once when he was twelve. By accident. He did revive all of them immediately]. Jackson also has some limited abilities to simulate how the future might unfold if certain actions were taken. So between the two of them, and her superlative father, you have a set of superheroes…
Jackson and Katie meet at a tea-shop where Jackson shows Katie how a white supremacist is planning a massacre which will forever change their little corner of civilization. Jackson can kill him outright, as can Katie, but Jackson knows that the unfolding future would not be pretty. He wants Katie to create certain conditions using her powers of manifestation so that the threat gets neutralized without blowing up the future. As Katie tells him:
| (quoted from Probabilitea)
“You’re basically asking me to manipulate one probability distribution function to another using only an arbitrary— and, frankly, unfair and unhelpful—set of mathematical trans—” Katie’s gaze falls on the first problem her father asked her to solve and a near electric thrum of excitement vibrates through her. “Actually, yes, I do.”
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The events take their little course without a problem, with the story ending in a poignant conversation between Katie and her father, speak about their gift and a talk around the great responsibility which comes with great power. A neat short story.
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