Kalila by Rosemary Nixon

faces hard to see.
    Lorenz was fascinated by the unpredictable, the seemingly random behaviour occurring in a system that should be governed by deterministic laws. The kinds of systems Lorenz was dealing with were disordered, but Lorenz searched to find underlying order in his random data. To find such an equation, however, involves many variables. A very small initial difference may make an enormous change to the future state of a system.
    Does this have something to do with butterflies? Frankie is combing his hair, holding a tiny hand mirror.
    It does. And you look lovely, Frankie. The theory was first introduced to describe unpredictability in — Evan. Your toast popped.
    And sure enough, the smell of toast wafts through the classroom. The students crane their disbelieving necks to find quiet Evan Stewart unplugging a pop-up toaster balanced on the radiator, and now he is pulling from his backpack a tiny tub of peanut butter, another of jam, and a plastic knife. Evan slathers his toast.
    Sorry, Mr. Solantz, Evan says earnestly, mouth thick with peanut butter, but I practise on the swim team till eight-thirty Monday mornings and I don’t have time for breakfast, which is, he waves his knife, according to Mrs. Mahovalich, my grade two teacher, the most important meal of the day. He cuts his toast in four, pops a quarter in his mouth. The kids are giggling — now they’re wide awake.
    Evan, be kind enough to give us a definition of the chaos theory.
    Evan cheerfully stuffs in another quarter, waves a hand, pulls a baggie from his backpack, and drops the empty tubs inside, along with his plastic knife. He withdraws a napkin with a scruffy hen on it and wipes the grease from his desk. Swallows.
    How weather around the world is affected when a butterfly in South America flutters its wings, sir, he says respectfully and cleans his teeth with his tongue.
    You shake your head. Next time, Evan, it would be nice to share. Yes, Lorenz started with weather. And he found that the equations governing weather were so sensitive that he came to the conclusion that if a little butterfly palpitates its wings in one part of the world, it may affect the arrival of a hurricane or tropical storm — or divert it — somewhere around the globe.
    Evan pops the toaster in his backpack, hollers, Ow! and dumps it back out to cool.
    Right, you say. The chaos theory, which Evan is so aptly demonstrating here for us this morning, is a field of science that studies the complex and irregular behaviour of nature’s systems, Evan being only one. What are some examples of the chaos theory in practice?
    Hands bob the air.
    The currents in oceans, sir.
    The dripping of a tap.
    The collision of billiard balls.
    Russian roulette.
    All correct, you say. Or let’s take something closer to home. The evolution of the human species. Our body’s inner workings. Even the human heart and its blood flow have a chaotic pattern. Or music. Not that many years ago a graduate student in electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology used chaos theory to recreate musically variating themes in Beethoven’s symphonies.
    You sit down behind your desk. The twentieth century, grade elevens, is known for three monumental discoveries: relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory. And who knows what new discoveries await?
    I still don’t get what a theory that can’t be consistent gives us. Gurinder, polishing his glasses.
    Hope, you say, standing abruptly. Such a system gives us hope.
    The bell jangles. Chaos ensues, students slipping back into runners, stuffing textbooks into bags, and heading for the door.
    Evan, you call to their departing backs, next week we review the big bang theory. We’ll look forward to your demonstration.

You walk through a windblown Sunday morning, weather and light, smoky with early December, molecules hanging, the wind’s song snatched away. Then you open a door and replace it with