Sometimes an idea is too fragile, delicate, not quite ready to put into words. Maybe it had already been said aloud, too soon. Ann Kelly wasn’t sure. None of them wanted to pull it apart though, so they just left. A few words of small talk, then Ann got in her car and drove back towards her home in Princeton.
Halfway there she turned around and went back. During the summer school, which Ann had attended occasionally to enjoy the flow of shared activity and endless unstructured conversations, the software had thrown her together with a few students. Now she felt a need to spend time with one of them. On a device built into the console of her car, Ann punched in a five key sequence which had requesting contact. It took only a moment to get permission to drop by for coffee.
Zenda Miller was from a rich, well-educated family in the Southeast, not far from Atlanta. A casual charm disguised a brilliant mind. The 16 year old had insights few adults ever would.
Unlike most students who were from New York City, or at least the Tri-State region, Zenda had come north from Georgia for one reason, to attend Social Tech High. Her family knew that she was running around with boys back home and thought she should at least be with a compatible one. They’d talked her into using Tech Fantasies, which knew the school had a shortage of girls intentionally linked with boys. It recommended Zenda, who was quickly linked to a senior boy and found herself an adequate link to another girl.
Not good enough to meet the school’s official link standard, her friend Sissy did provide Zenda with a best friend. Having a small apartment of her own, paid for by her indulgent parents, Zenda often had people over, most especially her friend Sissy, but spent most of her home-time in bed with Phil Gerald.
When Ann contacted her, Zenda and Sissy were enjoying an illicit beer, but were quite sober, so far.
“Dr. Kelly! Come in.” The beer had disappeared. Ann smelled it on Zenda’s breath, but didn’t care.
It took only a moment to get to the point. “I know about you”, Ann said. “You are social, not like me. Even before you came here, you made friends, you were connected.”
“That’s me.”
“Zenda, did the people way down in Brookwood know about us, here. You searched, using our software, but did people know already? Was the school ever talked about?”
“Sure it was. People knew, there was a buzz about it. Just because something happens in New York doesn’t make it beneath our contempt, you know.”
“Was it just talk? Did you have friends who thought it was going to be good for you here?”
“I know what you want to hear, don’t I. You are being way too obvious about it. Sorry, Dr. Kelly, but you just can’t trust anything I tell you now, you’ve given me just what I need to fool you.”
“You won’t though, will you? You know I’m not testing you, I really want to hear what you say.”
“Yeah, well, let’s pretend I’m telling you the truth. Sure, they all said it would be great.”
“I believe you.”
“So, what’s up? You aren’t here for me to tell you what I just said.”
“No. There’s an idea floating around. I just can’t put my finger on it. Do you know what a nexus is?”
“Well, it’s a link, right, a connection. But more than that. A bundle of connections, no, uh, the centre of bundle of connection, a core of something, maybe the centre of a network.”
“Good. Sassy, hi, do you think you and Zenda might be part of a nexus?”
“Sure we are”, Zenda answered for her, but Sassy did nod. Sassy was not actually the sassy type. Shy in contrast to her friend, one who would never volunteer anything and would be hesitant even to answer. But honest. That nod did mean something.
Ann sat back, thinking. Finally she asked, “whatever the plural of nexus is, I’m wondering if there are more.”
“More like how? Nothing like what we have. It’s amazing here, better than what we’d thought back home. I would have heard. My parents thought about a lot of places before getting me to use your matcher to find a place. I’d already heard about it, but figured they’d never go for it, you know, because of the sex thing. With the machine’s recommendation to back me up, though, they let me come. Maybe it was because of the sex thing, I don’t know. I’d not just be screwing around, but be with one guy. I am, too.”
“I’m sure. So the school could be a nexus, a core, a centre, and might, just might, be the only one.”
Sassy poked Zenda in the side and whispered to her. “Oh, yeah, the sweater. Right. Dr. Kelly. Sas knits. She actually knits. A while back she did something neat. Want to see? Here, she gave it to me.”
Zenda went to a corner shelf and picked up a fuzzy pink ball. “Look at this.”
Ann held the ball in her hand. It was about six inches around. When she looked closely, she could see the surface of the ball between threads of yarn. It was a globe, a representation of the Earth. The Earth, wearing a sweater.
Zenda waved towards herself, to get it back. Holding it loosely, she grabbed a pinch of it and pulled, fairly hard. The nearby threads stretched a bit, the ones further away a bit more. Ann couldn’t see it, but knew that all of the threads were being stretched a little bit.
“Hey, this is good, I get it. That’s a nexus, pulling all the threads. Thanks, Sassy, Zenda, that’s wonderful. So what about there being only one?”
“Here, Sas, rest it on your hand.” Obediently the girl reached out a hand. Ann put the sweater-wrapped globe into it. Zenda looked at Ann, “Now pinch and pull like I did.” When Ann grabbed one side of the fuzzy globe, Zenda grabbed the other. They both pulled.
“What do you see?”, asked Zenda.
“I see the knitted fabric being pulled in two directions. Two, uh, more than one nexus.”
“Yeah, I don’t know the plural either. See the knots or loops or whatever at the, uh, meridian, no, what would be the equator if we were pulling on the north and south poles. Let’s call it the equator”. Zenda was a smart girl, that didn’t mean she had a way with words.
“They don’t move.”
“Right. Now let’s move our fingers about a bit, around, and around, pull harder or not so hard. See?”
“Some nodes move closer to your end, some to mine. I get it. I’ll arrange for Sally to put you at the head of the class.”
“I’m already at the head of my class. I thought that’s why you came to see me.”
“No, just enjoyed talking to you in the summer. So, OK, there are knots moving back and forth between us. The undecided. Vote for me, no, me. That’s a terrible metaphor, Zenda, just awful. We don’t want power. We don’t want to rule the world from a single nexus or fight over it with someone else. I hate this idea.”
“You gave me the idea. Don’t you remember? We were talking about flat surfaces, but you also said it would apply to different topologies. You said you remember talking to me — do you remember what we talked about? It was almost a class, a few people sitting around while you talked math. That’s what you do, Dr. Kelly, you talk math. Any chance you get.”
“Yes, that’s true, what did we talk about? Lots of things.”
“Transformations. Don’t think we are pulling on a point, moving it. Think about it the other way. The world changes, it undergoes a transformation.”
“Damn you’re a smart kid, Zenda. I get it. You are talking fixed-points. The fixed-point theorem. That is what we talked about in the summer, deformations of the plane.”
“I’m right aren’t I? I know I am. It’s a sphere, not a plane, but that’s OK, right? We almost talked about spheres, maybe we did, but you said that any transformation like that had a fixed-point. And there’d be only one, right.”
“Well, yes, and no, but yes. I have to think about this. It would have to be continuous tranformations, or the point might jump about wildly, but yes. Damn. I don’t know why the school might always be at the centre of the transformations, nothing in the theory … well, there could be. I have to think. Suppose the transformations … they represent what, I have to think.”
“So think about it, Dr. Kelly. Sassy, can I give her the fuzzy ball you made for me?” Sassy nodded, always the quiet one, but smiled, a bit of pride in that smile.
Zenda held out her hands in a dramatic way, and bowed towards Ann.
“Girls, girls, thank you so much. I came here with a little intuition, which I couldn’t explain to myself. I’ve got to go talk to some people. They might have had the same intuition, but I don’t think any of us could put words to it. Now I know where to start.”
Ann left to drive home. In doing so she was in fact driving to Princeton, home of the best university for mathematics in the country. She had friends there, some found by the software. Not the closest of friends but some were perfect for fleshing out an idea like this, now that it was an actual idea, not just a glimmer of a hint of a little itch in her mind.
Yes. Social Tech High was almost designed to be a fixed point, to remain in place while the info-sphere writhed around it.