In print it would come out more like, “Although the human mind functions so as to seek patterns and predictability within chaos, the peculiar mathematics of my chosen field suggest that the only pattern ultimately discernible in weather is chaos itself. Weather is very sensitive to initial conditions, as is disease control, the relative value of currency, and whatever else I can come up with. This approach might be used to reduce crime rates. But note: the Greek poets used storms as metaphors for drastic changes in human existence. Proposal: although currently considered impractical, I believe that fractals can be used to predict global sociopolitical patterns. The trick is to determine the degree to which chaos itself is a controlling factor in human life-“

The path split and she automatically chose the high road. The old mine lay at the feet of the Allegheny mountains, and had once been a source of coal and natural gas.

Energy sources and environmental concerns had shifted drastically in the last hundred years. Thanks to the Council, there were probably forty billion tons of coal in the Pennsylvania earth that would never be harvested. How many tons of smog did that translate into? How many square miles of soot-stained lung tissue?

The deserted mine was an atavistic eyesore, a raw, mile-wide slash. Long ago, men had ripped coal from the earth, made it bleed black, carted away its flesh to heat homes and industrial furnaces. Today the Council had decreed cleaner sources: solar satellites, geothermal stations, fusion reactors.

The strip mine lay before Jillian, around her, a barren womb. Its grueling inclines and sudden, twisty depths were a challenge to mind and body, an ideal preparation for the rigors to come.

So lost in reverie was Jillian that she failed to hear Sean’s familiar rhythmic stride until he was ten feet away.