Up close his tie was even more nondescript than from a distance. It appeared to have some sort of pattern, though what exactly I couldn’t make out. Not paisley (which had been popular in 1988), or polka dots (1970). It wasn’t a nonpattern either.

“…and measured the air temperature, water temperature, dimensions of the grotto, makeup of the water, plant life along the banks—” he said and stopped. “You’re probably busy and don’t have time to listen to all this.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got to go back to my office, but I’ll walk you as far as the stairs.”

“Okay, well, so my idea was that by precisely measuring every factor in a chaotic system, I could isolate the causes of chaos.”

“Flip,” I said. “The cause of chaos.”

He laughed. “The other causes of chaos. I know talking about the causes of chaos sounds like a contradiction in terms, since chaotic systems are supposed to be systems where ordinary cause and effect break down. They’re nonlinear, which means there are so many factors, operating in such an interconnected way, that they’re impossible to predict.”

Like fads, I thought.

“But there are laws governing them. We’ve mathematically defined some of them: entropy, interior instabilities, and iteration, which is—”

“The butterfly effect,” I said.

“Right. A tiny variable feeds back into the system and then the feedback feeds back, until it influences the system all out of proportion to its size.”

I nodded. “A butterfly flapping its wings in L.A. can cause a typhoon in Hong Kong. Or an all-staff meeting at HiTek.”

He looked delighted. “You know something about chaos?”

“Only from personal experience,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “it does seem to be the order of the day around here. Well, so, anyway, my project was to calculate the effects of iteration and entropy and see if they accounted for chaos or if there was another factor involved.”