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Kernel | Chaos Theory

kernelmag.io · 3,498 words · saved by 8 readers

In another universe, sunlight drips through an open window. I am lying on the floor in a small apartment. I am five years old. Nothing bad has happened to me. In this version of the story, my life is still a blank slate, and I can control what happens like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure games. The critical events that will go on to change my life—the move to America, the class switch in high school, the fateful LinkedIn DM—have yet to take place. Nothing bad has happened, nothing good has happened, and I am still naïve enough to believe I can shape the future to my will. There’s something exciting and simultaneously terrifying about this echo of myself twelve years ago. Everyone has a version of this: What if X never happened? What if I never met Y? What if I wasn’t at Z (an oddly specific locale that you never could’ve predicted) at this particular point in time? We look back on our lives and consider all the possibilities of what could have been: all the alternate universes i

Kernel | Chaos Theory Issue 4 nonfiction Chaos Theory written by Tina Mai edited by Jasmine Sun art by Phuc-Thanh Mai Vo Or: On Modern Serendipity, Tech Twitter, and Luck as Agency In another universe, sunlight drips through an open window. I am lying on the floor in a small apartment. I am five years old. Nothing bad has happened to me. In this version of the story, my life is still a blank slate, and I can control what happens like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure games. The critical events that will go on to change my life—the move to America, the class switch in high school, the fate

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