"that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.... And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day." "I guess it's one way to look at things," Grant said. "No," Malcolm said. "It's the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning." "Okay ..." "But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things."