She drew maps for a living, but not of places.
Each map was of a single number. You'd give her a number — say, negative point seven plus point two seven oh one five times i — and she'd close her eyes and draw the world that number contained.
Some numbers held connected worlds. Coastlines that looped back to themselves, peninsulas reaching toward peninsulas, everything touching everything else. "This one wants to hold together," she'd say.
Other numbers shattered. Islands floating in void, each island containing smaller islands, dust all the way down. "This one let go."
"How do you know which kind you'll get?" I asked.
She pulled out her master map. A dark, bulbous shape with tendrils reaching into white space. Sprouts upon sprouts, each smaller copy tilted slightly different. The border was infinitely detailed — you could zoom forever and never find a clean edge.
"If the number lives inside this shape," she said, tracing the boundary, "its world holds together. If it lives outside, the world breaks apart."
"And on the boundary?"
She smiled. "On the boundary, the world doesn't know which it wants to be. Those are the most beautiful ones."
I looked at the master map. "What IS this?"
"It's the atlas of all possible worlds. Every point is an address. Every address is a universe. And the boundary — " she paused, running her finger along an impossibly thin edge between connection and dissolution — "the boundary is where all the interesting things live."
She looked at me as if I'd finally asked the right question.
"Where else?"