The Fleet Of Burning Ships

[greentexas]

This story is slightly cruel (because people are terrified on burning ships), but bear with me:

It was decided that a real number of people from the complex World of Fractals went on a boat voyage. Their fleet has seven ships. As oblivious guests were going about their lives on the ships, suddenly, one of the boilers on a ship blew up. Suddenly, the ship morphed into an infinitely large quarter-plane. It sank beneath the waters, and people exclaimed: "It's a Burning Ship! Burning Ship! The ship is burning down!"

The remainder of the guests (who were on the other six ships) watched. Suddenly, another one of the ships had a boiler failure. The ship started growing needles, which poked the guests. The needles were infinitely sharp, and other burning ships grew on them too. As people jumped off the ship while they were afraid, someone said: "Let's be reasonable. This is the world of fractals. In our mainland, we heard all about burning ships. Why were we so foolish to go on this voyage!?" Suddenly, the ship looked exactly like the Burning Ship fractal, and then it sank. On the ship, it said: "z = abs(z^2 + z₀)".

The third ship had its members on it. They were getting worried about the boilers blowing up on their ship (since they heard the lecture), but were still not too concerned. Suddenly, one of the boilers exploded. The terrified crew members shouted for help. People on the other ships thought: "That's the third burning ship. Surely it will be like the second." However, this ship fractalized also. It slowly morphed into a Bird of Prey. Even though it was then nicknamed the Bird of Prey, it was still a burning ship. It sank beneath the waters like the other ships.

The fourth ship started burning also by another boiler explosion. People screamed: "The 4th Burning Ship is going down! Where's the rest of the armada?!" At this, a few people started jumping into the water. Others tried hiding in nooks or crannies, especially by hugging the needle (even though they got poked doing so). There was an example, now to be followed by the remaining ships.

When the fifth one had its boiler exploded, people thought that they were just on a giant but fat man. They were perplexed by the flames and the denser structures got the people riding on the ship. They were injured by being forced into tight spaces.

The sixth burning ship was paradoxical. As it sank, it turned into a burning snowflake. People screamed: "A burning snowflake? Now we're headed for serious trouble!" It was still technically a burning ship like all the others, but it looked like a snowflake, hence earning it the name. The boilers blew up as expected.

Most of the survivors on the final ship jumped off. A few optimists stayed on, hoping that the boilers wouldn't blow up. They did, and the optimists thought: "We need to make a move. Everybody's cooked, and we're here on the 7th and final Burning Ship!" The burning ship had the engraving: "z = abs(z^7 + z₀)".

There were some people swimming in the water. They were rescued by lifeboats, but they learned that they shouldn't be riding on ships again because they burn in the world of fractals. Now tell me, why are you making that Burning Ship zoom with 20,000,000 iterations again?

I created this story because I was at a family gathering once. My father was joking about fractals, and said: "The 4th burning ship is going down! Where's the rest of the armada?" That is the punch line of the story.

In case you don't know, here are the funny parts in this (slightly cruel) story:

The number of the ship burning was given because the 5th ship in the story (for example) represents the 5th order Burning Ship, also known as the 5th Burning Ship.

The half-plane and snowflake shapes are given because of the plots of the 1st and 6th order Burning Ship. The 6th order Burning Ship has six main outgrowths, hence giving it that shape. The 1st power Burning Ship is pretty useless, as it is just a quarter of the complex plane.

The engravings are there because they show the formula of the fractal that the ship they are on represents.

The third burning ship is a bird of prey because that is what the cubic Burning Ship is nicknamed: The Bird of Prey.

The final six ships grew needles because the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh order Burning Ship all have needles. (The first order may also technically, but the needle is just the edge of the quarter-plane.)

Dense structures on fractals (like those on fractals with a large exponent) will have smaller crannies on average. This density would force somebody into a smaller cavity.

Since the needles have infinitely small (and therefore sharp) edges, people would be poked badly. However, it would probably not be painful until a needle of a finite edge was touched, but even then, a needle of 10^-200 meter in diameter is still a poking.