Episode 06: Butterfly Effect's Divergence#
The lab stops observing and starts experimenting. The first deliberate D-Mail is sent, the first worldline shift is engineered on purpose — and Okabe's lonely superpower finally gets a name.
Synopsis#
Against Kurisu's explicit objection ("we understand nothing about the side effects"), the lab votes to run a controlled test: a D-Mail to Daru's past phone containing a lottery number.1
The send works. The world lurches. And Okabe, alone, remembers the previous version of the evening — the number they chose, the argument, the pizza. Everyone else remembers having sent a different message. The ticket in Daru's wallet is real, and it is a losing ticket: the number arrived garbled past the 36-byte boundary.
Kurisu names Okabe's cross-worldline memory Reading Steiner, borrowing the term from Okabe's own chuuni vocabulary, to his enormous satisfaction and her immediate regret.
Meanwhile Suzuha Amane, Mr. Braun's new part-timer, takes an instant, unexplained dislike to Kurisu — and an equally unexplained interest in whether the lab has "sent anything" yet.
Suzuha's hostility is the episode's dangling thread. It is not resolved until episode-11, and the resolution recolors every scene she is in.
| Episode | 06 |
| Japanese title | 蝶翼のダイバージェンス |
| Air date | 2010-05-11 |
| Arc | D-Mail arc |
| Worldline | Alpha $0.571015$ |
| Shift to | Alpha $0.523307$ |
| D-Mail | Lottery number (garbled) |
| Named | Reading Steiner |
| Focus | Okabe, Suzuha |
| Previous | Starmine Rendezvous |
| Next | Divergence Singularity |
graph LR; A[Alpha 0.571015] -->|lottery D-Mail| B[Alpha 0.523307]
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Message | Lottery number, week 19 draw |
| Payload size | 41 bytes — over budget |
| Bytes delivered intact | 36 |
| Target | Daru's phone, −72 hours |
| Divergence before | 0.571015 |
| Divergence after | 0.523307 |
| Who remembers the original line | Okabe only |
Sortable-table exercise for new readers: sort the full D-Mail record by divergence delta and this "harmless" test is the third-largest shift of the whole D-Mail arc. Small causes, large worldlines — the butterfly effect of the title.
The episode gives the series its second pillar (after the D-Mail itself). The rules, as established here and refined in episode-07:
- Okabe's memories persist across worldline shifts; his body does not move.
- Everyone else's memories are rewritten to have always been consistent with the new line.
- The transition is subjectively instant — a lurch, a flicker of vertigo.
- No other confirmed carrier exists on the Alpha attractor field.2
For the physics-flavored fan theories, see the worldline overview and Alpha worldline: Reading Steiner.
- First deliberate worldline shift; the D-Mail log begins its numbered entries here.
- Suzuha asks Okabe whether he is "the lab's founder, the one they talk about" — past tense, unnoticed by everyone including, on first viewing, the audience.
- The garbled-payload rule set up in episode-03 pays off exactly as documented: rule 2, out-of-order arrival.
- Mayuri buys the metal Upa a companion — a vinyl Upa — which matters enormously in episode-22.
In Suzuha's 2036, Kurisu Makise is remembered as the scientist whose work SERN built its time-travel monopoly on. Suzuha is meeting, in the flesh, the person her war is named after — years before Kurisu does the work. The tragedy is that both of them are right to trust the lab and right to fear each other.
#lore #episode
Footnotes#
-
Daru's argument — "if we're going to break causality, we should at least profit" — wins 3–1. Kurisu registers her dissent in the log. ↩
-
The Steins Gate worldline finale implies at least one other partial carrier. The series leaves it deliberately unconfirmed. ↩