by Unknown
Ghost in the machine
The sages of ancient days tell this story. There was a poor Taoist priest. He walked on the paths between the mountains. He lived on air and on river water and on what he was given.
One day he came to the village pear-seller. The village pear-seller had more than one hundred pears in his barrow.
‘Give me one please,’ said the priest.
‘No. You must pay like other people,’ said the pear-seller. ‘Go away.’
But the priest did not leave.
The man became angry. The people standing near said: ‘Give him a small one. Or a bad one. Then he will go.’
The pear-seller said: ‘No.’
Now a crowd had gathered.
The chief of the village came. He paid for a pear. He gave it to the poor priest. The priest said thank you. He said: ‘People like me give up everything. We give up life, family, money, homes, possessions. We cannot understand the minds of those who give up nothing.’
The people asked the priest: ‘Yes, you give up much. But what do you get?’
The priest said: ‘Many things. For example, I have many beautiful pear trees, each with hundreds of delicious pears.’
The people asked: ‘Where are they?’
The priest said: ‘In here.’ He pointed to the pear in his hand. Then he ate the pear. He took out the pips. He buried them in the ground. He asked for some water. He sprinkled the water on the ground. A stick came out of the ground. Then it became a tree. Then leaves came on the branches. Then pears came out of the branches.
‘Take. Eat,’ said the priest. The people took and ate the pears. The priest said goodbye and left the village.
The tree faded. It disappeared. The pear-seller looked back at his barrow. But all his pears had gone.
So, Blade of Grass, remember that he who is wealthy in riches is often poor in spirit. He who is poor in wealth is often rich in spirit.
From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by C F Wong, part 116.
‘Ah, my prayers have been answered: a meeting of the mystics on a Friday night. We haven’t had a Friday-night meeting for a very, very long time.’ Madam Xu Chung Li radiated glee at her companions before taking a small towel out of her handbag and wiping the table, employing particular vigour on the areas directly in front of her and the other female present. These efforts had no visible effect on the table surface, but her observers assumed the gesture was symbolic.
‘Why d’you like meeting on Fridays?’ asked Joyce.
‘Well, dear, Friday is a very special night at the Sambar,’ the old fortune teller whispered confidentially, pursing her crimson lips to create a network of lines pointing the way into her mouth. ‘It’s the night old Uberoi makes string hoppers. Only place in Singapore where you can get them, to my knowledge.’
‘Oh.’ The young woman decided against asking what a string hopper was, not wanting to appear a tourist.
It was a comparatively cool evening at the open-fronted restaurant where they sat on Serangoon Road, after a day of wind and rain. A week of heavy, humid, oppressive weather had turned the population into slugs, and the sudden cloudburst of the mid-morning had brought welcome relief. It had rained intermittently all day, but had conveniently stopped at 6.30 p.m., allowing a northeast zephyr to blow the open-air seats and tables at the restaurant dry just in time for the 8 p.m. meeting of the Investigative Advisory Committee of the Singapore Union of Industrial Mystics.
Joyce had arrived early to make the most of her first visit to Singapore’s Little India. She had stopped at the Temple of 1000 Lights, and then spent a happy hour perusing the shops on Serangoon Road. She bought some Punjabi clothes, a movie poster showing overweight actors from Madras, some Tamil music tapes and a whole bag full of Indian brass jewellery. Her shopping bags had soon become heavy, and she was glad when the time came to slide them under the table at the Sambar Coffee House.
She watched Madam Xu expend a great deal of energy rubbing at a dark circle on the table, and wondered whether she should tell her that it was a knot in the wood, not removable by anything less than a power saw.
The elderly fortune teller eventually gave up by herself. She foraged further in her handbag—a large, burgundy leather sack with gold clasps—and pulled out another towel, a small, flowered flannel, scented with patchouli. She delicately touched her forehead and upper lip with it. The evening was becoming balmy, and warm air was flowing out of the kitchen door, which was propped open. The smell of fried cumin pervaded the street.
Someone flicked a switch and a fan started to whirl lazily on the ceiling above them, sending down fluttering waves of tepid air. Joyce felt as if someone was gently stroking the top of her head.
‘Ng, chat, saam, yee, lok, sei, baat. ’ C F Wong mumbled to himself as he sat on the edge of the table, filling in numbers on a chart he had brought with him. ‘Yat gau-gau gau.’
Madam Xu tutted unhappily. ‘You have a lot of work? Can’t even take a break on a Friday night, C F, when string hoppers are on the menu?’
‘Yes, Xu-tai, have much work today.’ The old man’s hand seemed to vibrate as he drew tiny Chinese characters over a floor plan.
The fortune teller turned back to the geomancer’s young assistant. ‘While we’re waiting for the Super, shall I just read your palm, my dear?’
‘Er. Yeah. Whatever. I, like—’ said Joyce, nervously dropping her hands into her lap. Then she looked into the distance and broke into an involuntary smile. ‘There’s not enough time. Look, he’s here.’
Superintendent Tan approached in his usual languid manner, with a sloping gait and his hands buried in his pockets, as if he alone were the counterbalance to the famed uprightness and stiffness of other aspects of the city-state’s of ficialdom. He stood at the corner of the table. ‘Hello, old friends, very nice it is to see you. Thank you very much for coming, Madam Xu, C F, and, er, Miss Mak—er . . .’
‘Jo,’ she reminded him.
‘Jo, right. We met last time.’
‘Our pleasure to come,’ said Madam Xu. ‘Especially on a Friday night.’
Wong lowered his pen and gathered up his papers, his long fingernails scratch-scratch-scratching at the table like a cat sharpening its claws.
‘But where is D K?’ asked the young Singaporean police officer. ‘Not here yet? He’s coming late, is it?’
‘Not coming tonight. Sends his apology,’ the geomancer put in. ‘Has been tied up.’
‘Sit, sit,’ said Madam Xu.
‘No, first, I have something to ask you, you see. Officially, according to the rules, there are no visitors allowed to these meetings, right? But C F, you brought your assistant with you last time and this. I want to ask tonight if I can bring someone too. Can or not? You don’t mind, is it?’
‘Well, it depends,’ said Madam Xu, automatically checking how her cheong-saam (black velvet, flecked with purple, blue and pink) sat, at the thought of a guest approaching. Her clothing, of course, was immaculate. ‘If it is someone as charming as Ms Jo, I can see no objection.’
‘It is a bank manager. Well, private banker, really, I should say. He is involved with the case you will help with tonight, you see.’
‘A bank robbery?’ asked Wong.
‘No, it is a case of . . . actually, I am not sure what it is a case of. The bankers are calling it mass hysteria. I think you have not had a case of mass hysteria before, is it? I can bring him now, okay or not?’
‘A private banking gentleman? I think you may,’ said Madam Xu, and Wong nodded his assent.
Tan turned and gestured at a man in his early thirties, who stood awkwardly watching them from a distance. Tall and pale-skinned with sandy hair, he approached briskly, coming to a sudden halt behind the police officer.
‘I will do the introductions. This is Joseph Sturmer of United World Banking Corporation. Madam Xu, Ms Joyce, Mr C F Wong. Right, now sit, please.’
The lanky banker, looking out of place in his dark sui
t and conservative tie, perched unhappily on a chair with his hands on his lap and looked dolefully around. He was as freckled as a child. Joyce looked at him carefully. Nice floppiness to the hair, okay roman nose, but unpleasantly thin lips and no chin at all. Anyway too old, she decided.
Madam Xu explained that she had already discussed the evening’s menu with old Uberoi, so the men may as well just get on with their story. ‘We can eat and listen at the same time.’
‘We shall get on with it then,’ said Tan. ‘This is a story of a bank robbery, as you said. Or perhaps not. What would you say, Mr Sturmer?’
‘Well, it’s a mystery, isn’t it? That’s why we’re here, right? The guys in the bink can’t work it out, inniwhy.’
Joyce noticed the broad accent. ‘Hi. I’m Jo. You from Down Under?’
‘Austrylian? Me? No, mite. From New Zeyland.’
Uberoi’s wife, a huge woman named Nina Chug (Uberoi himself was supermodel-thin) arrived with drinks: salt lassi for Madam Xu, Wong and Tan, and sweet for the two mat sellah. All Westerners, it is assumed, prefer sweet.
The silence which followed was broken by Tan. ‘Ah. How shall we start? Someone has robbed the bank in a funny way.’
‘We think, maybe,’ added Sturmer, unhappily.
The geomancer said: ‘Why not Mr Sturmer just tells us?’
‘Yeh, okae,’ said the New Zealander. ‘All this is totally confidintial, right? Not to go further than these four . . .’ He noticed that the restaurant only had three walls. ‘It’s confidintial, inniwhy. I’m the diputy exicutive minager of the private binking division of United World Bink. Now I received a call from a customer this morning clyming that a deposit had not been processed. We often get this type of complynt. Nine times out of tin, it’s some sort of perfectly normal da-lie.’
‘Da-lie?’ asked Wong.
‘Delay,’ said Joyce. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll translate. My sister went out with a Kiwi once.’
Sturmer continued, a little warily: ‘I gaive the usual excuse: “I’m sorry Mr Somchai,” I say. “It takes up to seven working dies to clear a cheque, depending on which bink the money is drawn from, and up to twenty-eight days in the case of a foreign currency cheque.” It does, you see. But this customer, Mr Somchai, is not satisfied. “This was cash,” he says. “I put cash in. It should have been cleared immediately. You don’t have to clear cash, it’s just cash.” He had a good pint there. Now this calls for a different line. “Probably jist some miscalculation somewheres,” I tell him. “I’m sure it’s not a problim. I think if you just wite for your bink statement, you’ll find that it’s all there,” I say. You see, sometimes customers, they put money in, and a cheque arrives for a similar amount the same die, so that the customer thinks that his bink account total has not gone up, when really everything is fine. Or perhaps his wife withdraws an amount which she forgits to tell him about. Hippens all the time. I tell Mr Somchai that I could send him an interim stitemint, for which we could whyve the processing charge.’
Joyce noticed that C F Wong was watching and listening with intense concentration, struggling to understand the man’s accent. For some reason, the bank manager focused on Joyce, and related the story entirely to her. She was first nonplussed, and then pleased, and made sympathetic nodding movements as he spoke. She wondered if the others would be annoyed, since she was the only non-mystic among them.
‘Inniwhy, the guy turns mean. “Mr Sturmer,” he says. “I am not a fool. I have no wife. I know exictly what goes in and what comes out of my account. I bilince my chequebook every time I use it. What I know is that I deposited five thousand Sing dollars in my current account two dies ago and it is not there now.”’
Sturmer, now getting into his story, became more relaxed, and looked briefly at Wong and Madam Xu before returning his gaze to Joyce. He started using his hands for emphasis. ‘So I do the stroke-stroke thing and tell him that I know he is good with figures and I tell him I will personally look into the matter right awhy. Where did he deposit it? Head office? Fourth machine on the right? Right. Thank you for calling. I tell him I will call back within two business hours, which is standard procedure for private binking clients. Okay so far?’
He paused and Joyce and Madam Xu nodded. Wong continued to stare.
‘Right. Now at this stige, I am still largely disregarding the problim. Ninety-nine per cent of cases like this, it is the customer having mis-counted something. You would be amized the number of billionaires who just can’t count from one to tin or do simple arithmetic. But then my colleague, Sarah Remangan, who sits one desk away from me, she looks over. “I’ve had the same call from one of my accounts,” she says. “Put her money in last Tuesday. Got a receipt and everything. But she swears the money isn’t there now and never got there. Even ordered a stitement which bicks her up, so she says.”’
The banker paused as a waiter gently elbowed him to one side and placed plates in front of each of them. A platter containing five masala dosas followed almost immediately.
‘Go on,’ said Madam Xu, starting to distribute the potato curry pancakes, serving the banker first. ‘That is when you realised something was wrong.’
‘No, not really, not then,’ said Sturmer. ‘You see, the whole system is computerised. It can’t be wrong. It’s always that people spend too much and don’t know where the money’s gone at the end of the day. Human naeture. Then Sarah’s phone rings agin, and it was inother of her clients, with the sime problim. I could tell, just by listening to her half of the conversaition. It was probably then that I was getting a little worried. Three similar complyints, one after another. Something might just possibly be wrong.’
‘A bug in the computer?’ asked Joyce.
‘No way. You see, bink computers are set up so that they can only do one of two things: They either get it right, or they freeze. There’s no in-between. They cannot do their sums wrong. If they are working, then they are working right. All binking computer systems are based on this principle, as far as I know. Inniwhy, I called several people. I phoned my supervisor, of course, who told me to give all detiles urgently to the bink technology departmint and security departmint. This was about ten o’clock this morning.’
He ran his hands backwards through his hair. ‘Over the nixt, well, couple of hours I giss, there were several similar complyints from customers. A high-level security team was empowered to invistiguyte. By lunch time they gaive their initial findings. All checks of the bink computer showed no problim at all. No hint of a malfunction.’
The banker paused, his mystification showing in his face. ‘It was bizarre. It was like a mass hallucination. According to all our records, none of these cash deposits was ever put into the bink, and all the computers were behaving perfectly, according to all diagnostic checks. It was a complete mystery.’
‘Could it have been a mass hallucination, like you say?’ asked Madam Xu. ‘Perhaps . . . deliberate?’
‘That’s the answer the bink would like,’ said Sturmer, turning to her. ‘But between you and me, no. None of these people know each other. And there’s too many of thim to be in on a scam togither. Some are really old customers, been binking there for years. One of the people complaining is the niece of one of the directors.’
He paused again, as Mrs Chug arrived with plates of idli and uttapum. Madam Xu reminded her about the hoppers.
‘Don’t you have like, security cameras and things?’ asked Joyce.
‘We do. That was the nixt stige of the investiguytion. We worked out that all customers who lost money put it, in cash, into automitic teller machines in the head office’s 24-hour binking hall. There are security kimras in the doorwhy there, which tyke photos every five seconds.’
‘Cameras,’ translated Joyce.
The banker continued: ‘The videotypes confirmed that the customers who complained had entered the hall and used the machines, just like they said.’
‘Tell us about the room, please,’ said Wong.
‘Well, i
t’s a big room, squarish, on the north side of the building. The investiguytive team checked the bink machines themselves. There are three on each side of the hall, built into the walls on the east and west side, and another six stand-alone machines at the back of the hall, with two more or less opposite the front door and two on each side. All the machines were working perfectly. They were genuine machines, connected properly to the bink by their normal kybles. Nothing appeared to have been timpered with. The security videos showed UWBC technicians entering the premises several times during that two-week period. Four kyses involved adjustments of the wall-mounted machines. Two involved teams delivering and installing stand-alone machines, and one involved a team removing a malfunctioning stand-alone machine. Then there were visits twice a day by cleaning staff. Everything seemed striteforward.’
Mrs Chug arrived with a large plate of aloo gobi, which Madam Xu took from her hands and started dispensing to each of the diners, the banker first, then the other men, then Joyce.
‘That’s it, really,’ said Sturmer, his brow furrowed like a cassava field. ‘That’s all we know. People put the money in, or they imagined they did, and the stuff just vinished. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of Sing dollars, perhaps a million or more. We just don’t know. We don’t know when the complaints will stop coming.’
‘Did you count the machines?’ asked Joyce. ‘Sorry was that a silly question?’
‘All the machines were real and all ours. And nothing wrong with any of them.’
‘Now you stop talking and eat,’ said Madam Xu to Sturmer. She had apparently decided that she would mother the unhappy banker. ‘The time now is for eating and for thinking. Here.’ She picked up a plate of pakora and thrust it towards him.
‘Thenks, but I don’t really feel like . . .’
‘Eat. Will revitalise the brain and help you to solve the problem. Must eat.’
He helped himself to a tiny sample and the other diners were also suddenly active, serving each other and themselves.
