“Research and development for your new company? What’s it called again? Iq?”
“eQ. With a lower-case e and a capital Q.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s the abbreviation of Encefaliseringskoefficient.”
“Encefal…excuse me?”
“I’m kidding. It doesn’t mean anything. I asked the marketing team to come up with something for me.”
“What’s it going to do, your new company?”
“You’ve heard about drones?”
Lisa settles into her pillows; with an introduction like that, the story promises to be complicated.
“There’s an outfit in New Mexico that builds solar-powered drones capable of flying at an altitude of thirty thousand metres for years without any kind of refuelling.”
“A perpetual drone.”
“Better than that: a self-guided drone. It’s linked to an operational centre via microwaves. You just need to upload the raw data—weather forecasts, pressure systems, winds—and the drone makes its own decisions. You feed it a destination and some data, and the optimization algorithms do the dirty work.”
“Wow!”
“Exactly. Soon this thing will be seriously competing with low-orbit satellites. I’ve heard that a major Mountain View company is set to invest in it big time.”
“Okay. And the connection with eQ?”
Éric takes a sip of coffee. “I read an article on the subject last year, while I was working on T2T…”
“You like short names.”
“…and it gave me an idea.”
Another sip of coffee. He needs to gather momentum.
“Refrigerated containers currently occupy the top rung of the evolutionary ladder. A conventional container is essentially just a big corrugated steel box. Reefers are somewhat more advanced: they’re equipped with GPS beacons, webcams, motion detectors. The atmosphere and temperature are determined according to the environment, and the data is sent to the exporter in real time. If a customs officer in Hamburg opens the door of a reefer, an alert sounds in a Hong Kong office. The exporter can see if the door stays open too long, if the interior temperature drops…”
“A smart container.”
“The marketing department would probably use that sort of term, but basically it’s still just a big stupid box with a wi-fi connection.”
Lærke suddenly appears over Éric’s shoulder with a warlike expression.
“Jeg er suuulten!”
“Cheerios er på bordet.”
“Can I have some apricots? Vœr venliiig?”
“They’re on the cabinet. Help yourself. Hey, you can’t imagine how much a four-year-old can eat. It just doesn’t stop. A genuine industrial shredder. She asks me for something every ten minutes. Fruit, cereal, milk. Sausage, ham, pickles. And bananas! A dozen bananas a day! Okay, so where was I?”
“Big stupid box, wi-fi connection.”
“Ah, right. Most reefers sail on weekly lines, with hyper-regular schedules. No changes, ever. Industrial and agricultural zones have stable production cycles. Climatologists can predict the dates of grapefruit harvests ten years in advance. But.”
“But?”
“But even so, there are unforeseen events. A late ship. A typhoon. A longshoremen’s strike. An outbreak of the H5N1 virus is all it takes for Taiwan to tighten its import laws, and your exporter is stuck with fifty containers of frozen Brazilian chickens quarantined in power stations at a hundred dollars a day per box.”
“So the schedules are theoretically fixed, but there are always adjustments to be made.”
“Exactly. For a company that moves sixty thousand containers every day, it’s a real problem. Ideally, the container would make the adjustments on its own.”
“A container with a sense of initiative.”
“A semi-self-guided drone.”
“Can it be done?”
“Almost everything is already automated. Robots have been moving containers for years. The industry operates like a three-dimensional database. The only thing that isn’t automated yet is the consumer.”
“My mother is working on that part.”
“So to answer your question, yes, it can be done. Theoretically. The container could hook itself up to the terminal’s network and manage its schedules by integrating the environmental parameters: weather, traffic jams, shipwrecks, delays, strikes, quarantines. A swine flu epidemic? The container could calculate the costs, assess the risks and automatically direct itself to another market or a less costly transition port. Even the paperwork would be done and sent by the container—bill of lading, customs forms…Shit. Hold on a second!”
Éric disappears. The sound of crockery and a French-Danish dialogue on the law of gravity can be heard in the background. The only thing showing on the screen is the whiteboard covered with notes, and Lisa uses the opportunity to try to decipher the jumble of phrases and equations, but the image resolution is too low, unless it’s Éric’s handwriting that is deteriorating. She takes a screenshot so she can study it at her leisure.
Éric comes back and sits down in front of the camera with a new cup of coffee filled to the brim. He takes a sip and gives Lisa a worried look.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m cold.”
“You seem depressed.”
“I’m cold and I’m depressed.”
“Why?”
She draws the sheets up to her chin. It’s the only warm spot in this damned apartment. If not for her being in the middle of a video call, she would pull the pile of blankets right over her head, the way she used to long ago when she played submarine under the sheets, armed with a flashlight.
On the screen, Éric is still waiting for an answer. Lisa lets out another sigh.
“Every time you talk to me about containers, I get the feeling you’re describing a major achievement of humankind. Like the roads of the Roman Empire, but better. It’s almost as though our civilization had created an artificial continent, but an invisible one, hidden in the walls.”
“That’s a good image.”
“Your semi-self-guided container—that’s a tour de force. It involves optimization algorithms, risk management systems. It reminds me of the Voyager probe. Do you see what I mean?”
“I see what you mean.”
“Except that instead of visiting Saturn, your drone-containers will ship Bic pens and toilet brushes. The smartest guy I know is racking his brains so that Mrs. Ouimet can buy flowery cushions and bananas…”
“You underestimate the importance of bananas for our society.”
“I’m serious. We’re living in fucked-up times, where every fabulous invention ends up becoming insignificant. Technology ought to, I don’t know, push against the limits of the human experience, right?”
Long pause. Éric makes an ambiguous gesture with his head, as though pondering the question.
“Fine. Okay. Forget about the banana and cushion industry. Suppose the semi-self-guided container were a Leonardo da Vinci kind of idea, though I should point out that Leonardo da Vinci also had his bananas and cushions moments. Suppose eQ were to be used to push back the limits of human experience. How would we go about it, in your view?”
Lisa takes a deep breath and looks at the ceiling. You would first have to determine exactly what human experience is. She thinks about her mother, standing at the centre of a vast IKEA, and her father napping in his long-term cubicle; she thinks about the Domaine Bordeur and Mr. Miron trying to start his Datsun, and even about Edwin Schwartz in his mezzanine, and thinks about herself, gloomily seated in a windowless classroom, assimilating equations and constants. Then, suddenly, it strikes her, every inch of her, from the top of her skull down into her spinal cord, travels through her vertebrae like a string of pearls, descends into her right leg and exits through her big toe, leaving behind a sensation of numbness and the smell of charred leather.
Lisa is struck dumb, mouth agape, eyes wide open, transfixed. Her lips artic
ulate empty words, while she visibly attempts to take the measurements of the new space that has just opened up in a remote area of her brain.
Éric, leaning toward the screen, one eyebrow raised, waits for her to recover her ability to speak. Lærke shows up stage right, with a mulish expression, and mutters, “I’m still hungry.” She turns toward the screen and sees Lisa, paralyzed.
“What’s the matter with her?”
Éric rubs his chin in bemusement. “An idea, I think.”
JAY CAN CLEARLY RECALL THE day she was processed. She had hardly stepped into the airport when her mug shot and fingerprints were taken. The policía nacional already had everything, of course, but the basic deportation package deal did not include the transfer of legal data, and the RCMP had to do the work all over again from scratch. After-sales service was on the decline in every sector, Jay thought as she contemplated the blue ink on her fingertips.
And there was more: they still had to take DNA samples. Jay shrugged. She was back in Canada; they could take whatever samples they wanted. The procedure lasted no more than a minute. A technician wearing nitrile gloves unwrapped a cotton bud on a long stick. She asked Jay to open her mouth and rubbed it against the inside of her cheek. Jay hated the texture of the cotton wad.
Jay mentioned the episode when she met her new lawyer that same afternoon. The small, feisty woman immediately flared up and declared she would have the “abusive, invasive and illegal” procedure nullified. Jay was not sure of what it all signified. She was already in prison, wasn’t she? What difference could it possibly make?
Her lawyer made further inquiries and learned that the judge had authorized the procedure on the pretext that the offender had been found guilty of piratería and subversión, and that Canadian law allowed DNA samples to be collected for this type of crime. Case law, however, was imprecise on the subject of sentences handed down outside Canada, and the lawyer planned to exploit this lack of precision to have the ruling annulled. The case would no doubt be heard on appeal, but it was a bit late; Jay’s saliva cells had already been collected and the sample processed. Though she failed in her efforts to have the data destroyed, the lawyer had succeeded at least in having their entry into the National DNA Data Bank suspended.
Consequently, Jay’s DNA hibernated on a hard disk pending the outcome of a trial that most probably would never take place. Seven years on, Jay does not know where exactly the data is located, and, given this uncertainty, it makes sense to assume the RCMP entered it into the system nevertheless, which means that the traces of blood found at Autocars Mondiaux are liable to trigger a long series of causes and effects, like a steel ball dropped into a vast Rube Goldberg machine, which would make its way from the judicial laboratory to the database and from the database to Jay.
It’s only a matter of hours before they question her and, worse, search her apartment. The detectives will quickly find the big cardboard box chock full of pieces of evidence classified with the loving attention of a museologist: bundles of invoices pressed flat and arranged in chronological order, lists scribbled by an unknown hand and, especially, the old, battered, inoperative Canon. They will triangulate, they will deduce.
It will be the end of an era—and maybe that would be a good thing, Jay muses as she climbs the stairs to her apartment. Her life will return to where it stopped seven years ago, with her imprisonment, the investigation, the legal procedures and the criminal charges. And she will finally recover her old name, her true identity. She is almost eager to see the news reports about her arrest. A former hacker employed by the RCMP, suspected of complicity in a terrorism case. This time, she won’t be upstaged in the media by a hockey story.
When she reaches the top of the stairs, she flips the light switch. Nothing. The Malayan light fixture has already died. Through the floor comes the sound of a long monologue in Greek and the noise of broken dishes.
For an instant, Jay has the urge to let go, to let events take their course. Then she pulls herself together. She takes the box of evidence out of the closet and carries it to the trash can in the kitchen.
Inside the box is a stack of about twenty envelopes, organized with dividers. Jay pulls out the envelopes one at a time and unceremoniously throws them into the trash can, like pieces of a puzzle that will no longer be of use. Farewell, mysterious sketches and diagrams. Farewell, invoices and illegible lists. Farewell, precious Canon PowerShot. Garbage you were, and to the garbage you shall return.
Soon the trash can is overflowing. Tonight Jay will go toss the bag into a neighbourhood Dumpster, as long as she can find one that’s not locked.
The only thing left at the bottom of the box is the Miscellaneous envelope, where Jay recalls having classified whatever defied classification, the crumbs, the shreds. She is about to chuck it when she suddenly stops short. She opens the envelope, pokes around amid the scraps of paper, and harpoons a Park’N Fly receipt for three months of parking, long-term rate, dated October 11.
Jay leaps to her feet, trembling. She checks her watch. She still has half an hour to run out and buy a suitcase.
ÉRIC SAID HE WOULD THINK about it, and he is probably thinking about it, the bum, thinking very hard about it, since his answer is as slow in coming as the fulfillment of an election promise.
It will be ten days tomorrow since Lisa was electrocuted by the idea of the century, ten days during which the two protagonists have ruminated on either side of the Atlantic, which proves that the two kids have become (at least theoretically) adults; six years earlier, the decision would have been made on the spot, live. Now everything is complicated, every question turns into a maze. They’re not fifteen anymore.
Left to her own devices, Lisa draws up plans and diagrams in her head. The idea gnaws at her twenty-four hours a day, in the shower, at work, on the road to Saint-Anicet-de-Kostka, and even in the string of jumbled dreams in which she gets entangled at dawn.
As for Éric, there is no way to imagine what is brewing in his brain.
Yet the situation is not all that complicated. Lisa’s idea was either excellent or mediocre, and, all things considered, Éric’s hesitation provides a crucial hint. Why would he hesitate if the idea is an excellent one? No, this endless waiting points to only one possible conclusion: it’s not going to happen. His company will perform its initial function: inject smart containers into the global economy. The limits of human experience will not be pushed back. Lisa curses bananas and flowery cushions.
In any case, she has no time to lose over this. She has to keep an eye on her father’s sock reserves, memorize the history of Babylonian electronics, greet the hordes of customers at HardKo and refill the bottomless tank of the Dodge Ramosaurus; the fact is, she made a rough calculation of how much it would cost to realize her idea, how many hundreds of Leica IIIs in excellent condition would need to be sold on eBay to finance the project. Bottom line: forget it.
Éric does not like her idea, time and money are lacking—okay, message received: everything militates against the project, and Lisa immediately stops waiting for the answer. In her mind, the plans and diagrams fade like old sales receipts left lying in the sun. Tonight she will make a Montreal–Copenhagen video call to officially put an end to her blues.
But why the hell does she have the blues?
The question floats in the background of her mind while she stands in the doorway of the room and looks at her father looking out the window. On the other side of the glass, there is Route 132, powdery snow and the dark line of the river. No ship in sight, the St. Lawrence Seaway is frozen solid, closed until March. Lisa wonders where her shipbuilding forebears ended their days. She sweeps her eyes around the room with a twinge in her heart. This clearly is not the lap of luxury. Each time she visits, she discovers a new problem: a peeling piece of wall, a loose tile, a warp in the baseboard, a dripping faucet in the bathroom. Everything is falling apart, and Robert, the shadow of the man who was Robert, couldn’t care less.
Look, the radiator co
ver is half unscrewed. A little tug is all it would take to open it partway. With some help from Murphy’s Law, Robert will surely end up stuffing his dirty socks in it and setting the building ablaze. The problem should be brought to the superintendent’s attention; on the other hand, it may be three weeks before he gets around to this small repair. Better handle it herself.
In the lobby, the receptionist is focused on a sudoku. Lisa steps up to the counter.
“Could I borrow a screwdriver from you?”
The woman jumps, as if she’s been asked for a plasma welder or an industrial riveter. She opens a drawer that for years has served to keep sundries and in which Lisa glimpses bits of string, watches, pencils, dentures and greeting cards. The woman triumphantly waves a tiny screwdriver. Without touching it, Lisa looks it over.
“Is that all you have?”
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s a Robertson. I need a Phillips.”
“A Phillips?”
“A star-shaped screwdriver.”
“There are different kinds of screwdrivers?”
Lisa sighs and gestures “never mind.” She’ll take care of the matter some other day. So long as, in the meantime, her father doesn’t burn the place down.
The sun sets and Lisa drives back to Montreal at proletarian speed; the price of gas has risen again. She feels as if she has run an ultra-marathon. She must be coming down with a cold. It’s too warm for January, there’s a miasma in the air, the streets are dirty, and brown snow clings to the cars.
Stepping into the vestibule of the building, Lisa collides head-on with a UPS driver, who looks her up and down.
“What’s your apartment number?”
“Six.”
“Lisa Routier?”
“That’s me.”
He hands her a large brown cardboard envelope. The phrase Ultra Express Parcel in red Helvetica takes up the lower third of the envelope, and in the Sender section there is Éric Le Blanc’s name above an address full of ø’s. The customs invoice is marked “gift—value $20.”
Six Degrees of Freedom Page 16
