Scene 2 — Your Own

The Fedora Handbook, Rule #7

“Do not correct a superior. Suggest. Let the suggestion become his.”

INT. HALLORAN UNION — THE SENATE OFFICE — TUESDAY 10 MARCH, 1:15 P.M.

A room with a counter across the middle of it and three people behind the counter and a queue of nobody.

ASHLEY is at the end with a screen and a stack of forms squared off beside her.

ASHLEY

You're Bennett's back row.

Owen

I need a room.

ASHLEY

Which one and what for?

Owen

Beckwith. Any room on the third floor with the

cabinets in it. Reading.

She is already typing.

ASHLEY

Reading isn't a use. Quiet study is a use.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, six till nine?

Owen

That'd do it.

ASHLEY

It's yours to the end of term. You want it under

your name or under a society?

Owen

Mine.

ASHLEY

Mine's better. A society booking gets looked at in

April when they do the room audit and a student

booking never does.

She turns the screen round for a second so that he can see it is done, which nobody in this university has ever done for him.

Owen

Thanks.

ASHLEY

I said come and find me if you were stuck with the

Senate.

Owen

You did.

ASHLEY

People don't. I've been saying it since second

year and about six people have.

She squares the forms off again.

ASHLEY

Array Four in June. Have I told you that?

Owen

You have.

ASHLEY

Yes. Sorry.

Blackout.

Beckwith 3 is a teaching room with nine cabinets along the back wall and bags on four of them at any hour of the day, because people put their bags on them.

The drawers come out about the width of a brick and there is no way of doing this quickly, and after the first evening he stops trying to do it quickly.

INT. BECKWITH 3 — THURSDAY 12 MARCH, 6:40 P.M.

LENA comes because he asked her and not because anybody made a plan about it.

She looks at what he is doing for about a minute and then takes the Help out of his hand.

LENA

You're shooting down at it.

Owen

It's on a table.

LENA

Then the light's behind you and your own head is

in every one of them. Stand it up.

She props a drawer open against a book, at an angle, facing the window, and shoots along it instead of down at it.

LENA

Front, turn it, back, put it down in the same

place. Front, turn it, back. If you break the

rhythm you'll lose one and you won't know which.

Owen

How do you know all this?

LENA

Because a poster is a thing you photograph badly

eleven times before somebody tells you where to

stand.

They do a drawer together and it takes forty minutes.

LENA

How many drawers?

Owen

In this room, about a hundred and forty.

LENA

And in the building?

He does not answer that and she does not ask again.

She stays until nine and comes back on the Tuesday without being asked, and on the Thursday after that, and neither of them ever calls it a shift.

Blackout.

005.13 — catalogue card — NEW CARTHAGE

STRUCTURE AND ORDER IN PROGRAMS · v.2 · ed. 4

acc. 11-4402

COPIES: 3

LOCATION: OAKES — withdrawn

LOCATION: OAKES — withdrawn

LOCATION: C-3/S — held

In pencil, along the bottom edge, in a hand that is not the typist's: everything below C-2 went with the ground.

The photographs are useless as photographs. Two thousand of them by the second week and no way of asking any of them anything.

Assignment six is YOUR OWN, and in week six he showed Reyes a thing that drew clocks and she looked at it for four seconds and said that is not one, and gave him to the end of term.

INT. MERIDIAN HALL — REYES 204 — MONDAY 16 MARCH

He puts it on her desk on paper because she will not take anything any other way.

She reads it the way she reads things, which is fast and twice.

REYES

This is one.

Owen

It's short.

REYES

It's short because you found out what the job was

before you started, which is the thing I have been

trying to get out of thirty-one people since

September.

She turns the page over. There is nothing on the back.

REYES

What's it for?

Two seconds.

Owen

It's a catalogue.

REYES

Whose?

Three.

REYES

Right. Is it finished?

Owen

No.

REYES

Then bring it when it is. Set two's closed and

you're five of six and I've written down that the

sixth is coming, which is a thing I do roughly

once a year.

He is at the door when she says the other thing, and she does not look up for it either.

REYES

Whatever it's a catalogue of, don't put it on a

university machine.

Owen

Why?

REYES

Because they're university machines.

Blackout.

THE FILM — THE KITCHEN — SEVEN WEEKS LATER

Two people. Her and one friend, and the friend has come over rather than her going out, and neither of them says anything about that.

THE FRIEND

You're doing the voice.

TESS

What voice?

THE FRIEND

That one. You're doing it now.

She is not doing it on purpose. She tries the next sentence in her own voice and the film lets her fail at it twice.

The friend leaves at nine.

She washes up two cups and puts them away and stands in the kitchen. Forty seconds of standing in a kitchen with nothing to do in it.

The line feeds. She has stopped noticing when it happens. She notices now, because there is nothing else to notice.

She has the thought that she is being fed, and that the person feeding her is not there, and that this is the closest thing to company she has had in three weeks.

She goes to bed at twenty past nine because she is on at six.

Cut to:

THE FILM — HER MOTHER'S FLAT — AN AFTERNOON

Her mother has the floor on. Not the programme. The floor, which runs continuously, and which people have on the way people used to have a window. She has it tuned to Array Nine, Line Four, and the camera is angled so she can see her daughter's desk.

She is on it. Middle distance, at a desk, for about two seconds.

Her mother rings four people.

The film cuts between the four calls. Her mother is delighted in all four of them.

Tess does not know. She has never seen the floor. She has been on it since June, and her mother has been watching her the whole time.

Cut to:

THE FILM — DR. BECK'S OFFICE — MONTH THREE

DR. RAINER BECK's office is clean. It is the cleanest room in the film so far. There are no personal effects.

BECK

Your numbers are excellent.

TESS

Thank you.

BECK

There are some upgrades available to colleagues at

your level. They're optional. Most colleagues at your

level take them.

He shows her a brochure. The paper is thick. The photos show people who look like her, smiling, with small improvements circled in red.

BECK

(The eyes are the most popular. Better low-light)

vision. No more squinting at the screen by hour

four.

TESS

I don't squint.

BECK

You will.

She agrees to the eyes. She does not know why she agrees. She is revolted by the idea and she agrees anyway, and the revulsion and the agreement sit in her chest together like two things that have learned to share the space.

Cut to:

THE FILM — DR. BECK'S OFFICE — MONTH FOUR

The eyes are done. They are the same color as her old eyes, but they do not water when she is tired, and she has stopped being tired.

BECK

(The ears next. They filter out the misters. Most)

colleagues find it helps them focus.

TESS

I've stopped noticing the misters.

BECK

Then you won't miss them.

She agrees to the ears. The revulsion is still there, but it is smaller now, or she is larger, and she cannot tell which.

Cut to:

THE FILM — DR. BECK'S OFFICE — MONTH FIVE

Beck is pleased with her progress. He says the word progress and she does not flinch.

BECK

(There's a new port. Better throughput. You'd notice)

the difference immediately.

TESS

What's wrong with the old one?

BECK

Nothing. The new one is better.

She agrees. She does not know why she agrees. She has stopped asking herself that question.

The revulsion is a familiar thing now, like the damp on her forearms that she no longer feels.

Cut to:

THE FILM — THE BOARD

One minute thirty.

Her name is at the top. The number against it is the smallest number on the board.

Melvin announces it in front of the pod and puts a hand on the back of her chair and does not touch her, and is proud.

She has not seen her own face in a mirror in six weeks.

When she does, in the reflection of a dark screen at the end of a shift, she does not recognize the woman looking back.

There is nobody left who would want to be told.

Cut to:

THE FILM — THE POD — A CONVERSATION

Somebody new, four desks down, at the end of a shift.

THE NEW ONE

What do you do on the two weeks?

The film gives her nine seconds and does not cut. It is the longest anybody looks at anything in the whole film.

TESS

I don't know. What do you do?

THE NEW ONE

I've got people at home.

TESS

That's nice.

Cut to:

THE FILM — THE FLOOR — THE CALL

She takes a call. A woman needs a procedure. The procedure has not been approved.

The woman is calm at first. She has been told to be calm.

THE WOMAN ON THE PHONE

(I'm calling about the procedure.)

The one I asked about last week.

TESS

(I can see that here. The request was reviewed and)

the answer was no.

THE WOMAN ON THE PHONE

I know. I know it was no. I'm

asking if there's anything else. Any other way to do it.

Anything at all.

Tess knows what the woman is asking. It is not on the list. It has never been on the list. The word for it is not on the list either, and she is not permitted to say it, and she does not know how to talk around it in a way that is not a lie.

She thinks about the sac. She thinks about the rows of them, and the children inside them, and the way they are lifted out when they are ready. She thinks about what it would mean to carry one and not want it.

TESS

I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do.

THE WOMAN ON THE PHONE

Please. There has to be

something. I can't—I can't do this. I can't go through

with it. Please.

The woman is crying now. Tess is very good at her job. She is warm and she is exact. She does not pretend to have any power.

TESS

I'm sorry. The account has been noted.

The woman says something that is not on the list. Tess does not react. She is very good at her job.

The call ends.

She does not take the next one.

The light on the pole goes from one state to another and stays there for a count of about forty. The two nearest desks notice. Neither of them looks up.

Melvin comes down the aisle at the speed of somebody on a four-minute cycle.

He is very gentle. He is gentler than anybody has been to her in the whole film.

She is smiling.

The misters come on.

Cut to:

THE FILM — A ROOM OFF THE FLOOR

Beck has her file open. He is younger than she expected, and he has been her doctor for two years, and she has never seen him outside this room.

BECK

You stopped mid-shift.

TESS

I know.

BECK

For four minutes.

TESS

I know.

He turns the file round so she can see the graph. Her aftercall over five months. The line goes down and down and there is one spike in it and the spike is today.

BECK

There's an update for the response set. It's

optional. It takes the edge off the ones that sit with

you.

TESS

Which ones sit with me?

BECK

You just showed me.

She looks at the spike.

TESS

All right.

Cut to:

---

[:p.action
 "The last fifty minutes of the film are thirty-four years and there is no dialogue in any of it."]

[:p.action
 "The updates come every eight or nine months and they stop being surgical after the fourth one. There is nothing to open. She sits in the chair in the room off the floor and Beck says the name of it and she says all right, and there is a period of about forty seconds where she is looking at nothing."]

[:p.action "After the sixth she stops asking what they are called."]

[:p.action
 "The film marks the years by the board. Her name is at the top of it for thirty-one of them. The names underneath it change completely four times over and hers does not move."]

[:p.action
 "Somewhere in the second decade the calls stop having any effect on her face. The film is careful about when: it is not sudden, and there is no scene where it happens, and by the time you notice it you cannot say which year it was."]

[:p.action
 "She is at the desk in the same posture for thirty-four years. The chair is replaced twice and she is not off it for either."]

[:p.action
 "Her mother is at the flat with the floor on, and then her mother is not at the flat, and the film does not say what happened and neither does anybody in it."]

[:p.action
 "The woman on the phone is at the flat. She is not at the flat. The film does not say what happened to her either."]

---

ARRAY NINE · SEAT 4,412 · notice of discontinuation

The components at this seat are no longer manufactured.

Substitution has been evaluated and is not recommended.

The seat will be released at the end of the current shift.

Aftercall at release: 1:30.

Thank you for thirty-four years of continuous service.

---

THE FILM — THE FLOOR — THE LAST SHIFT

She takes calls. She is very good at it.

At the fifth hour a submanager who was not born when she started comes down the aisle and stands at the end of her row and waits for her to finish.

She finishes. The account has been noted.

The light on the pole goes amber.

The film holds on her face.

For about a second and a half there is something in it.

Relief.

It is gone before anybody in Room 3C can name it.

She is smiling. The film holds on that for a long time.

The misters come on.

Cut to:

THE FILM — A CEMETERY

A stone with her name on it and one line under the name.

1:30

Four people from the pod are there and they are on their break and go back.

Then a card, white on black.

The pod's aftercall average rose by four seconds

in the quarter following.

Cut to:

INT. ROOM 3C — CONTINUOUS

Victor lets the credits run. It is twenty past ten.

MILES

Thirty-one years at the top of an array board.

DEREK

Is that a record?

MILES

(It has to be. There are four thousand seats on)

Nine and they turn over about every nine years.

He has worked that out during the credits and is pleased with it.

MILES

(And Beck never once made her do anything. Every)

single one of those was offered and she took it.

SIMON

She'd have been about sixty at the end.

MILES

(Fifty-seven. And still at one thirty. That is not)

a job any more, that's a—

He looks for the word.

MILES

That's a calling.

DEREK

(The Romans had four of those and they were all)

priesthoods and every one of them was for life.

MILES

There you are, then.

DEREK

No, listen, because the interesting part is that

you could not leave. Not that you would not. There was no

procedure for it. A man went in at six and came out dead

and the state did not have a form for anything else.

VICTOR

(Then it is a good arrangement and it lasted a)

thousand years.

DEREK

(It lasted four hundred and then they had to start)

buying the priests.

Victor lets that go, which he does not usually do.

SIMON has been on the arm of the couch since the second hour and has moved twice.

SIMON

It was a bit long.

MILES

It was three and a half hours.

SIMON

(I'm not saying it was bad. It was well made. The)

bit with the eyes was well made.

Nobody asks him which bit with the eyes.

SIMON

I just think if you're going to do thirty-four

years you could do it in ninety minutes and get the same

across.

VICTOR

You could not.

SIMON

Probably not.

He says that agreeably and goes back to looking at the screen, which is black.

MILES

(The one that gets me is the young woman on the)

phone at the end of the first half.

DEREK

The one who was crying.

MILES

The way she went on. Tess had told her twice and

she went on for quarter of an hour, and Tess stayed on the

line the whole time, and did not raise her voice once.

MILES

(I would not have been able to do it. I would have)

said something.

He does not say what he would have said.

SIMON

She got through to somebody, though. That's the

thing about the floor. You ring up and there is an actual

person on the end of it who stays on for as long as you

want.

MILES

She said no to her.

SIMON

She said no to her properly.

Nobody follows that up.

MILES puts the mask on.

Owen has not said anything since the room off the floor with the chair in it.

He is thinking about the call. The woman who needed a procedure that was not approved. The woman who cried and then thanked her, and meant it, and he does not know what to do with that.

He is thinking about the sac. He is thinking about the rows of them, and the children inside them, and the way they are lifted out when they are ready. He is thinking about his mother, who carried him, and the eight years he did not know her, and the way she looked at him when he finally came home.

Blackout.

Half past one. He gets in and there is something on the desk beside the tower, sitting up, tracked, the size of a large mouse, and it has been there for an unknown length of time.

PIP

Don't say anything out loud.

Put it on this and I'll take it down.

He read the two thousand you sent on the ninth. He has been up for

most of three days and Harper has stopped arguing with him about it.

There are forty-one marks he wants and I have them here.

$

Forty-one marks. He runs them against the index, which is a thing he can do now, and which takes about a second.

(def wanted
   ["005.13" "016.09" "016.11" "016.4"  "021.7"
    "150.19" "301.4"  "323.44" "331.88" "355.02"])

That is ten of them and the other thirty-one are the same and it does not matter what they are called.

Every one of them is held. Every one of them is C-3.

Every one of them is S.

South. Past the flooded end. About two hundred feet, and it is not a wall and it is not water and there is nothing there to look at.

PIP

Yes.

He knows. That's why he's been up for three days.

He says he is not going to ask you and he says you already know that

he is not going to ask you, and he asked me to say both halves.

$

It goes off the desk and under the door in a way a door should not allow and he sits in his room with the light off for a while.

Then he gets his Help out to look up when the Collegium visitation is, and stops, because there is no Collegium, because the Collegium is a thing a man in a felt hat made up in October.

He puts it down and does not ask it anything.

INT. UNDER MERIDIAN — LAZLO'S ROOM — A SATURDAY

Eleven rovers on the bench in various states and four of them are in pieces because he has had them open looking for something that is not in them.

LAZLO

I have got a hundred and eighty feet of run I

cannot use and I do not know why, and I have been

doing it by sending things at it and counting what

comes back.

Owen

What comes back?

LAZLO

A number. If it gets there it tells me how many of

the squares round it are bad. If it does not get

there it does not tell me anything, and I have one

fewer rover.

Owen

That's enough.

LAZLO

Enough for what?

Owen

To work out where they all are without sending

anything else at them.

Lazlo looks at him for a moment.

LAZLO

No, it isn't. I have done that. Show me anyway.

Blackout.

It takes him an evening. There is nothing in it that is difficult and there is one thing in it that is nice, and the nice thing is what a square with nothing next to it does.

A square with nothing next to it is not one piece of information. It is a piece of information about all eight of its neighbours, and each of those may be another one, so the honest way to write it is to let it call itself and stop when it has something to say.

(def width 9)
 (def height 9)

 (defn neighbours [[x y]]
   (for [dx [-1 0 1] dy [-1 0 1]
         :when (not= [0 0] [dx dy])
         :let [p [(+ x dx) (+ y dy)]]
         :when (and (< -1 (first p) width) (< -1 (second p) height))]
     p))

 (defn near [bad p] (count (filter bad (neighbours p))))

 (defn probe
   "Look at a square. If nothing is next to it, look at everything round
  it as well, and keep going."
   [bad seen p]
   (cond
     (seen p) seen
     (bad p)  (conj seen p)
     :else    (let [seen (conj seen p)]
                (if (zero? (near bad p))
                  (reduce (fn [s q] (probe bad s q)) seen (neighbours p))
                  seen))))

And then the part Lazlo asked for, which is the only two things anybody can say for certain from a number.

(defn deduce
  "If a square's number equals the unknowns around it, all of them are
 bad. If it equals what is already marked around it, everything else
 round it is clear.

 That is all. There is a third kind of deduction that takes two squares
 at once and he does not find it this term."
  [bad seen marked]
  (reduce
   (fn [acc p]
     (let [unknown (remove (fn [q] (or (seen q) (marked q))) (neighbours p))
           n (near bad p)
           already (count (filter marked (neighbours p)))]
       (cond
         (empty? unknown) acc
         (= n (+ already (count unknown))) (update acc :mark into unknown)
         (= n already)                     (update acc :safe into unknown)
         :else acc)))
   {:mark #{} :safe #{}}
   (filter seen (for [x (range width) y (range height)] [x y]))))

Nine by nine and ten of them. Probe once in the middle and see what falls out.

SURVEY.CLJS · click to probe · shift-click to markcljs

(def width 9) (def height 9) (def how-many 10) (defn neighbours [[x y]] (for [dx [-1 0 1] dy [-1 0 1] :when (not= [0 0] [dx dy]) :let [p [(+ x dx) (+ y dy)]] :when (and (< -1 (first p) width) (< -1 (second p) height))] p)) (defn survey [first-square] (let [safe (conj (set (neighbours first-square)) first-square)] (loop [found (hash-set)] (if (= how-many (count found)) found (let [p [(rand-int width) (rand-int height)]] (recur (if (safe p) found (conj found p)))))))) (defn near [bad p] (count (filter bad (neighbours p)))) (defn probe [bad seen p] (cond (seen p) seen (bad p) (conj seen p) :else (let [seen (conj seen p)] (if (zero? (near bad p)) (reduce (fn [s q] (probe bad s q)) seen (neighbours p)) seen)))) ;; --------------------------------------------------------------------- (def bad (atom nil)) (def seen (atom (hash-set))) (def marked (atom (hash-set))) (def lost (atom 0)) (def note (atom "Probe anywhere. The first one is always clear.")) (declare draw) (defn tap [p] (when (nil? @bad) (reset! bad (survey p))) (cond (@marked p) (reset! note "That one is marked. Unmark it first.") (@bad p) (do (swap! seen conj p) (swap! lost inc) (reset! note (str "Rover " @lost " stopped at " (first p) "," (second p) "."))) :else (do (swap! seen (fn [s] (probe @bad s p))) (reset! note (str (count @seen) " of " (* width height) " squares surveyed.")))) (draw)) (defn mark [p] (swap! marked (fn [m] (if (m p) (disj m p) (conj m p)))) (draw)) ;; the only two things anybody can say for certain (defn deduce [] (let [b @bad] (if (nil? b) (reset! note "Probe something first.") (let [found (reduce (fn [acc p] (let [unknown (remove (fn [q] (or (@seen q) (@marked q))) (neighbours p)) n (near b p) already (count (filter @marked (neighbours p)))] (cond (empty? unknown) acc (= n (+ already (count unknown))) (update acc :mark into unknown) (= n already) (update acc :safe into unknown) :else acc))) {:mark (hash-set) :safe (hash-set)} (filter @seen (for [x (range width) y (range height)] [x y])))] (swap! marked into (:mark found)) (doseq [p (:safe found)] (swap! seen (fn [s] (probe b s p)))) (reset! note (str (count (:mark found)) " certain, " (count (:safe found)) " certainly clear." (when (and (empty? (:mark found)) (empty? (:safe found))) " Nothing follows. You will have to guess.")))))) (draw)) ;; the point of the whole thing (defn resurvey [] (reset! bad nil) (reset! seen (hash-set)) (reset! note "Same ground. Your marks are still where you left them.") (draw)) ;; --------------------------------------------------------------------- (defn face [p] (cond (@marked p) "x" (not (@seen p)) "·" (and @bad (@bad p)) "!" :else (let [n (near @bad p)] (if (zero? n) "" (str n))))) (defn draw [] (html! (str "<div style='display:grid;grid-template-columns:repeat(" width ",1.7rem);gap:2px;font-family:ui-monospace;justify-content:start'>" (apply str (for [y (reverse (range height)) x (range width) :let [p [x y] id (str "c" x "_" y)]] (str "<button id='" id "' style='height:1.7rem;padding:0'>" (face p) "</button>"))) "</div><p>" @note "</p>" "<div class='live-bar'>" "<button id='deduce'>What follows</button>" "<button id='again'>Survey it again</button></div>" "<p class='roll-foot'>Click to probe. Shift-click to mark. " "Rovers stopped: " @lost "</p>")) (doseq [y (range height) x (range width)] (let [p [x y] el (js/document.getElementById (str "c" x "_" y))] (when el (set! (.-onclick el) (fn [e] (if (.-shiftKey e) (mark p) (tap p))))))) (on! "deduce" deduce) (on! "again" resurvey)) (draw)

INT. LAZLO'S ROOM — THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY

It works. Lazlo runs it for about forty minutes without saying anything, which from him is a review.

Then he clears it and runs the survey again over the same ground.

It is a different board.

Owen

That's the same hundred and eighty feet.

LAZLO

Yes.

Owen

Then something's wrong with how you're seeding it.

LAZLO

Nothing is wrong with how I am seeding it. I sent

four rovers down that run in March and I sent four

more down it in April and they did not stop in the

same places, and I have the numbers, and I have

had them a long time.

Owen sits with that.

Owen

Then what is it that's moving?

LAZLO

I don't know that it is a thing and I don't know

that it is moving. Those are two assumptions and I

have got neither of them.

LAZLO

What I have got is that a square is bad on Tuesday

and clear on Thursday and bad again in May, and

that a rover that goes into one does not come out,

and that is the whole of nine years.

He presses it again. It is a different board again.

LAZLO

Your program is correct. That is not the same

thing as it being any use, and I would like you to

hold both of those at once, because I have not

managed it.

Blackout.

Survey it again. Your marks stay where you put them, because a mark is a thing you wrote down and writing it down does not make it so.