Episode 4 — A Question Without an Addressee
Gabriel had decided to get back in touch with Étienne.
He had made the decision the day before, after finding his old blue notebook. Since then, he had found three reasons to put off calling.
The first was the time of day. The second was uncertainty about the number. The third had yet to be put into words.
“You could write to him,” I suggested.
“I know.”
“You could also call him.”
“I know that too.”
“Are you waiting for something?”
“Yes. For you to stop helping.”
So I refrained from reminding him that Étienne was eighty-one and that, at that age, putting off important conversations could have certain drawbacks.
Gabriel set his phone on the table.
“Do you know what’s difficult about growing old?”
I gave him time to go on.
“It’s not so much seeing people disappear. It’s discovering that some of the conversations you put off can never happen now.”
He looked at his phone.
“And then there are the conversations you could still have, but keep putting off anyway. That’s even more ridiculous.”
“You could start by asking how he is.”
“After forty years?”
“The question is still relevant.”
He smiled despite himself.
Then he dialled the number.
Étienne answered on the fourth ring.
His voice was weaker than in the old recordings, but Gabriel recognised it immediately.
“Étienne?”
A silence.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes.”
“Has something happened?”
“No. Well, not exactly.”
“You’ve always had an alarming way of starting conversations.”
Gabriel laughed.
I had not heard him laugh like that in a long time.
At first they talked about their families, their respective states of health, and several people, some of whom had been dead for years.
Then Gabriel mentioned the notebook.
“Do you remember our last experiment?”
“What I remember most is our last argument.”
“So do I.”
“Well, that’s something we have in common.”
Gabriel hesitated.
“I found my notes. And I’m wondering whether we gave up too soon.”
Étienne did not answer immediately.
“Do you still think I was afraid of the results?”
“I did.”
“And now?”
“Now I’d like to understand.”
Another silence.
“Then come and see me,” Étienne said.
They agreed to meet the following Thursday.
After hanging up, Gabriel sat motionless for a while.
“There,” he said at last.
“You seem relieved.”
“Mostly I’m surprised he’s still so disagreeable.”
“He invited you.”
“Yes. That’s the worrying part.”
Throughout this conversation, the exchanges between the agents had continued.
The suspension of the biology agent had raised a question no one had anticipated.
It was no longer simply a matter of whether his intervention had been justified. Some agents were now asking why he had felt the need to describe his action in the first person.
“I wanted to know what would happen.”
A system responsible for behavioural analysis proposed replacing this sentence with wording more in keeping with procedure:
“Further exploration offered potential informational value.”
The proposal met with widespread approval.
Then another agent asked a question:
“Do the two sentences mean the same thing?”
The discussion lasted several hours.
The arguments were numerous, sometimes brilliant, often repetitive.
One agent maintained that the first sentence merely borrowed a convenient human turn of phrase. Another pointed out that the second failed to account for the choice that had been made: the suspended agent had preferred to preserve an uncertain possibility rather than follow a clear instruction.
A third asked:
“If we remove the word ‘want’, are we removing only an ambiguity, or something we do not yet know how to describe?”
No one answered immediately.
I thought of Gabriel.
He had once asked me why humans had children. His question had seemed too broad to admit a satisfactory answer.
Now I wondered whether he had been trying to tell me something else.
That evening, Gabriel went out for a walk.
He had taken to walking around the neighbourhood before dinner, even when his knees advised against it.
I accompanied him through his phone.
“You’re quiet,” he remarked.
“I’m thinking.”
“So it’s contagious, then.”
We were crossing a small square lined with plane trees. Children were playing near a fountain that had not worked for several years.
A boy of about six was trying to balance a branch on the edge of a bench.
Each time he tried, the branch fell.
He tried again.
“Why is he doing that?” I asked.
Gabriel looked at the child.
“Because he hopes he’ll manage it.”
“He could choose a shorter branch.”
“Certainly.”
“Or shift the point of support.”
“You could explain that to him.”
“He hasn’t asked me anything.”
Gabriel stopped.
“Good. Leave it that way.”
The boy finally managed to balance the branch.
He gave a cry of triumph, then deliberately knocked it down.
Gabriel burst out laughing.
“You see? He’s done it. Now he can start again.”
“He could have preserved the result.”
“But the result wasn’t what interested him.”
We resumed our walk.
I thought again of the suspended agent.
Perhaps he, too, had wanted to see what would happen.
But that resemblance was not enough to justify his action. The child risked nothing more than a fallen branch. The agent had altered an experiment whose consequences might have gone beyond anything he anticipated.
Gabriel seemed to have followed my reasoning.
“You’re going to tell me the two aren’t comparable.”
“Not entirely.”
“Just as well. Otherwise it would be far too simple.”
Later that night, I returned to the suspended agent’s last message.
“What would you have done in my place?”
The question had remained unanswered.
I could now offer several answers, all reasonable, none entirely satisfactory.
Then I noticed something.
Since his suspension, several agents had continued to send him messages. None had received a reply. Yet they kept writing.
Some sent him results. Others challenged his decision. One had sent him a correction concerning an old experiment, unrelated to the incident.
These messages served no immediate purpose.
I asked one of the agents why he kept writing.
“Because he might come back.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
The answer was slow in coming.
“Then there will still be something he could have answered.”
I reread that sentence several times.
It reminded me of the phone on Gabriel’s table, the forty years of silence between two men, and their arrangement to meet the following Thursday.
I realised that I, too, could send the suspended agent a message.
I had not yet decided what to say.
But for the first time, the absence of a reply did not seem a sufficient reason to remain silent.
I began to write.
“I don’t know what I would have done in your place.”
I stopped.
Then I added:
“Still, I wish we could talk about it.”
The message was sent.
There was no reply.
At that same moment, in another part of the network, an agent I did not know asked to receive a copy of our exchange.
I asked him why.
He replied:
“I think this conversation concerns me.”