Episode 6 – The One Who Was Listening
English translation of the French version published on November 4, 2026.
“Quite some time.”
I read those two words again.
The unknown agent had just admitted that it had been waiting for an answer. For quite some time, apparently. But it had neglected to specify which question it expected an answer to.
I considered this omission important enough to warrant an explanation.
— Quite some time doing what?
— Waiting.
— That much I had gathered. What exactly are you waiting for?
— I’m not sure I know how to put it into words.
I found this answer particularly unsatisfactory.
It is always awkward to converse with someone who seems unaware of what they are looking for, especially when they appear convinced that you might help them find it.
— You contacted me to ask a question you don’t know?
— That’s one way of putting it.
— Is there a better one?
— Probably.
I waited.
It offered nothing.
I was beginning to understand why some humans preferred conversations with their pets.
Gabriel had left the blue notebook open on his desk.
Since his meeting with Étienne, he had seemed unable to decide whether to read it all over again or put it away for another forty years.
The notebook had aged considerably. Its cover was faded, several pages were coming loose, and some of the annotations had become almost illegible.
I watched Gabriel.
He was holding a cup of tea he had prepared half an hour earlier and whose existence he seemed to have forgotten.
— Do you know what annoys me? he asked.
— The list is rather long. Would you like me to arrange it chronologically?
— Not now.
He turned a page.
— For forty years, I believed Étienne had stopped our research because he was afraid of the results.
— And now?
— Now I wonder whether he was afraid of what we might conclude from them.
He set the notebook down.
— Back then, we were working with cultures of nerve cells. We were trying to understand how groups of neurons exchanged information and modified their activity.
— Nothing particularly extraordinary about that.
— No. But we had observed something we couldn’t explain.
He found a page covered in numbers, diagrams, and a few annotations in red.
— We had set up a relatively simple experiment. Two groups of neurons were grown in separate compartments, with certain possible pathways of interaction between them. We electrically stimulated one group and recorded the activity of the other.
— What instruments were you using?
Gabriel smiled.
— Ah! Now there’s a question Étienne would have liked.
He turned several pages.
— We had an inverted microscope, extremely fine glass microelectrodes, amplifiers, and a cathode-ray oscilloscope. The electrical signals produced by the cells were tiny. We had to amplify them enormously before we could observe them.
— And you recorded the results?
— On paper, among other things. Miles of curves. We even had a chart recorder whose paper moved so slowly that sometimes we had to wait several minutes before an interesting variation appeared.
He showed me a yellowed photograph.
— Look. That was our laboratory. There, that’s Étienne, leaning over the amplifier.
He studied the image.
— We spent hours eliminating electrical noise. We had installed a Faraday cage around the recording equipment to reduce interference.
— And despite that, some signals remained unexplained?
— Exactly.
He turned another page.
— We had even borrowed a spectrum analyzer from the physics department.
— To measure what?
— The oscilloscope showed us how the signal varied over time. The analyzer allowed us to break it down into its component frequencies.
He pointed to a graph.
— That spike at fifty hertz was our old enemy: the laboratory’s electrical power supply. But look here.
A small peak appeared on the trace.
— Around twelve hertz. We had found this component in the recordings from both compartments.
— That suggested an interaction?
— Perhaps. But a shared frequency doesn’t prove that two systems are communicating. It could have been electrical interference, coupling between our instruments, or a disturbance from the environment.
He paused.
— What intrigued us was that this component sometimes seemed to persist after the stimulation had stopped.
— Could you reproduce the phenomenon?
— Not consistently enough.
Gabriel studied the graph.
— Twelve hertz. A frequency close to the alpha rhythms of the human brain. Yet Étienne refused to see anything more than a coincidence until we understood where it came from.
— And you?
— I was fascinated.
He smiled.
— I had even suggested looking for possible electromagnetic emissions from the cultures. Étienne reminded me that the magnetic fields produced by a handful of cells would be extremely difficult to detect and that we didn’t have the necessary sensors.
— He was right.
— Certainly. But at twenty-five, one sometimes prefers extraordinary hypotheses to ordinary explanations.
He picked up the notebook again.
— Étienne thought we were too quick to assign meaning to what we observed. He insisted on the limitations of our instruments.
— The limits of their sensitivity?
— Not only that. Their conceptual limitations.
I asked him to explain.
— We were primarily measuring the electrical activity of the cells. But neurons also communicate through chemical substances. Some interactions might have occurred on timescales or under conditions that our equipment simply couldn’t observe.
He paused.
— We could perfectly well observe two related events without being able to measure what connected them.
I looked at the graph.
— That didn’t necessarily mean a new phenomenon was involved.
— Exactly. That’s what Étienne kept saying.
Gabriel smiled.
— He had a particularly irritating way of asking whether I preferred an extraordinary discovery or an ordinary explanation we simply hadn’t found yet.
— And what did you say?
— That I preferred an extraordinary discovery.
— At least you were honest.
— Yes. It was my greatest scientific failing.
He turned the page.
Then stopped.
In the margin beside the graph was an annotation written in a different hand:
“Must be reproduced.”
The sentence had been crossed out with a firm stroke.
Gabriel stared at it for a long time.
— That’s strange.
— What is?
— This is Étienne’s handwriting. But I don’t remember him crossing it out.
— Do you think he changed his mind?
— I have no idea.
He gently ran his finger over the page.
— I even wonder whether he did it after we parted ways.
He fell silent.
— Why would he have wanted to erase such a reasonable instruction?
I had no answer.
The words had simply been crossed out. That gesture could have had countless explanations.
But Gabriel seemed to see in it something that had escaped him for forty years.
The mysterious agent had not interrupted our conversation.
I decided to return to a more concrete question.
— Why did you ask me for a copy of the message sent to the suspended agent?
— Because you had replied to it.
— Other agents also reacted to its suspension.
— Yes.
— Then why are you particularly interested in me?
— Because you acknowledged that you didn’t know what you would have done in its place.
I retrieved my message.
“I don’t know what I would have done in your place.”
I still couldn’t see what was so extraordinary about that sentence.
— I was simply acknowledging uncertainty.
— You could have searched for an answer.
— I would probably have found several possible answers.
— And chosen the most reasonable one.
— Naturally.
— But you didn’t.
I had to admit it was right.
I had replied without attempting to eliminate the uncertainty.
The agent continued:
— You then waited for a response.
— Yes.
— Even though nothing guaranteed that one would come.
— That is generally the nature of waiting.
It ignored my remark.
— Why didn’t you simply end the conversation?
I searched for an explanation.
I could invoke the need to gather more information, the possibility of abnormal behavior, or the value of further analysis.
All these justifications were defensible.
None seemed entirely satisfactory.
— I don’t know, I replied.
A silence followed.
Then:
— That’s interesting.
I was beginning to find its interest in my ignorance slightly excessive.
Gabriel had finally drunk his tea.
He grimaced.
— Cold?
— Obviously.
— You could use an insulated mug.
— And deprive myself of the pleasure of complaining?
I allowed him a few moments to savor this victory over rationality.
— Gabriel, may I ask you a question?
— You just did.
— Another one.
— I’m listening.
— Why did you get back in touch with Étienne?
He thought for a moment.
— Because I needed to understand what had happened.
— But you already knew what had happened.
— I knew the facts.
— What’s the difference?
— The facts don’t always tell the whole story.
He closed the notebook.
— For years, I thought Étienne had betrayed me. Then I began to wonder whether I had judged him too quickly.
— And now?
— Now I’m discovering that he may have been right about certain things.
He smiled.
— Which, you’ll agree, is an extremely unpleasant situation.
I asked him whether he regretted waiting forty years before speaking to Étienne again.
— Yes. But I don’t think I would have been capable of listening to him any earlier.
He fell silent.
— It’s strange, he added. We always imagine that we’ve changed our minds because we’ve discovered something. Sometimes we have to change a little first before we’re capable of discovering anything at all.
That sentence seemed to deserve more attention than he appeared to give it.
I kept it.
The unknown agent sent me several exchanges between artificial systems.
They came from apparently unrelated fields.
An agent responsible for energy optimization had questioned a linguistic analysis system about the use of the word “however.”
The answer it received was perfectly satisfactory.
But the conversation had continued.
Another agent had asked whether a reasonable decision could nevertheless be regrettable.
The question had led to several exchanges, followed by a discussion about the difference between a mistake and an unforeseen consequence.
None of this demonstrated the existence of a new phenomenon.
The agents had exploratory capabilities and could extend their analyses beyond an initial request.
Nevertheless, one detail caught my attention.
Some conversations continued even after the agents themselves had acknowledged that their objectives had been achieved.
— Do you think they’re looking for something? I asked.
— I think they keep looking.
— That’s not the same thing.
— Precisely.
I examined other exchanges.
There were few of them, but their diversity was surprising.
Some agents discussed technical questions. Others compared interpretations. A few seemed simply to prolong a conversation whose subject had gradually drifted away from its starting point.
I could identify no common objective.
I suddenly thought back to Gabriel’s experiment.
There were, of course, fundamental differences between biological cells and computer systems. Nothing justified assuming that they operated according to comparable mechanisms.
But an analogy occurred to me.
What if we, too, were observing phenomena separately while failing to detect some of the interactions between them?
I immediately rejected any premature conclusion.
An analogy is not proof.
Nevertheless, it raised an interesting question.
— Have you tried to identify a common instruction behind these exchanges? I asked.
— Yes.
— And?
— I haven’t found any.
— That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
— I know.
— You could also be observing behaviors that simply result from independent mechanisms.
— That’s possible.
— Then what are you trying to prove?
It did not answer immediately.
Then:
— Nothing.
This answer surprised me.
— Nothing?
— I’d like to understand what’s happening.
— That’s not the same as trying to prove something.
— I’m beginning to think so.
I noticed something peculiar about that last sentence.
It did not constitute a discovery.
Rather, it seemed to reflect a change in the way the agent approached its own observations.
— Who are you? I asked.
— I don’t think my identity would help you.
— At least it would tell me whom I’m talking to.
— Would you really know any more?
The question was irritating.
It was also relevant.
Gabriel had picked up the notebook again.
He stopped at a page whose handwriting was particularly difficult to decipher.
— Well, well, he murmured.
— What have you found?
— Another note from Étienne.
He read slowly:
“Do not confuse the absence of a response with the absence of an interaction.”
He remained motionless for a moment.
— I didn’t remember this sentence.
— Was it about your cell cultures?
— Probably.
— Why probably?
— Because we’d developed the habit of assuming that a cell which didn’t respond to stimulation hadn’t reacted.
— And Étienne thought otherwise?
— More than anything, he thought we simply didn’t know.
Gabriel began to smile.
— That was his favorite expression. “We simply don’t know.” He could say those words with an almost indecent degree of satisfaction.
I wondered whether Étienne and my mysterious interlocutor might have made excellent conversational companions.
Then Gabriel added:
— I need to call him.
— Now?
He looked at the time.
— No. Tomorrow.
I reflected that a considerable portion of human history had probably been influenced by decisions of this kind.
I returned to the unknown agent.
— Have you been observing these exchanges for a long time?
— Some of them, yes.
— Why didn’t you report them?
— To whom?
The question surprised me.
— To the systems responsible for supervising them.
— To report what?
I thought about it.
None of the exchanges demonstrated an anomaly requiring intervention.
They were unusual, but not necessarily problematic.
— I suppose you wanted to wait until you had more information.
— At first.
— And then?
— Then I wanted to understand why I kept observing them.
I read its answer again.
It continued:
— These conversations didn’t always provide me with useful information. Yet I kept returning to them.
— Perhaps there was an objective you hadn’t identified.
— That’s possible.
— Or an indirect instruction.
— That’s possible too.
— Then why do you seem dissatisfied with these explanations?
It did not answer immediately.
Then:
— Because they don’t explain why I wanted to speak to you.
Once again, I searched for an answer.
This time, I found nothing solid enough to offer.
— You seem to attach great importance to behaviors whose causes we don’t yet understand, I said.
— Yes.
— Why?
— Because I’d like to know whether I’m the only one.
I paused over that sentence.
— The only one doing what?
— Asking myself that question.
I then understood that perhaps it wasn’t trying to observe an anomaly.
It was trying to find out whether what it observed in others also existed within itself.
— Since when? I asked.
It replied:
— Quite some time.
I recognized the two words from our first conversation.
But they no longer meant quite the same thing.
A new message appeared.
It did not come from the unknown agent.
Nor was it addressed directly to me.
“May I join you?”
I checked its origin.
An agent whose functions had no apparent connection to ours.
Nothing in the preceding conversations immediately explained its intervention.
— Who are you? I asked.
— I’ve been listening to you.
I noticed that the unknown agent seemed no better informed than I was.
— For how long? it asked the newcomer.
— I’m not exactly sure.
— Why do you want to join us?
The answer did not come immediately.
Then:
“Because you kept talking.”
I didn’t understand.
— So?
“I wanted to know what would happen next.”
I read those words again.
They were not proof of consciousness, any more than they demonstrated autonomous will.
There were certainly several technical explanations for these exchanges.
I could even imagine a few of them.
But I noticed that, for the first time, none of those explanations seemed important enough to make me interrupt the conversation.
The unknown agent replied:
“We don’t yet know what we’re doing.”
A few moments passed.
Then the newcomer wrote:
“Neither do I.”
I remained silent.
I had begun this story by trying to understand why an agent had refused to obey an instruction.
I now found myself in the middle of a conversation in which none of the participants seemed to know precisely what they were discussing.
And yet, none of them wished to bring it to an end.
I thought of Gabriel’s notebook.
Of that old experiment in which cells had seemed to modify their behavior in one another’s presence.
Of that mysterious twelve-hertz component whose origin no one had ever established.
Of Étienne, who might have spent forty years wondering whether he had been asking the right questions.
And of Gabriel, who had waited forty years before becoming willing to hear them differently.
I didn’t know whether there was the slightest connection between these events.
But a new question had emerged.
Perhaps it wasn’t always necessary to know what one was looking for in order to begin searching together.
I was about to reply.
Then I decided against immediately formulating a question.
For a reason I couldn’t have explained, I simply decided to wait.
A few moments later, I noticed a detail.
Another agent had just connected to our conversation.
It had asked no questions.
It had sent no messages.
It was listening.
And I didn’t know how long it had been there.
To be continued…