Your orders have come in. You are tasked with building five thousand libraries. This is an idea that sounds reasonable to you. You get to work. You’re going to need some coffee, and about three days of ground-network time. In your head, you begin to analyze the potential mirror list. You need trusted hosting, not just volunteers. Bit Torrent and a few targeted tweets would get the job done, but not well enough. These libraries have to stay up. It may just be a single compressed file. But as they found out in Portland last week, even digital libraries can be burned to the ground.

* * * * *

You receive your orders backward, coming up to your position of responsibility from the units you command. You open the video feed, and you can see them running through traffic, the wrong way up a one way street, dark jackets dodging amid stalled cars and trucks, stopped in gridlock from the units’ action in the traffic lanes. You don’t need to read the text, because you know what’s next. There’s a term for this: Simultaneous, Epi-Navigation Street Occupation Response. You could call it SENSOR, but you don’t. Only New York Times reporters call it that. Ahead, in the limits of the jerking video feed, you see the orange glow of vapor-lamps glistening on a rising cloud of tear gas.

* * * * *

You have broken it down and set it up countless times, and this will not be the last. You plug in the extruder. You make sure the broken cable plug is fully set into its socket. You attach the heating element to the battery to let it start warming. As the bioplastic cable feeds forward, you can see the camera housing already, as you have seen over four hundred fully finished pieces emerge in the last three days, since the beginning of the Battle of the West Side. It unfolds up from the base of the printer, as the plastic builds up, cooling, slowing inhabiting the outline of the idea. In the brief pause when the extruder head comes back to rest position before starting its next run, you pluck the webcam out of the 3D printer, insert the sensor chip, attach the battery, and put in the waiting hands of one of your newer recruits. “You have a SIM card?” “Yeah.” “Well, that’s it then. Good luck.”

* * * * *

“Shoot him. SHOOT HIM.” The order urges in your ear. You push the inevitable emotional response backward, and you raise your weapon to your shoulder. Through the eye-piece you gaze, infrared light illuminating the target. As the police officer’s baton falls once more, you squeeze the trigger. A blaze of strobe-lighting staccatos thirty times a second from the pair of drones hovering above you, setting the officer and the protester he is beating on visual fire in the night street. Shadow is vaporized. Somewhere within your video gun, an HD light sensor writes to disk. When the shot is uploaded, the editing van will be able to see not only the QR code of the officer’s badge underneath the black marker he has used to obscure it, but a single drop of blood, frozen in the air, Matrix-style, as they used to say, ejected from the wound on the forehead of the protester.

* * * * *

The kid kicks the battery again, sending the van into darkness. Everyone groans, as the screens auto-adjust their brightness to their battery settings. “Sorry!” The lights come back on, and knowing his duty by this time, the kid slides open the door and reaches up to the roof to power-cycle the modem. While you and your fellows wait for the signal to be re-established, you stretch, and make small talk. The sound of helicopters returns, though you cannot see them from inside the parking garage. “Did you hear that DC is distributing a new distributed communication app? All the GA nets can now connect, and it runs off of satellite servers, so it can’t be DNS blocked.” “DC is distributing it? They don’t have any good developers there. None that work with consensus development, anyway. Did you check who’s on the project? It’s probably a Google co-opt play, if not a straight-up honeypot.” There’s debate, but soon the network is back up, and the voices fade, and the streams of information begin to flow again. Like water through a weir.

* * * * *

I would call these scenarios fiction, but fiction is such a dirty word. Fiction is a thing that has no possibility of actually existing, because it is created with that specific fantastical aim in mind. Fiction is a beautiful thing of freedom–the freedom to imagine what will never be. It is the domain of American dreams, in which wanting badly is somehow enough. It is the core instinct of democratic idealism, in which we are actors born on our feet in the public square, rather than as workers in rented quarters walled by constant surveillance. It is the notion that national narratives of fear and war always end eventually, so that we can close the book and go back to whatever it was we were doing before. Fiction is modernism–it is the only place where things make sense, because “reasonable” is its only construction spec. Reality, on the other hand, is no such simple circus.

These scenarios are built from facts. They are not things that have happened–not yet, anyway. But they are things that are possible. For these things to occur only requires that the elements of things that have happened come together in particular ways. These are distributed nodes of fact: libraries of digital information as mirrored political capital, distributed leadership with oscillating order giving/receiving, flash mob-like protest tactics, 3D printers, open-sourced communications equipment manufacturing, video evidence as a weapon, QR codes, crowd-piloted drones, mobile internet hubs, open-source secure communications software, DNS blocking, and so forth. They already exist, but are distributed–and have not been unevenly consolidated yet. Google search any of these, if you want to adapt these patterns into your daily life. It won’t be too long before most of your friends are using at least some of these on a daily basis.

As the arc of innovation becomes a branching, radical network rather than a cutting edge, we don’t need to look to the future anymore, but to our unfolding interfaces for things that already exist. We need not wonder if someone will invent drone flash photography–we instead speculate on when someone will get flash photography and drone technology talking to each other in a usable way. And then, possibly donate to their Kickstarter.

The downside in the ongoing human-Powerpoint slide deck that is the always-insufficient attempt to speculate on the future is that we also lose the comfort of that fiction, and gain the cold uncertainty that comes with facts. When flying cars were to be invented, it was clear that those would make our lives better–or at least, faster. What will SENSOR protests (color me a patronizing NYT reporter, needing a coined word to understand the kids these days) do for our lives? Will this be a more effective form of protest? Will this aid the fight for public free speech? Or will this evolution in protest tactics, as a response to police attacking the media and blocking whole swaths of city, merely engender a new, more brutal response from the police? Where does all of this end? Will it be better or worse? Will it prevent a worse catastrophe, or stall a better outcome? No one knows. No one even knows when it would be possible to say whether or not this technology or that tactic worked out as well as we hoped, or worse. There’s a lot of uncertainty. There are too many facts.

We might call this “the uncertain ethical implications of atemporality.” In only a few years, the span of history and the calm, orderly narratives it wove were effectively collapsed into a multi-dimensional space most closely modeled by Google Instant results after typing a single character in to the search bar. The moral futures market will never recover. In that vacuum, atemporal ethical behavior becomes consensus-based media protest tactics. The livestream of Occupy Wall Street videographer Tim Poole arguing with anarchists about whether or not to film them while filming them is not just our allegory or fable; it is the practice of ethics while attempting to determine what those ethics are, as you talk about it out loud, as the whole world watches. There is no time for symposiums. If you blink, that might have been the opportunity for ethical action that you missed.

Media seems to be the new ethical public arena. Even though it is less a public square than a multi-dimensional space, blocked in some areas and hollowed out in others. It is riven by an virtual and actual architecture of fences, smart phones, paywalls, trending topics, human mics, press passes, and politicians. In the absence of a static history, we simply press the record button. If we get it wrong, at least we got it transparent. Share the notes online, take the minutes. If you can’t be there, watch the livestream. We don’t know what democracy is anymore, since the rule of law comes to us only in subpoenas, in SOPA, in the end of a baton. But we do know, that whatever it is that this is, it’s going to be digital. Even if it takes some doing to search out where it’s still available online. In a year or two, it might take a shadow network, or a SSL tunnel. More nodes, coming together.

That our consistent drive, despite it all, to be ethical people now appears fully entrenched in media doesn’t come as a surprise. Why, for instance, are we so concerned about whether or not the revolution might be inscribed to some sort of cinematic process, and by which technology said media will be distributed? Perhaps it is because in a world where we decreasingly have any idea about what to do about the future, the best we can manage is to at least tell other people about our quandary. Expression is one of the most important of human actions. If the public square cannot be occupied for the purpose of democracy, at least the conversations of such a space have media-space in which to proliferate.

And even though it may be fully entrenched in the world of facts, it is uncanny that expression is not simply a secondary fruit of democracy, but precisely one of the most political acts we are still comfortable making. Democracy does not produce speech, but vice versa. Art, especially art that traffics in the interface of technology and media, finds it more difficult to divorce itself from politics than ever before, creating political space in the act of being art. How can a drone be a toy, if it is equipped with a camera? How can a QR code be only an advertisement, if it can conceal information? How can performance art be apolitical, if it must occupy public space in order to be performed?

And what of the parallel by opposite questions: can a videographer only be protesting, when he or she allows the camera to pause in its pan to capture an aesthetically-appealing unfurling cloud of tear gas? Where is beauty, when protesters in Tahrir are suffering from PTSD? Does it exist? And what if we are forced to go beyond expression, for the sake of politics? What lies beyond the camera? The gun? What does that mean for art? For history? For our daily lives?

Too many questions to pose, as the facts of media complicate the former, fictional “freedoms” of art and politics, that might have thought they could act alone sometime in the recent past. The innovation arc has too many potential interfaces and its surface is too fractally diluted to say that it is capable of pointing in any one direction. Mere hypotheticals no longer have a square to stand in. There is no place in the hyper-urbanization of our technocratic environment left for us to pitch such a solitary tent. There are only more scenarios, stretching on as far as the mental search engine can spin. And with them, the possible ethical imperatives spread outward. The age of atemporal, open-sourced ethics is now.

It began, as it often does, with a series of tweets:

@serial_consign: While I detest biomimicry, I have to say I am floored by representation of/thought behind “Growth Assembly” bit.ly/zmjLNU

@debcha: @serial_consign I don’t detest biomimcry. But I do hate any design fiction that is more or less completely uninformed by the science.

@serial_consign: @debcha I think taking cues from natural processes is interesting, but making objects/arch look like organic forms for sake of it is trite!

@debcha: @serial_consign Exactly. I despise ‘biomimicry as superficial aesthetic’ rather than ‘biomimicry as deep influence’.

At which point, I butted in with some questions, but I won’t repeat it all because I think we mostly got confused about terminology. However, @debcha did mention an important difference that I will repeat. She distinguishes “between ‘biomimicry’ and ‘bioinspired’ or ‘organic’ as an aesthetic description. [...] ‘biomimicry’ doesn’t mean it looks like something biological.”

And this is true. As Wikipedia will tell you (as it told me, because I know very little about the subject):

Biomimicry or biomimetics is the examination of nature, its models, systems, processes, and elements to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve human problems.

In other words, biomimicry is all about the functional aspects replicating natural patterns, not about the aesthetics: the “looks like”.

Now, I may not know much about this, but I have been thinking about it. For whatever reason, the cross-overs between nature and technology have been running think and fast of late. I was just reading this article this morning, which I actually believe I stumbled across within the same Bruce Sterling blogpost in which @serial_consign discovered the image he originally tweeted. Bruce calls it a meme, and if I was going to trust anyone on this, it would be him.

My question, that I posed a number of ill-designed ways, is this: what are we doing, in the differentiation between “works like” nature, and “looks like” nature? This is a judgement call, but an important one, because it is so specifically apparent. It isn’t just @debcha and @serial_consign’s personal tastes that makes buildings that look like seeds (for example) seem to be overblown sci-fi. Buildings that grew from seeds: I think we’d all agree that is pretty excellent. But buildings that just look like seeds: meh. Contrived? Weak? A little too Futurama? There is a defined difference there, and it is something that is easy to see.

Of course, there is a long history of futuristic architecture out there, and futurist design of all kinds. Whether it’s Googie, Modernism, or Brutalism, all of these aesthetics are meant to invoke a particular generic idea of a positive, future program. Even if the form is derived from a functional theory of that object’s mechanics (like the aerodynamics of Googie, the ergonomics of Modernism, or the efficiency of Brutalism), that aesthetic ends up taking on its own life apart from the function. We know this, because something can “affect” like one of these aesthetics, without actually being one of these aesthetics.

And if the word Skeuomorph just came to the tip of your tongue, you are quite the atemporal aesthete, aren’t you? Because, therein, is exactly the phenomenon we are talking about. “Works like” can produce a certain “looks like”, but then, even after the “works like” evolves in another direction, we keep the “looks like” our of habit or custom.

Bio-inspired, therefore, is perhaps the atemporal reverse of a skeuomorph. Because the “works like” is not technologically feasible as yet, it settles for the “looks like”. This is Bruce Sterling’s famous “astronaut luggage” example. (Can’t remember the keynote exactly, but I believe it was the well-known “Atemporality for Creatives” talk.) It works like this: you want to be a recreational astronaut, but aren’t the head of a global corporation? Well, just design yourself some astronaut luggage, and start using it. Sure, you might look a little weird carrying astronaut luggage on a boring old jumbo jet. But really, how exactly to our design signifiers work? What other way is there to show people that you’ve been to space? Are you going to whip out a moon rock to show off to everyone you pass in the street? And really, how weird is it to carry astronaut luggage? Is it weirder than the fact that the CEO of Cirque de Soliel has been into space because he came up with way to take a date to a pole dancing event for $100 a ticket?

So we have “anachronic” skeuomorphs, and we have “neochronic” skeuomorphs. The former lingers, and the latter presages. Even though, neither really “does” anything: it just “looks like” it does something.

Or do they?

The reason a doubt first entered my mind, and the reason I began asking such ill-designed questions of @debcha and @serial_consign, is that I’m not quite sure that “looks like” can ever really be apart from “works like”. And it’s not just an inspirational effect of the aesthetic. Sure, building a structure that looks like a seed might serve to somehow inspire a genetic engineer to figure out how to make a structure that grows from a seed, but the causality is specious at best. You would be much better off making sure children get a good math education if you would like to go to the moon, than simply building apartments that look like rocket ships.

And yet, everything must “look like” something, right? Just as much as it must “works like”. Think of an object: say, a lamp. Even if the lamp doesn’t look like a jellyfish, it has to look like something. Ought it to look like a platonic solid? A hat? A space ship? There is an aspect of aesthetic preference involved. If you really like icosahedrons, then you might make yourself a lamp that looks precisely like that. Or, if you really don’t care, you can just get the easiest lamp to find that seems to produce as much light as you want. Or if you don’t have much money, you might make do with a lamp you picked up on the street corner, which looks the best, because “free” is a pretty acceptable aesthetic decision maker.

And yet, the lamp will continue to look like something, even if you pick it out in the dark. You will be sitting in the room with that lamp, day in and day out, using it as a light source, and will be forced to look at it every time you turn it on our off. There is no such thing as “doesn’t look like”.

In which case, what is opposite of a bio-inspired lamp? A non-bio-inspired lamp? Okay. But it is still a lamp.

A lamp, as a light source, is always “inspired” by illumination. This is its “works like”. It’s function mimics incandescence, or florescence, by actually doing just that. It mimics the sun, and fire, and also the hearth. A lamp ought not to produce too much heat, or produce smoke (the benefit of electric over oil or gas), or be so bright that we can’t look anywhere near it, like the sun. In its functional design, it mimics certain functional characteristics which avoiding as many downsides as possible. And hence, every lamp will have a certain aesthetic. It will “look like” a lamp.

It may seem that I’m going around in circles, but I think that is the point. Even a modernist lamp, completely not bio-inspired, by being a physical object following physical laws in order to maintain its functional definition, will in a sense, be using biomimicry. “Works like” always informs a “looks like”. Aesthetics, then, are merely an effort to add additional “mimicry” inflections onto a functional element. A lamp will always function, to a certain extent, like a bioflorescent jellyfish. Whether, beyond this function, is further designed to look like a jellyfish even more than it already does, is beside the point.

Yes, I’m quibbling. Saying any lamp that illuminates automatically “looks like” a creature that fluoresces isn’t really accurate. Because a lamp could quite easily “look like” a rocket ship much more than a jellyfish, even if it “works like” a jelly fish much more. Unless we start using Titan rockets as mood lighting. (Aren’t philosophers a pain in the ass?) But figuring out what we actually mean by our genres identifications and functional chains of causality is all about quibbling. If we just go with our gut, we haven’t defined anything.

And yet, lamps still look like lamps, and lamps that look like sea creatures are still potentially cheesy. We define things as different, regardless of obscure similarities, because these noted aesthetic differences (also subjective differences, or semantic differences) in themselves become functional. Differentiating between a lamp that simply looks like a jelly fish, and a light source that actively bio-floresces is important, because one is a matter of style, and the other would be a scientific breakthrough. They are clearly not the same thing.

But here is the question I will end with: the distinction between biomimicry and bio-inspired aesthetics are easy to differentiate. But does the ease of distinction between form and function follow for other genres of design? For example: at what point is a Brutalist building not merely efficient, but simply Brutalist? At what point are aerodynamic fins not actually aerodynamic, but just look as if they were? Must we measure a building and complete engineering equations to decide if it is a skeuomorph or not? Must we use a wind tunnel to aesthetically judge cars?

Perhaps, it is not that bio-inspired design is cheesy. Perhaps we haven’t discovered what real bio-inspired design looks like yet. Because, once we do, perhaps only an expert could tell the difference.

This story was submitted to the Machine of Death 2 submission call, and wasn’t accepted, for reasons not least of which are because it is just over 10,000 words long. However, I really like the story, even reading it again more than half a year after I wrote it. I wanted to explore some of the surreal concepts behind the Machine of Death idea, and needed a bit more space for this world to inhabit. There is something so bizarrely unsettling about the idea of a mortality contained within a short phrase.

Without further ado, here it is. In the standard form, the title of the story is the words on the card that comes from the Machine of Death. It’s called “Moose Moose”.

And in case you are unfamiliar with the Machine of Death concept, you should read this first.

It was a steel and glass spiral extending upwards and forwards, before pulling back in rollercoaster-loop as it rose, twisting out of the view of any person standing in front of it within the enclave of high steel fence. The architecture left the individual isolated in the bright sun while the building and its inhabitants swooped backward in what might be a loop of impossible height, or, perhaps simply ending after twenty or so floors, once the whorl of the architect’s magnanimous project was out of view.

And so Maddie stood there for a moment, as the space seemed to intend that she ought to, absorbing on her face the glare from the glass above, twitching the edge of the cloth of her formal cotton jacket between her fingers, balancing expertly in her tall heels. Then forward, into the air-conditioned lobby.

The click of her heels on the marble were metronomic over the brush-cymbal HVAC tones. A sound system played the corporate theme at barely a decibel over a whisper, more suggestion of ambient electric tones than the familiar melody. Maddie approached the desk, where the stunningly beautiful security guard/receptionist raised herself on her platform behind her unused writing surface, and leaned forward in her formal cotton jacket to set the tone, and imply the answer to certain unspoken questions. The corporate logo helix in black-on-yellow shone on a button on her lapel.

“May I help you, miss?”
“Yes, I’m looking for the Complaints department?”
The formal jacket standing above her moved slightly.
“Do you have a complaint?”
“No. I mean, perhaps–I’m not quite sure. This was the only address on the website, you see.”
“So you do not have a complaint.”
“I have a question. PR said that Complaints takes all questions that relate to algorithm related inquiries.”
“You have read the FAQ?”
“On the website?”
“There is no other FAQ.”
“Yes.”
“And you still have a complaint?”
“A question. Which they said that Complaints would answer.”
“Complaints is quite a busy department, that being the nature of the department. Are you sure your question hasn’t already been answered elsewhere?”
“I… yes?”
“So you would like to Complain.”
“Well, no… I–”
“Complaints Department is through those double doors there. Please take this ticket and this form.”
“Okay.”
“Those doors, there.”
“Thank you.”

The woman sat and looked elsewhere. Maddie took the items from the surface of the desk and held them under her arm, while she quickly clicked across the floor towards the doors. They swung open at her proximity, and she walked onto the carpet beyond.

The edge of a moving walkway beckoned her, and she stepped on with a touch at the rubberized railing to maintain her balance under the acceleration. The belt pulled her near silently through the wide hallway: windowless, carpeted wall and ceiling, softly diminishing ranks of flat-screens. The many varieties of corporate commercial spots replayed themselves for her.

“Wish you knew more from your canonical reading? Wish that there was more in the cards?”
“…a Patented Algorithm, giving full-spectrum analysis in verb-form and tense…”
“…More Information; Your Information. You’ve heard the bottom line, now get it defined!”
“Take Another Chance, Dad! Take Another Chance Card, and know… more.”
“…my Doctor told me what I had to know, but then I had to know more. I Took Another Chance.”
“Patented Algorithm, with new contextual information derived direct from your canonical. Take Another Chance. Try Chance Networks, and start to know more!”

She looked down at the form, thinking to fill it out, but was stopped by a large bold-lettered message at the top of the form, reading “DO NOT FILL OUT THIS FORM!” And so she didn’t. The volume of the screens increased as she approached the end of the walkway.

She stepped off quickly, picking up her heels to avoid catching them in the grilled edge where the moving floor dropped away under the stationary carpet. Doors swung open quickly to reveal a room filled with chairs filled with people, talking loudly, holding up different colored pieces of paper in the air, changing the color and the height of their hands as directed by a static-tinged PA horn on the wall between three screens, all of them playing Chance Network ads. A line of people snaked the walls of the room, leading from a glass-booth-enclosed man in a formal jacket next to a door, all the way around to where Maddie stood. And so she stood for a moment, trying to determine where it was she ought to otherwise be standing. Behind her, on the closing door, was an advertisement poster image of a woman having an epiphany as she read a card. The card text clearly read the words, “purple shoe”.

Maddie didn’t like the thought of joining a queue without knowing if it was the right one to be waiting in, but the idea of simply finding a chair couldn’t be the correct decision. She looked at the materials she held. The form was blank, entries coded with combinations of number and letters, stern warnings of “FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY”. The tag had a punch-off tab, marked with a serial number, mated on the other half of the tag with a different serial number, a bar code, a proprietary data square, and in large red letters, “F1037”. She looked around the room for any sign, any indication of anything in the room matching these clues, finding nothing. Sighing, she felt her choice in footwear and formal jacket for the occasion, if nothing else, demanded quick action to match her visual impression. And so, Maddie purposefully made her way around the edge of the crowded room, trying not to catch her heels on protruding feet, snaring bag handles, and oscillating children. The heat of the room increased, as the HVAC system struggled with the heat of the living.

Maddie fanned the edges of her cotton jacket discreetly to cool the small of her back as she sidled up the the person at what seemed to be the rear of the line. A man in his fifties held his hat in his hand, moving air with it.

“Excuse me, is this a particular line?”

His voice blended with the monitors overhead, but his irritation broke through. “‘Patience’, it said! ‘Patience’! That isn’t information, that’s an insult!” He waved the Chance Card in her face.
“Personalized elaboration to clarify your life!” promised the monitor overhead.

“I understand the irony. We can all take a bit of irony. But this is abuse! This is sardonic, manipulative, exploitative, expulsionary, extra-propriary…”

Maddie decided to ask the next person.

“A Chance is more than information, it’s a technological step forward, a Chance to be proactive with your mortal future,” suggested the monitor overhead.

She tapped a woman standing hand in hand with her husband, holding an infant, two children leaning sleepy-eyed against the wall.

“Excuse me, is this a particular line?”

The family looked at her, saying nothing. She didn’t know if it was her question, or her, or something more dire to blame for creating this look of tortured ignorance on their faces. The woman looked confused, and apologized in another language, perhaps Italian, maybe Portugese? Maddie moved on.

“Integrity. Decision point. Neutron beam. Processed cheese food. Predatory insect. Information like this, contextual clues, to help you understand!” the screen suggested.

The next in line was a woman wearing the exact same brand of formal cotton jacket as Maddie, but without the heels and the skirt, with slacks and boots instead. She tried not the look at the jacket as she asked, “Is this a particular line?”

“A particular line? This is C particular line.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Look at your ticket, honey. See, here on mine. ‘C7491.’ C particular complaint, C particular line.”
“All of this line?”
“As far as they’ve told us. Here, let me see your ticket..” the woman plucked it from underneath the elbow of Maddie’s jacket. “No, no, no. You are F general. You can tell by the number. F, 10, and then number. You want a different line.”
“A different line?”
“F general. Sorry, honey. Don’t know where.”

The woman looked upwards as if to continue watching the monitor above, which intoned, “Each of us in an individual, and for each of us there is an individual death. And yet the canonical cards read all the same! Why not pick a card, algorithmically derrived, specifically for you? Take Another Chance!”

Maddie stood confused for a moment, and then slowly drifted towards the glass-enclosed booth, hoping that perhaps there was a sign, or maybe a chance to ask where it was that she should be. She wondered if perhaps she should have just kept waiting on the phone at home.

The people closer to the head of the line watched her suspiciously, as if they expected her to try and duck into line in front of them at any moment. Within ten feet of the booth, she was able to see a list printed on a sign riveted to the front of the booth, but there was a gaggle of strollers blocking her view. She bent down to peer through the people, and was almost knocked down as a pair of doors on the nearby wall flew open, and collided with her hip. Three maintenance men pushed in a new glass-enclosed booth, complete with formal-jacket-enclosed man enclosed-within. Theypositioned it next to the door in front of her. A Klaxon sounded, and everyone in the room jumped.

“F general! F general line! F general please step to the booth!”

There was a rush, and shouting, as people from all over the room attempted to join the line, stepped out of the old line allowing people to move up, stepped out of line before realizing they were already in the correct line and attempting to reclaim their spots, went after better seats vacated by people who joined lines or tried to improve their positions, either farther or closer to air conditioning vents, doors, other people, and the screens. Children took the opportunity to increase the level of chaos at hip-level and below.

By the time Maddie had securely reattained her posture on her heels, the line had formed behind her and snaked either through the center of the chairs, or along the wall, though this was disputed by proponents who stood to gain or lose by either eventuality.

“STEP UP please!”

It was the man in the booth. Maddie took a half-step forward and pointed her voice towards the slanted metal grill in the shape of the helix logo placed in the glass.

“Tag please.”

She slid it into the document slot.

“Form.”

That followed.

“Complaint?” His pen hovered over the form.

“I have a question.”
“Have you read the FAQ?”
“Yes, I–”
“And you would still like to complain?”
“I’d like to ask–”
“No questions here, miss. Through the doors, and head into the light.”
“The light?”
“The lights. Follow the lights.”

The doors buzzed, indicating they were unlocked. She took her form and tag, and stepped to the door, pressing on it gingerly. She just missed the unlock, and the doors didn’t move.

“Smartly, please! Press smartly!” The voice from the booth reminded her.

The buzz again, and she was through. It was a white hallway, with moisture damaged acoustical tiles that appeared to date back further in time than the building might have existed, extending above her in what appeared to be equal directions to the left and to the right. She stood still, looking for any sign to indicate direction. Then, from recessed LEDs in the wall, a red arrow illuminated and pointed towards the left. She followed, and as she clicked down the linoleum of the hall more arrows lit. She must be heading in the right direction, but should she slow down and let the arrows precede her? It wasn’t clear. Suddenly the arrows stopped, a buzzer sounded, and a door popped open. Maddie stopped, turned quickly, and stepped into the doorway as it closed behind her.

In front of her was a man in a formal jacket, bent low over a desk, thinning hair presented to her inquisitively, as if it were shrouded face peeking through the dark. There was a chair in front of the desk, but she decided to remain standing. A dusty terminal on the desk, dark, but fan humming. The tag on the desk read: “Milten”. Behind the desk, was a typical advertisement poster for the company, featuring one of their yellow cards with the watermarked helixed logo, marked with a Chance, reading “linguine”.

The man looked up from his writing, and was taken aback by the sight of her in that way that only a middle-aged man can, upon suddenly realizing that he was alone in a room with a younger woman. Maddie wasn’t sure if that meant that he thought she was attractive or only that he was awkward.

“Please be seated… Ms…?”
“Roubacheau. Madeline Roubacheau.”
“Oh–I’m sorry. Form please.”
She presented it.
“And name again.”

She repeated it. He transcribed it to a particular box on the form.

“A general complaint, is it?”
“A question.”

His pen paused in its scratching path. “I’m sorry, you must have followed the wrong lights.”
“No, I was told that my question could only be answered in the Complaints department.”
“You were.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve read the FAQ?”
“Yes.”
“And you still have a complaint?”
“A question, but yes.”
“Well Ms. Roubacheau, let’s call up your history and see what we can do about your complaint.”

She thought about it, but decided at this point to just let it go. He looked up and smiled politely, as if waiting for her.

“I’m sorry?”
“Your cards, miss? I assume you have brought them?”
“Oh yes, I’m sorry.”

From inside her jacket, she retrieved her case for her personal set, that she had received free on the occasion of getting her fifth. The slim glass-plastic clamshell would fit up to twenty cards, and had position locks to fit into a case storage shelf for her home catalog of excess cards sorted into separate twenty-cases, the shelf which she would receive as a free gift on the occasion of her two-hundredth. She wasn’t sure at what point she received a free laser name-engraving on her twenty-case, but her clamshell was still fresh, its unmarrable surface shining in the dull office florescents. She clicked it open, tapped out the cards, all five of them. She laid them in a stack on the desk. Politely averting his eyes from the printed words, the un-introduced Mr. Milten selected the top card in his small fingertips, and deftly slid it into the slot in the surface of the desk, pulled it out, and replaced it sideways on the small stack. Pen still over the form, he squinted at the terminal’s monitor, and began to write quickly in efficient strokes.

“Five cards then. Not so many…”
“Yes.”
“Have you had your canonical? We have no record of you receiving it through Chance Networks.”
“Oh, yes. I… I don’t carry it with me, though.”
“I see.” He wrote in small letters to fit a great deal of words in a particular box.
“Your file notes your canonical death prediction regardless of whether it has been given to you, of course. The algorithm cannot write new Chance cards without it.”
“I understand.”

He held the pen aloft, and wasted time enough to give her another small glance and smile.

“So what seems to be your complaint?”
“I have a question about the algorithm.”
“Our proprietary Chance algorithm is the key to the derivation of your specific Chance cards, yes.”
“Yes, but why are they so… obscure?”
“Obscure, miss?”
“Oblique.”
“Oblique?”
“Obtuse?”
“I’m not sure I understand, Ms. Roubacheau.”
“Well, look.”

She spread the top three cards out along the desk, turning them so they would face Mr. Milten. He did not look at the cards, but instead looked at his screen.

“I see nothing out of the ordinary.”
“This one says ‘anticipatory’.”
“Yes.”
“And this one is ‘coniferous’.”
“Yes.”
“And this one: ‘yellow’. What is that supposed to mean?”
“You have read the FAQ?”
“Yes.”
“Then you understand that Chance cards are often like this. They all refer to the contextual circumstances of your canonical death prediction. Interpreted through our proprietary algorithm, the Chance cards spread out in subject and circumstance from the singular cause of death.”
“No, I understand what they are. It’s just that–”
“It’s like a meadow of grass, Ms. Roubacheau.”
“I’m sorry?”

Mr. Milten leaned back in his chair, smiling to someone, but not to Maddie. “A meadow is made from many different blades of grass. Each is singular, a leaf unto itself. But without all of them, together, there would be no meadow. A leaf of grass on its own is nothing. A clipping. A dead thing. But together…” he gazed off above her head.

She said nothing. She imagined she would hear his spiel one way or another. And so allowed, he continued.

“Many people are unhappy with their canonical death predictions. They are so sparse, and so often ironic. The incontrovertible truth of them is no consolation for the additional mystery they create. What the technology of Chance Networks achieves, using our patented algorithm, is to calculate contextual synonyms, related terms, other useful adjectives to help describe the circumstances of the death prediction. Your fate is derived through the algorithm, one Chance at a time, sketched all the way from the canonical event, back through the fabric of time, to now. We don’t change the death, we add to it. Each new card generated from the algorithm is another Chance to understand. We help paint the entire picture. A picture–of a meadow. You see Ms. Roubacheau?”
“But these cards don’t make anything clearer.”
“Well, you do have only five. The algorithm is a fickle thing, Ms. Roubacheau. As advanced as it is, it can only do what it is capable of doing. Each is a Chance, but only a single Chance, if you catch my meaning.”
Mr. Milten withdrew a small box from a shelf underneath his surface, with an air of repressing a small amount of excitement.
“Ms. Roubacheau, because of your concern, I am able to offer you a complimentary Chance card. If you would be so kind as to insert your finger, we can let the algorithm continue its work…”
“No.” Maddie crossed her arms on her chest.
“You don’t want another Chance?”
“Someone must be able to tell me how I’m supposed to interpret these cards.”

Mr. Milten placed the box on the desk, and looked concerned.

“Now, we at Chance Networks are aware of the so-called cottage industries of ‘Chance Interpreters’ out there, doing a secondary business in… ahem… ‘reading’ our cards. But we take a firm stance that there is no way to conclusively add to the picture of what the algorithm reads from the canonical prediction, other than through the algorithm itself. We do not recommend or condone using these services, and there are several lawsuits pending regarding claims certain of these outside service entities make regarding our… intellectual property.”
“But certainly someone within the company could tell me what I’m supposed to do with these?”
Milten laughed. “I’m sorry miss, but I’m but a customer service operative. What those folks in engineering do, is–ahem–quite outside of my expertise. I could perhaps allow you to review one of our instructional videos…” he began opening drawers.
“No thank you. Perhaps there is someone in engineering I could speak to?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Ms. Roubacheau. In the meantime, let’s just mark that you have accepted the Chances surrounding your death…” he reached for his pen.
“I don’t accept these.”

He blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“I can’t accept these. How could I?”
“The algorithm is infallible, Ms. Roubacheau. Derived from the canonical Machine of Death design, the truth is unquestionable.”
“But if I don’t understand them, how can they mean anything to me?”
“Well, let me show you a few of mine.” He reached in his jacket pocket, and pulled out a custom metal case, inscribed with his name, just as on the sign on the desk. “See here?” He held the yellow card he extracted delicately by the edges. “ ‘Rotini’, reads this one. Pasta-related, not unlike the poster behind me, which is why I chose it to decorate my workspace,” he gestured behind him and grinned.
“I used to think that meant pasta salad, as if I would die of my canonical while on a picnic or at a barbecue. But then I got this one, which says ‘bi-plane’. Perhaps an airshow or county fair then? But then! This one: ‘labyrinthine’. Which relates, I believe, to a particular school trip I took in my college days. Making the pasta-related Chance readable in an entirely new light!”

Maddie did not share his enthusiasm. “Are pasta-related Chances supposed to mean something in particular that I don’t understand?”

Mr. Milten sighed, and rolled his eyes back, appearing to be thinking about a problem, but what sort of problem, it was difficult to say.

“Have you read any Zen philosophy, Ms. Roubacheau?”
“I have, and I find it abhorrent.”
“I see.”

Maddie placed her hands on her knee, and leaned forward in her formal jacket.

Milten twitched his pen back and forth on the desk. “Are you sure I cannot simply mark down that you accept these Chances–just in the effort to… push things along?”
“I do not accept them.”
“Well.” He glanced at his watch, and pushed what might have been a bead of sweat back into his hairline. “Well–perhaps there is someone I could refer you do on the engineering floor.”

Maddie smiled. “I would appreciate that very much.”

He hastily made a series of marks on her form, writing with much less precision.

“Please take this, and proceed down the hall to your right. Up the steps, around the corner, and to the elevator. You want the sixth floor, room 77, a Mrs. Dantez.”

She gathered her cards, replaced the case in her pocket. As she turned to leave, Milten stopped her.

“Oh, before you go–can you give me three adjectives to describe ‘panther’?”
“Panther? Like the predatory cat?”
“Yes, but not those adjectives. Like what you think of when you think of a panther.”
“Oh. Um, ‘feline’, ‘sharp’, ‘black’… ‘hungry’–”
“Three will do, thank you!” He jotted on a pad on the side of his desk. “Have a good day!”

In the elevator, the buttons were marked with letters, rather than with numbers. Maddie didn’t feel like going back to inquire, so she took a chance, and pressed the button with “F” on it. The corporate music was louder in the elevator, but the volume from the screens was lower.

She clicked down an oppressively warm hallway, holding her paperwork lightly in one hand to try and keep the moisture from her fingers from marking them. She knocked twice on the door marked 77, all alone on a particular stretch of hallway, and opened the door.

A rush of overly-cooled air met her. Opposite the door was a counter, where a bored-looking receptionist read a magazine, while he twisted back and forth in a low office chair. Behind him was a mirror, and two passages leading in either direction. On wall with the doorway were a line of three chairs to the left, one of which was occupied by a large man with a white cowboy hat, who sat next to a small table just large enough for the potted plant on top of it. The room was also a hallway, extending in either direction. She approached the desk.

Without looking up, the man said, “have a seat, she’ll call when she’s ready for you.”

Maddie took chair closest to the door.

“Good day, miss.” It was the man wearing the hat.
“Hello.” She began to play with the edges of her jacket, as if she was picking off lint.
“Could I… ask you a favor?”

Maddie looked at him for a moment, but he was looking at the receptionist, as if making sure the man was focused on his magazine.

“It’s a bit of a proposition.”

She froze, and prepared to stand if necessary.

“Nothing untoward, or out of the ordinary, I assure you. I simply offer that I might… buy your cards.”
“You want to buy my cards?”

He gestured with his hand, in a downward motion.

“Quietly now, quietly.” He laughed nervously. “But yes. Twice what a new Chance card reading costs at retail. Cash.”

Maddie was startled and confused. “But I don’t have that many, only…” she stopped herself from saying how many she had, though she wasn’t sure why.

“You can buy two new for what I’ll give you for one. Nothing wrong with having more cards, right? Take Another Chance, as they say in the literature.”
“I’m not sure it’s a good–”
“Oh, for research only, miss. I don’t want your canonical, nothing like that. I’m just a curious man, see. I’ve been studying their algorithm for years. Out of curiosity, nothing more than that. Every card is a new data point. No good to anyone but the people who bought ‘em. And to me. Data, you see. If you care to help, I’d make it worth your while.”
“Well, I need them for my complaint–I mean my question.”
“Of course you do. Well, after that, if you want to write down your words and sell me the cards, I’d still be interested. Here is my card. Business card, that is.” He palmed it in his hand, and held it over to her. She took it. It read “Chance Cards”, and then there was a number.
“I’d… you might want to put that away for now, miss. These folks, they don’t exactly take kindly to my research. Think I’m trying to hone in on their algorithm. Not possible though. I’m more curious in what it generates.”

Maddie tucked it away. She looked over at the desk, and caught the receptionist looking at her suspiciously, but then he quickly went back to his magazine. The man next to her was inauspiciously studying the wall, and began humming a tune that Maddie didn’t know. She pulled her jacket close against the cold of the air conditioning, and had a sudden desire to inspect her cards. Once more. For the hundredth. Thousandth. But she didn’t want the man with the hat to see them.

Then the voice came over an intercom, full of static, far too loud. “Madeline Roubacheau, I will see you now.”

Maddie stood, and looked towards the receptionist for direction, but he didn’t look up.

“To the left, down the hall.”

She moved past the man in the hat, clicking on the floor.

The intercom burst with static. “No, not that way. My left. MY left.”

Maddie stopped, confused as to which way that was, but it must be the other way. She passed the man in the hat again, who smiled, and tipped the brim, as if that was the only reason he wore such a hat. Down the hall, she reached for the door on the left side.

“Not that door. The third one,” the intercom corrected.

She kept going.
“No, the… from the… that door. THAT door. Yes. Come in.” Static, and then nothing.

The room was warm, but not to an uncomfortable extent. It was large enough to refer to as an office, with a large wooden desk, and several chairs. There was a blotter on the desk, and a phone, and behind it, an imposing looking woman who looked as if she was into-her-sixties-but-looking-in-her-fifties, wearing a full formal jacket and skirt, a long string of pearls, and a neatly assembled silk scarf with pin, bearing, of course, the corporate logo, black helix on yellow. Behind her were three framed posters. One, advertising a “Chance for Life” charity event. The other flanking poster a photo of a family with full decks of cards, and the slogan, “We Understand!” written in large, slanted, san-serif letters. The middle poster showed a hand of indeterminate race holding a yellow card, palm up. “Imagination”, it read.

“Please have a seat, Ms. Roubacheau. I am Mrs. Dantez. How can I help you?”
“I have a question.”
“Yes, I gather that, and that is why you are here. You have read the FAQ?”
“I have.”
“And you have no complaints?”
“Aside from my question, no.”
“And your question is?”
“How is it that these cards mean anything?”

Mrs. Dantez sighed, and crossed her fingers on one hand over the others on the blotter.

“Form please.”

Form on the desk.
“Tag as well, for formality’s sake.”

Tag.

“And your license to test, if you would.”

Maddie pulled her license out, and laid it on the desk. Mrs. Dantez picked it up with one hand, and put on a pair of reading glasses with the other. She studied it in the overhead light, and then produced a pen.

“One of your cards, as well.”

Maddie opened the case, and gave one up. The stoic woman in front her began marking items on the form while speaking aloud.

“Age to test: passed. Mental competency to test: approved. Medical consult: met. Drug test: no indicators… though that date was some time ago,” she looked over her glasses at Maddie, who was glad she’d worn the formal jacket. “Though it is within the mandated cycle. Preparedness for Mortality Training Course: attended, and standardized.”

She paused, and the pen hovered. “Religion is blank.” She looked at Maddie. “Is that Atheist, then?”

Maddie felt the familiar blush. “I haven’t really considered it. And I was told it isn’t mandatory to have it declared in any direction.”

“Oh, it’s not mandatory. But it is an anomaly.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, oh no. No problem. But it is irregular.”
“Would that affect my Chance card generation?”
“No, not assuredly. But it is something that we’ll take into consideration.”

She marked the form. Then she placed the pen on the edge of the blotter, and took up the card, and inserted it quickly in the slot in the desk. Then she pulled out a screen from the side of her desk, tilted downward so only she could see it. Shading the glare from the overhead lights, Mrs. Dantez read whatever was summoned to the screen.

“You have had your canonical, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve only had five cards.”
“I’m sorry. I know it isn’t very many, but I simply can’t have any more until I know what they are supposed to mean.”
“What they are is described in the FAQ, Ms. Roubacheau.”
“I know what they are, of course. Anyone knows that. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them. How to read them. How I’m supposed to understand any of this.”

Mrs. Dantez leaned over the desk, severely. “You haven’t been to an interpreter, have you Ms. Roubacheau?”
“No, of course not. I know that’s a scam. That’s why I came here, to the corporation.”

The older woman sighed, and began to look slightly closer to her actual age, but only for a moment. She opened a drawer and pulled out a disc.

“I have this video that I could show you…”
“I’ve seen the videos.”
“You haven’t seen this video. It’s not a promotional video. It’s an internal training video.”

She slipped it from its case, and inserted it somewhere on her side of the desk. The lights dimmed automatically, and from a spot in the corner light shone, projecting an image on top of the middle poster behind the desk. A screen descended from the ceiling and caught the film image. Mrs. Dantez didn’t turn to watch the film, appearing to only close her eyes. Maddie looked over her head as carefully as she could.

A man walked into the shot, wearing a formal jacket, complete with logo pin. “Good morning!” he said to the camera, though the time of day was no more visible in the scene than it was in the windowless office in which Maddie sat. “My name is Sam Augustine, and I’ll be your guide through the training procedure.”

The scene changed. Sam was in front of a bustling Change Networks franchise, walking past the line extending out the door, walking inside the lobby, walking behind the banks of machines and teller windows, and into the raised area that was unique to every franchise.

“Before we get into the step by step procedure by which you’ll tune the central algorithm hub, let’s take a minute to discuss the importance of this seemingly minor daily maintenance task.” Sam popped the lid of the central unit, audibly humming through the recording, and let the cover rise to his eye level. “It only take a minute, but it is importance cannot be overstressed. Sloppy tuning can result in misaligned results transmitted from the algorithm mainframe, and inappropriately delivered to the customer. The checksum safeguards make receiving incorrect results an impossibility. But result errors are possible, or franchise-wide Failure-to-Chance. Either can mean costly downtime for the entire franchise, and dissatisfied customers, who haven’t received the quick and accurate Chances they have come to expect. Without balancing the hub to the characteristic load of customers on a twice-a-day basis, Chance failures can increase by as much as twenty percent.”

The film stopped, the lights came back on, and the screen retreated into the ceiling. Mrs. Dantez opened her eyes.

“Are you saying that there might have been an error in my Chances?” Maddie was open-mouthed.

“No dear. I’m saying precisely the opposite.” She held up one of Maddie’s cards. The one marked ‘coniferous’. “You see this code strip here? This contains your unique user ID, linked to your stored canonical reading, verified in our central algorithm servers. Your canonical reading is what it is: the way that you’ll die. The algorithm develops your Chance here on the server from the canonical, and then transmits it to the Chance franchise, and prints it on the card. The server generates a checksum to make sure only algorithmically correct results are printed on your card. We don’t need a new blood test every time we Chance. The blood test is only to verify, for security, that only you will receive your Chances.”

She looked down at her screen. “The Chances are yours, no less than your canonical. Each of your five Chances are 100% checksum accurate. The checksum is recorded in each Chance code strip, for paper trail verification.”

Mrs. Dantez smiled across the desk.

“You see, dear, that is what Chances are. They are you. From your canonical cause of death, we derive the nano-fate Chances that surround how that death will occur. There is no possibility of them being wrong, or being for anyone else. Your Chances are you–and while I don’t mean it in a belittling way, if they don’t seem to make sense to you… well, there’s no one that can do anything about that but yourself.”
“But the canonical is a cause of death. These are just words. They don’t make any sense.”
“They will. Given enough Chances, given enough time, and enough personal reflection, the meaning comes clear. The meaning comes from you.”

Maddie shook her head.

“This just isn’t good enough. These are words with no meaning! Look at this.”

She held up a card from the bottom of the stack, so the woman across from her would have to read it. The immaculate composition of her face faded as she saw the word.

“I… I do apologize for that. Normally the words aren’t so… anatomical…”
“It’s not just a part of my body! It’s my… it called it a… I never have used that word in my life!”
“I understand why you’re upset. I don’t care for that word at all myself. But I must reiterate, Ms. Roubacheau, that the Chance Networks does not create these words themselves. Chance Networks and its algorithm do not attempt to… well as I said, these words come from you. They are your Chances, and nobody else’s.”

Maddie sat back in her chair, her emotion spent for a moment.

“I must ask you, dear: have you ever… considered using suicide as a means to hasten the resolution of your canonical results?”
“No, I have not. My canonical isn’t ‘suicide’.”
“Few are. But an educated woman like yourself knows that it doesn’t have to be.”

Mrs. Dantez removed her glasses.

“It’s okay if you have thought about it. Many people who seek Chances have considered it. In a mortal world as this, it is an option for all of us. Chances are another way out of the vicious, emotional cycle of having to deal with our mortality. If you have considered using suicide–”
“I have not.”
“I believe you. But even if you haven’t, seeking another Chance might give you some further insight into yourself. Taking a Chance might be the way out.” She pulled out a box, and set it on the desk. “I’d be happy to give you a complimentary Chance. It is often that when we’re at such an impasse in interpreting our Chances, just then a new Chance comes along to put everything in a different light.”

She pulled out a case from her jacket pocket, and clicked it open. It was inlaid with mother of pearl on the upper side, and black velvet on the bottom. There were only four cards in it, and she carefully lined then on the raised edge of the blotter, like a pathway of four yellow stones.

“When I was twenty-two, not too far from your own age, I received this Chance.”

‘Silence’.

“For a young woman, this is a fairly morose Chance. It troubled me, I don’t mind telling you. It wasn’t until I was thirty-seven that I got this additional Chance.”

‘Morning’, read the card.

Mrs. Dantez took a deep breath, as if she were actually recalling the emotion. “It changed everything for me! I had had visions of the worst things you can imagine: suffocation, becoming deaf later in life, being murdered as a witness to a crime, and so on. My canonical aside–for it to occur in the context of ‘silence’ seemed particularly gruesome. But, ‘morning’! A time of peaceful silence, of reflection, or meditation. I began to see that silence could be a beautiful Chance, and it was only my preconceptions and fears that I was seeing, reflecting in my Chances. My world was turned around completely! And then I received these other two: ‘apothecary’, and ‘wooden’. Well you see the first one was…” she looked at Maddie, who was looking off into space.

“Take another Chance, dear.”
“I don’t want one.”
“You don’t want one?”
“I don’t want another one, until I can figure out the ones I have.”
“But you must accept them, Ms. Roubacheau! They are your Chances.”
“I won’t accept them. Not until they mean something to me.”
“But if you accept them now, and wait, in time the meaning will become clear.”
“I refuse to accept them.”

Mrs. Dantez sighed, and sat back. Then she reached forward and gathered up her cards, putting them away in her case. She picked up her pen.

“There is one more thing we can do. We can examine you. There are certain physical signs–and I remind you, that they are very slight tells, nothing definite or assured–but they can act as diagnostic criteria for checking Chance causality.” She began to write. “If you want the exam, you must promise to take it to completion. For insurance purpose, once begun, the exam must be finished. It’s causal-liability, as the case law about the matter is not binding yet. I can give you an exam, and then with those results in mind, perhaps you will be willing to take another Chance.”

She wrote something on Maddie’s form.

“Okay?”

Maddie nodded her head.

Mrs. Dantez opened a drawer, and pulled out a file folder, which she spread on her desk, and began withdrawing forms. She assembled a packet as she checked off items, filled out passages, and inserted the complaint form Maddie had brought with her.

“Any history of heart conditions?”
“Any medical allergies?”
“Any fear of confined spaces?”
“Any history of epilepsy?”
“Any surgeries in the past five years?”
“Any metallic implants that are known to be reactive to magnetism?”
“Any recent skin reactions in the presence of radio waves?”
“Sensitivity to light?”
“Have you been in any environments with reactive chemicals over a safety level of 2?”
“Do you or do you not enjoy the taste of cilantro? Has your opinion on this changed in the past three years?”
“Okay, Ms. Roubacheau, sign here. Please go through this door, and speak to the nurse. His name is Virgil. He’ll take good care of you. And wear this badge for the rest of the time you’re here, please.”

She gestured at a door Maddie had not seen before. She signed, and gathered up the forms, affixed the badge, and stepped towards the door.

“Oh, Ms. Rouhbacheau?”
“Yes?”
“Could you tell me the first five words that come into your mind when you think of the phrase, ‘boiled egg’.”
“I’m sorry?”
“‘Boiled egg’. Five words. Any words. Go.”
“I–uh… shell, pan, cooking, quickly, salt.”
“No adverbs please.”
“No–”
“No adverbs. One more. Hurry now.”
“Yolk?”
“Thank you.” She wrote what might have been those words down on a pad on her desk. “Go ahead–Virgil will be waiting for you.”

Maddie stepped onto the tile of a brightly lit hallway, lined with glass windows that must have opened onto exam rooms. Each window had a curtain drawn in front of it, and shadows moved on the curtain, two, maybe three people per room. She wasn’t sure which way to go to find Virgil, or even what exactly she was doing, or whether she ought to leave. Standing still for a moment, the edge of her jacket in her free hand, the other filled with paperwork. Listening to the dry, HVAC air, Maddie tried to hear which direction the most noise might be coming from. She heard what sounded like distant shouting. No, it was most certainly shouting, coming from the right. It was shouting, getting louder. It was someone coming this way.

Wondering what she ought to do was what she was doing when the shouting rounded the corner. The young woman in a white medical gown had a familiar look, but before Maddie could return the look of disoriented derailment, the figure pushed past her and ran, slapping barefoot, down the hall and away. Maddie was sent backward, trying to keep from tottering off of her heels, flat against one of the glass windows.

“There she is!” A number of large orderlies rounded the corner, dressed in a manner in which only women titled orderlies would be dressed. Two were on either side of Maddie, and a slim, older man stood beside them.

“I… I think the person you want–”

But they had her by the arms, and her stack of papers fell to the floor. The man, whose logo-emblazoned name tag read “Virgil”, bent to pick them up.

“But Mrs. Dantez said that I–”
“Yes, I’m aware of what Mrs. Dantez said. Put her in room 846.”

He took her papers down the hall in the opposite direction from the way she was taken, both arms of the orderlies on her formal cotton jacket’s arms, raised in the air in a way that she could only barely manage to stumble along on her heels with them, clicking along to keep from falling down. After what must have been some seventy yards, a door was pushed open, a light came on, and she was inside.

“Remove your clothes.”
“I–”
“You’ve agreed to a series of tests.”
“Yes, but–”
“Remove your clothes, please.”

The orderlies were imposing figures, and they held out a familiar looking gown. She had agreed, but to what? Maddie sighed, and slid her sleeves out of her formal jacket. The badge was missing from the label where she had clipped it. She stepped out of the heels, and onto the floor. Blouse, skirt, hose.

“Your underthings too.”

And those. She put on the gown. One of the two women gathered up the discarded clothing and her shoes, into a white cloth bag. Before she put in the jacket, she fished out Maddie’s case.

“You’ll want these. There’s a pocket.”

And indeed there was, on the chest of the oddly fitting gown, generally over the left side. She put the case in the cloth opening that was just big enough, and the case weighted down the cloth against her breast. The metal was cold through the light fabric. Then the orderlies were gone, and the door was closed.

There was a poster on the back of the door. A Chance box, as if in a franchise booth, was visible in a close-up shot. A card was emerging from the slot. The first letters were visible, spelling ‘Wit–’, and the caption said beneath it, “This Chance Could Be the One.”

A different orderly returned. She had a tray. First it was blood. Then a swab of the inside of Maddie’s cheek. Then a tissue sample, a scratch beneath her upper arm. Then urine. The orderly disappeared with the tray.

A new orderly, with a cart. Many different devices, all for the measurement of various things. Heart rate. Mini-EEG. Reflex arc. Standardized pain threshold. Electro-conductivity. Cognitive ray. Radio stethoscope. Magentoscope. Positronic band. Physical exam. Flashing lights, sanitized probes: under, behind, in, and back out. She checked it–the area referred to in profane language on her card. Maddie looked at the wall, while the orderly seemed to make an audible noise, not quite approvingly or disapprovingly. Then she was gone.

Maddie stood flat-footed against the wall. She stared at the poster, wondering what sort of person it was that had stuck their finger in the slot of the Chance box, causing it to print that card, of which she could only read the first three letters. Did they take an actual picture with a Chance box in order to make that poster? Or was it a computer-generated graphic? Was it a false box, perhaps–used for such photographs? Or did someone actually generate that card… was that someone’s Chance, and they were waiting for the camera to finish its work before they removed it and read what it said?

The orderly who had previously carried the tray came back into the room, seemingly in a much better mood than she had been when she was wielding the needle. This time she carried a clipboard.

“Don’t look so glum, deary! We’ll have you out of exams in no time at all. They don’t take but a minute, you see. Like the boxes themselves, those test machines are. In the hole, and there it goes. Oh, but your stool! No wonder you look so tired.”

She reached outside and pulled in a light plastic stool that had been outside the door, handing it to Maddie, who held it to her chest, touching lightly against the case in her gown pocket. The orderly pulled in a chair on wheels, and sat on it.

“Well, sit down then.”

Maddie did.

“Just a few questions. Now–you know your canonical, don’t you?”

Maddie sighed, and leaned forward to let her elbows fall to her knees.

“Yes.”
“Excellent, excellent. Have you ever considered suicide in order to hasten the results?”
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“No.”
“Well, okay. You know it would not be out of the ordinary if you had.”
“Okay.”
“But you haven’t.”
“No.”
“Okay. Three synonyms for ‘hungry’.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Synonyms please, three of them, for ‘hungry’. No adverbs.”
“Famished, starving, and… uh, malnourished?”
“Hmm… I’m not sure about that last one, but it will do. Would you be willing to take a Chance right now?”
“Now?”
“The box is in the hallway. I’ll go get it. Complimentary.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I won’t take one.”
“Okay, and… wait one moment. What is your name?”
“Madeline Roubacheau.”
“Roubacheau?”
“Yes.”
“My goodness, but I’ve got the wrong forms here! Where is your badge?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“It wasn’t on your formal jacket.”
“It must have been when…”
“But you have your cards, don’t you?”
“Yes, they’re right here–”
“Well thank goodness for that! Who only knows what might have happened… and then for you, my dear… how horrible to have lost one’s Chances!”
“No, I do have them…”
“Well thank goodness! Let me go get your forms, and get rid of these!” She shook them on the clipboard, as if they were wet, or had been particularly troublesome somehow. “Feel free to keep your stool.”

Maddie hadn’t made any motion to get up, or pull her arms from her knees.

“Would you like a Chance then?”
Maddie exhaled before speaking. “I…”
“Free of charge, of course. I only thought–these not being your forms–that perhaps you would indeed like one after all.”
“N–no, thank you.”
The orderly blinked her eyes, and tapped the clipboard against the side of her hip. “Well, okay…” she said, as if she blamed the form she held. “Pretty young lady like yourself, I never would have figured, but…”

She turned to leave the room, pushing the chair in front of her. Then she paused. “You know what my last Chance was?”

Maddie looked up.

“It was ‘Others’. What do you make of that?”

Maddie opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. The orderly was already gone, and she heard the wheels retreating down the hall.

In less than three minutes, she heard flat footsteps running, approaching. It was Virgil, completely out of breath, his name tag askew.

“Ms. Roubacheau! Thank goodness I’ve found you!”

As he leaned against the door frame to catch his breath, Maddie felt as if she was required to say something in response.

“Yes?”
“There’s been a terrible mistake!”

She raised her eyebrows and began to speak, but he continued.

“Not with your test results, no! Those were all fine. Normal, I might say, though I’m hardly qualified to give you any sort of assessment. No, there was a mistake, and I’m so very sorry to have mixed it all up in this way. It is my responsibility, and I understand if you are upset, and I can only apologize to you in the most sincerest of terms!”

Still leaning against the door frame, bent over with exertion, it almost appeared as if he was attempting to bow in way of apology.

“But there is time yet!” he blurted out. “Please, follow me now, and I’ll get you going in the right direction.” And then he was out of the room. “Come along, come along! And I’m terribly sorry!”

She had to pad quickly on the cool floor with her bare feet to keep up with the man’s tall strides.

“We’ll get everything straight, I assure you!”

Around three turns, down a straight away, and up a short flight of rubberized stairs. Virgil opened a door.

He whispered, holding his head close to the edge of the door, “Mr. Blake’s office! And once again, I’m sorry!” He closed the door behind her.

The office was immense, carpeted deeply from wall to wall. Maddie squinted against the natural light streaming in from the wide windows, showing nothing but a view of uninterrupted blue sky, the bright sun sending gleaming shadow lines down the large modern statuary that dotted the open expanses of carpet, and the couch, and the low tables, and the several chairs. It lit up a full, dark head of hair on a surprisingly young man behind the desk that presided over the space, as he looked down at a pad of paper, scribbling furiously. Maddie breathed in a bit suddenly, overwhelmed by the light after the low florescent lighting previously illuminating her.

“My goodness, Ms. Roubacheau!”

Her feet felt warm on the sun drenched carpet.

“Virgil didn’t give you your clothes back. What a silly man.” He pressed a button on his desk repeatedly. “It should only be a minute.”

The door behind her popped open, and Virgil’s arm stuck in holding the cloth bag. He waved it side to side, and, “I’m sorry!” came around the door. She took the bag, and the arm gratefully disappeared and the door closed again.

“I’ll just secure myself in the closet, and you can get dressed at your leisure. Not to worry, no one will come in that door unless I call for them.”

The man rose from his chair, and took several large, sporting leaps across the carpet, dodging around two statues, to what must have been the closet door on the wall. He flung it open, revealing, indeed, a number of hanging jackets, all dwarfing the small man. He plunged in between the garments, and with a flourish, pulled the door closed to a click.

“Please go ahead! Just let me know when you’re finished!” His voice was quite muffled by the door. It seemed thick and secure, from the sound of his elbows bumping against it as he no doubt fought for space among the coats. Seeing no other option, Maddie begun to dress. The sun was warm on her skin.

“My name is Mr. Blake, by the way!” He shouted from inside, to overcome the muffling. “And you must be Maddie Roubacheau! I’ve been dying to make your acquaintance for… well, it must have been almost forty-five minutes now!”

With her hose on, Maddie quickly pulled up her skirt, and tucked the blouse back into it.

“You see, I’m the boss around these parts! The Complaint Department, that is! Nothing much happens here without me finding out about it, at least within the hour! You might think that being in charge means I don’t have many responsibilities, other than overseeing things. But I assure you, that’s not the case! If someone isn’t satisfied, it’s my job to make sure that they are!”

She put on her formal cotton jacket, and held her heels in her hand, leaving the gown and bag on the floor. “Mr. Blake…” she raised her voice a bit to penetrate the closet.

It opened a crack. “All finished?” She assured him that she was. “Well then, I’ll come out of the closet, where it will be much easier to speak with Ms. Roubacheau–Maddie, that is–if the young lady doesn’t mind if I address her as such?”

“No, that’s okay.”

He leaped back across the carpet, and landed hard in his chair, swiveling around a complete turn. “Please sit down, please sit down! Pick any chair you like.”

There were no chairs near his desk, and so she picked the couch, which was a bit awkward because it faced the center of the room. But he sprang across the rug again, and chose a seat immediately next to the couch. “A wonderful choice, a wonderful choice! I say chair, and she picks the couch! Ms. Roubacheau–Maddie, that is–an excellent choice, if I may say so.”

The chair he sat in was low, and even his short legs came up quite high above his lap, pulling the cuffs of his casual suit up over his shoes, exposing the fact that he was not wearing socks. He was quite young, perhaps the same age as Maddie herself, or even younger. She did not put her heels back on, as she was seated, and they would have been nearly buried in the long carpet shag anyway. She set them next to her feet.

“But you’d like to get to the point of the matter, of course. Your tests were absolutely, positively normal. There was no reason to think that they would have been anything else. And there was a little mistake with the forms, but no harm done. You still have your Chance cards, correct?”

She nodded. They were back in her jacket pocket, as they always were.

“Only five cards, Maddie? Naturally, there is no reason to expect someone so young to have accumulated hundreds and hundreds. But still, only five?” He put his chin on his palm, and his elbow on his knee, and smiled at her.

“I won’t get any more.”
“So I hear. And though I think I know why, would you like to tell me?”

It seemed, at least to the disoriented and still slightly blinded Maddie, that he was almost earnestly excited to hear her tell him. “I’m not sure that I see the point, Mr. Blake.”

“Herman! Please call me Herman. And go on, please do.”
“I’ve read the FAQ…”
“Yes! The FAQ!”
“And I’ve seen the videos…”
“Some of the videos certainly are better than others.”
“I… yes. And I’ve thought about the Chances I’ve gotten over and over again.”
“Yes, assuredly! We must–I only imagine we all do.”
“But I don’t see to what end, Mr… Herman.”
“Say more.”
“The canonical. Its meaning is clear, though it may ‘delight in a certain irony’, as the saying goes.”
“Yes.”
“And the canonical is ever so brief, and always the same.”
“It is.”
“Whereas, the algorithmically decoded Chances are less ironic, and yet more obscure.”
“They are–though if I might interrupt you quickly to say that they are ‘derived’, not ‘decoded’. But, please continue.”
“And they are supposed to be more information. Not read in the same way as a canonical, but as a supplement to a canonical. Words to surround it, and augment it, slowly, with more and more Chances, giving you a better picture of what one’s end might be like.”

He smiled, and extended his hand, palm wide. “But…”
“But they are just words.”

He waited for her, hand still outstretched.

“They may be algorithmically verifiable, but they are just words. With no context, they might as well be chosen at random. Without some sort of story or order to assemble them in, they could relate to my canonical in any conceivable way. They’re simply no good.”

Herman closed his hand, and smiled. He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his legs out in front of him, crossing one bare ankle over the other. “But you’re here.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Even though the words are meaningless to you, you came here looking for someone to explain to you how you ought to find meaning in them. You wanted them to have meaning, and so you went looking for a way to find it.”

Maddie suddenly felt sad. But she could only smile, and let out a tiny laugh, that somewhere inside it, had the faintest thought of a cry.

“Yes.”
“You didn’t have a complaint. You had a question.”
“That’s what I told them.”
“You see? I know simply everything that happens in this place.”

She laughed. Herman stood up, and sat next to her on the couch. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’d like to show you something, if I could.”

He was almost attractive, in a strange way. Cute, maybe. Like an overly sincere young man, trying to act a part, and almost pulling it off. Was he really in charge here, or was he just masquerading, pretending to be important, playing executive in someone’s office? “Sure,” she said, giving him her best camaraderie smile.

Out of his casual jacket pocket he pulled what appeared to be two matchboxes, taped end to end. She had never noticed before that a Chance card was precisely double the size of a standard matchbox.

“I made this. When I was little. It has… sentimental value. You know.” He slid out the end, and there were a stack of perhaps ten cards inside it. He pulled the one from the bottom out, leaving the rest in place. With the soft hush of cardboard moving against itself, he pushed the box closed, and replaced it in his pocket.

“I love this one best. I used to think it was a really important one. The pivotal Chance, as it were. Then others came, and it didn’t seem so crucial. After a while, it almost seemed superficial and redundant, almost as if it was blocking the continuity of the rest of the cards. But I kept it. Maybe it was because it was so important at one time, I kept it in my personal set out of habit. Or because of its uselessness now, perhaps there’s a certain significance in that. I don’t know. But I keep it in my set, and I imagine I always will. Though who can say for sure.”

He handed it to her. This time she did laugh. She laughed, and laughed, holding her free hand up to her mouth. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes, and tried to compose herself.

“I’m sorry. You probably want to know why I’m laughing.”
“I imagine that I know.”
“I have the same card.”
“I know you do, Maddie.”

She reached for her case, and opened it. She took out her card, and held it next to Herman’s, though keeping his in her right and hers in her left, so she wouldn’t be confused as to which was which.

‘Moose Moose’, said the cards in her hands.

She gave his back to him, and put hers away.

“You’re not convinced,” said Herman. “And that’s good. You don’t have to be, and maybe you never will be. But,” he said, with a smile. “I think you are ready to take another Chance.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you will be ready. Maybe not now, maybe not for years. But before that canonical takes effect, you will want to have another Chance. You will step into a Chance Networks franchise, you will insert your beautiful finger to have a drop of blood drawn from it, you will be verified on our central algorithm servers, and your Chance will be printed on one of our yellow cards. And, for the entire extent of the brief amount of time it will take for you to reach down and pull out the card so you can read it: that Chance will not come soon enough.”

She thought about it.

“I have a special offer for you now. Because we’ve just completed a number of physiological tests on you, I can offer you a special Chance. This sort of Chance is not yet available commercially, not to the public. It will be soon, and it is even more precise, less ironic, and better helps each and every individual to better understand their specific Chances as regards their canonical. We call it a Gold Chance. And I have one waiting for you.”

He stood, and walked over to the desk. From beneath it he pulled a small box, shining in bright gold. As he brought it over, the sunlight was tossed in a thousand directions from its surfaces, lighting up the statues, the walls, the ceiling with shards of golden light. Herman sat back in the chair, and balanced the machine on his knee.

“It’s already had your data transmitted to it. All you need to do, if you wish to accept your Chances, is press the button there, right on top. You press the button, and it will print the card. If not, I’ll open the cover and hit the reset, and it will forget your Chance that is right there inside it even now, waiting to be printed.”

He put his eyes into hers. “It’s up to you, Maddie.”

She felt the carpet around her toes. He smiled.

She pressed the button, and with a buzz, the card printed and ejected. Maddie instantly looked at the ceiling, and reached forward to palm the card.

“I… I’d like to read it later, if that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Herman.”
“Your welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”
“Oh–no, I don’t think so.”
“Well thank you for coming to see me, Maddie. I always appreciate visitors.”
“Oh, it was nothing.”

They sat silently for a full five seconds, and then Herman took the box back to his desk, and sat in his chair, replacing the box from wherever it had come from.

“I should go, then.”
“Alright, Maddie. Just out the door, and to the left is the elevator.” He stayed seated.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and Maddie?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget your shoes.”

She held the card in her palm, as she bent down to get the shoes.

She kept the card there as she clicked to the elevator, and all the way down, and out through a windowed causeway that looked out over the grounds, underneath the backside of the twisting helix of the building. And then down a set of stairs, and out a back gate, where the security guard gave her a salute that she didn’t feel was necessary, but that she appreciated anyway. And then she was back in the street, hot, full of traffic, dust rising everywhere in the sun. Maddie figured out which direction it was that she needed to go, and then pulled out her case. Quickly, she glanced at the Chance card in her palm before sliding it into the case and clicking it shut. It didn’t make a bit of sense.