“That’s fascinating, Dr. Novak. I’m going to call Mr. Pope so he can come get you in out of the rain.”
“No!” shouted Dr. Novak, so loudly that she dropped the phone. “He’ll kill me. He showed me the gun.”
“Mr. Pope doesn’t have a gun,” Miss Smalls said, but she sounded even less sure than she felt.
“He keeps one in his office–ever since he took money from the Russians. Do you understand?”
“Which Russians?”
“No, do you understand about the monks?”
“Yes,” she lied. “What if I call someone else? Not Mr. Pope, but some family, or a friend? I think you need some help.”
“I searched trillions of universes. We’ve never looked at so many. I ran the machines for five days straight–you have no idea what that costs. I’ve bankrupted our company, Miss Smalls. It’s the same in every universe. Do you understand?”
“I don’t understand–you’ve … bankrupted your company in every universe?”
“At first I was sure that it must be a mistake. But I checked every possible error condition–I cross-checked everything six ways to Sunday. There was no mistake. It was the same.”
“Dr. Novak, what are you talking about? What was the same?”
“Your hair, Miss Smalls. Across every single one of those trillions of universes, bearing every variation imaginable, your hair was exactly the same. Just like this.” For a second Miss Smalls thought he would reach through the window and touch it, and she bristled. “There should be millions of universes where you’re a brunette. Millions where you’re a redhead. Millions where you wear your hair short. Even some where you’ve already shaved it for a role. There are none. Zero. Do you understand? About the monks?”
“Dr. Novak, you’re not making sense.”
“I think Miss Rwanda was being literal. Your hair allows your husband to love you because it allows … this is madness, I can’t believe I’m saying this, thinking this. But that’s why there are so few parallel universes, when we should see so many, because if you change your hair too much in any given universe … That is–Miss Smalls–” said Dr. Novak, straightening his posture somewhat, “it is my scientific opinion that, for the sake of your career, your marriage, and … many, many other things … you should not accept this role, or any role that requires you to shave, dye, or otherwise alter your hair to any significant degree.”
He stood for a moment, searching for something else to say.
“I’m sorry,” was all he managed.
He turned and walked away, the water sloshing around his ankles with every step.
“Dr. Novak!”
The scientist turned around as Miss Smalls dug through her wallet.
“Take this,” she said, holding a business card out the window. Dr. Novak walked back to retrieve it. “To help you figure out what’s next. Tell Miss Rwanda I sent you.”
Dr. Novak looked at the card, then at Miss Smalls, then at the card again.
“Thank you,” he said, and put it in his pocket.
Tuesday
“You smell like cigarettes,” said Janine Smalls.
“There was a lot of second-hand smoke at the party,” Ryan Bradley said, stooping to kiss his wife on the head. He sat down in the recliner adjoining the sofa where she lay stretched out.
“You also smell like alcohol.”
“Lots of second-hand scotch too. Are we reading parts?”
“If you want to call them that,” said Janine, tossing another screenplay onto a pile on the floor and taking the next from the stack on which she had propped up her feet. “I swear to you, I don’t know why I pay Maurice to find me this garbage.”
“If I had an Oscar for every time you threatened to fire Maurice …”
“You do have an Oscar for every time I’ve threatened to fire Maurice.”
“Heh, I suppose I do. What’s wrong with this one?” said Ryan, picking up the screenplay she had just discarded and flipping open the light blue cover. “Family Matters?”
“She’s a bitch, that’s what wrong with it. A working mom who, in the first ten pages, manages to yell at her husband, her kids, and the hot young intern working for her. With whom she later has an affair. No one will root for her.”
“Well that’s all in how you play it, isn’t it? You have to make the audience feel just how much depends on her–just how much weight is on her shoulders. What do you think about Luigi’s for dinner? I’m in the mood for a bistec florentino.”
“I had Sandy come by earlier, there are grilled vegetables with an arugula chimichurri on the counter and an egg white omelet in the fridge. Don’t give me the face, I saw your latest test results–if cholesterol numbers were electoral votes you would be the next president. Speaking of which, Marcy told me the DNC called–they want you to direct something for them.”
“No thanks.”
“Don’t tell me, tell Marcy.”
“How about this one? Scarlet Ambition? I like the title. And it opens nice.”
“It’s sci-fi. I seem to remember a famous director advising me to stay out of sci-fi. Also, the heroine gets naked within the first ten minutes–which I seem to recall some more advice about. Furthermore she has the line ‘It’s quiet. Too quiet.’”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope–it’s on page four, about halfway down. And then, just to top it all off,” said Janine Smalls, tossing another screenplay on a pile and turning to her husband, “she’s a ginger.”
Slices of Pi
From Mariposa Media Conglomerate v. Partensky
Roy Selva, Witness for the Plaintiff
Ulysses J. Fleetwell, Attorney for the Plaintiff
George Baniff, Attorney for the Defense
* * *
Selva: March 14th of last year? Yeah, I had contact with Igor–Mr. Partensky–that day.
Fleetwell: How did this contact come about?
Selva: I called him into my office that morning, before he went out on his calls.
Fleetwell: You were his direct superior at the time?
Selva: That’s right, I manage all the field technicians in Mariposa’s Boston office.
Fleetwell: And at that time Mr. Partensky was a field technician in the employ of Mariposa Media Conglomerate?
Selva: His official title was “Field Technician, Class III.”
Fleetwell: Can you describe the discussion that took place in your office on the morning of March 14th?
Selva: When Igor–I mean Mr. Partensky–came in he was a hot mess–sweating, shivering, and he smelled like he’d already been hitting the liquid courage. As soon as he saw that I was holding his “Equip Yourself!” application, he crumbled. He dropped to his knees, right there in front of my desk, and crossed himself like he was kneeling in front of an altar or something, and then started stabbing himself in the chest with his hands over and over, like he was holding a knife. He was praying–sometimes in English, sometimes in Russian. Just a mess. My heart just went out to the guy. Anyone’s would have.
Fleetwell: What was the “Equip Yourself!” program?
Selva: That was a pilot program for the field techs to buy their own equipment. Mariposa would reimburse them up to 90%.
Fleetwell: Why would field technicians want to buy their own equipment?
Selva: Maybe, you know, one of them preferred a different brand of voltmeter, or a wire-stripper with a handle especially contoured for lefties. The company thought it would be a nice perk to give them a little flexibility.
Fleetwell: So Mr. Partensky had applied to participate in the “Equip Yourself!” program?
Selva: Yeah.
Fleetwell: By submitting an application for reimbursement to you, his direct superior?
Selva: That’s right.
Fleetwell: Had he bought his own voltmeter, of the special brand he preferred?
Selva: No.
Fleetwell: His own left-handed wire-stripper, then?
Selva: No.
Fleetwell: Then what had Mr. Partensky bought and submitted for reimbursement under the “Equip Yourself!” program?
Selva: A laptop.
Fleetwell: Do you happen to recall the make and model of this laptop?
Selva: It was a Toshiba Q100.
Fleetwell: Was there anything noteworthy about that particular make and model?
Selva: Yeah, it was the first–I guess you’d call it “consumer” machine–to ship with a quantum coprocessor.
Fleetwell: A “quantum coprocessor?” That sounds expensive.
Selva: It was.
Fleetwell: How expensive?
Selva: $23,000 and change.
Fleetwell: Which was the amount for which Mr. Partensky was seeking reimbursement?
Selva: He was asking for 90%, which was the maximum allowed under the program. So a little over $20,000.
Fleetwell: What was the amount of the average reimbursement request for the “Equip Yourself!” program?
Selva: I don’t really have those numbers off the top of my head.
Fleetwell: Ballpark–to, say, the nearest $1,000.
Selva: Oh, that’s easy–all the other requests were way under $1,000.
Fleetwell: You mean that every other reimbursement request you received in the Boston office under the “Equip Yourself!” program was under $1,000?
Selva: Yeah, they were all maybe $50 or $100 at the most.
Fleetwell: Can you describe briefly the duties that a Field Technician, Class III is expected to perform for Mariposa Media Conglomerate?
Selva: Um, sure. The Class IIIs handle mostly the same stuff as the Class I and IIs–installations, basic repairs–but they also get called in for the really tough problems.
Fleetwell: What are the really tough problems?
Selva: Maybe a customer is getting a bad picture, or the sound is still out of phase, even after we’ve swapped the box out a couple times, and the Class III might have to figure out why the network was misbehaving, or if there’s a bad stretch of cable that needs to be tracked down, or if there’s phase interference. That sort of thing.
Fleetwell: That all sounds pretty complicated.
Selva: It can be.
Fleetwell: And which problems were made easier for Mr. Partensky to solve, in his capacity as a Field Technician, Class III, by the purchase of his new Q100 laptop with its quantum coprocessor?
Selva: Well–it’s honestly hard to see how a quantum coprocessor would have helped him much.
Fleetwell: Much?
Selva: At all.
Fleetwell: Would it be fair to say that you, as an expert on the duties and responsibilities of Field Technicians, Class III, would be unable to conceive of even a hypothetical use that a Field Technician, Class III might have for a quantum coprocessor in the execution of his duties?
Selva: Yeah, I guess. I mean, if there is a use, I can’t think of it.
Fleetwell: So why had Mr. Partensky submitted the laptop for reimbursement?
Baniff: Objection: calls for speculation.
Fleetwell: I’ll rephrase: on the morning of March 14th of last year, in your office, did Mr. Partensky tell you why he had submitted the Toshiba Q100 laptop for reimbursement?
Selva: Yes, he said that he’d–well, made a mistake.
Fleetwell: Was that how he phrased it to you?
Selva: No, in his words, he’d “fucked up.” “I fucked up,” he kept saying. “I know I fucked up.”
Fleetwell: Can you elaborate?
Selva: He said he’d bought the laptop in a “moment of weakness,” even though he knew he couldn’t afford it. He’d emptied his checking and maxed out his credit card–he wasn’t even going to be able to make rent that month, or send his daughter to camp like he’d promised.
Fleetwell: So he thought to try to apply for reimbursement through the “Equip Yourself!” program–even though he hadn’t bought the laptop for the purpose of his duties at Mariposa Media Conglomerate?
Selva: That’s right.
Fleetwell: Did he say what purpose he had bought it for?
Selva: He mentioned something about finishing his dissertation, and information theory–honestly I couldn’t follow it very well, he was very upset, and a lot of it was pretty technical.
Fleetwell: But you’re very technical, aren’t you?
Selva: This was a different kind of technical–not cable television and internet stuff–more like stuff he’d been working on when he was going after his PhD.
Fleetwell: And on this occasion, on March 14th, did Mr. Partensky ask you for anything?
Selva: He asked me to help him get reimbursed for the laptop, so that his wife …
Fleetwell: So that his wife what, Mr. Selva?
Selva: So that his wife …
Fleetwell: I know that the former Mrs. Partensky is a sensitive topic for you, Mr. Selva, but this is a court of law, convened to determine the facts surrounding a matter of intellectual property. Any personal indiscretions that may or may not have occurred by the wayside are simply irrelevant. Now, why did Mr. Partensky want your help to get reimbursed for the laptop?
Selva: He was afraid that his wife would leave him if she found out what he’d done.
Fleetwell: Thank you. Did Mr. Partensky say why he didn’t just return the laptop?
Selva: I guess the cover had gotten all banged up when he threw it in the back of his truck, and the store wouldn’t take it back. He said reimbursement was his only chance, and he really needed my help.
Fleetwell: So did you agree to help him? Mr. Selva?
Selva: Well, yeah. Yeah, of course I did. He was my best field tech. But apart from that, you would have done the same–anyone would have. He was just so broken, kneeling there on the floor, crying and praying and hitting himself in the chest. My heart just went out to the guy. I told him we’d work it out.
Fleetwell: How would you work it out?
Selva: I told him to take the day off, go home and rest, and that I would try to find something for him to do with the laptop that would let me slip it through and get him reimbursed.
Fleetwell: So your plan was to make reimbursement possible by finding him some task that both legitimately served the interests of Mariposa Media Conglomerate and also legitimately required a quantum coprocessor?
Selva: To be honest, I wasn’t really thinking much about whether the task was a “legitimate” use of a quantum coprocessor or not. It just had to look good on paper.
Fleetwell: But, to be clear, you were specifically looking for a task–whether that task would have been, in your opinion, a “legitimate” use of a quantum coprocessor or not–that would fall within the purview of Mariposa Media Conglomerate’s legitimate, day-to-day business?
Selva: Yeah, of course, it would have to be for Mariposa–otherwise how was I going to argue that he should be reimbursed for the laptop? Look, I had no idea it was going to blow up like this–I never in a million years would have thought we’d end up here. I thought we were just talking about 20,000 dollars.
Fleetwell: And did you find such a task?
From My 12 Memorable Cases (A Memoir), by Ulysses J. Fleetwell (unpublished)
“Intellectual property.”
No pair of words I ever managed to coax or compel together in my second career as New York’s Poet Laureate has surpassed the tense energy that names the concern of my first.
Even today, here in the gray backwaters of retirement, I roll them on my tongue and they conjure up an image for me: a sun god gazing down with stern approval as a horde of intellectual property attorneys, invisible but for the merest perturbation of the atmosphere, like angels bear the sun-god’s gifts from Heaven to Earth. In my day I was one of these beasts of subtle burden–an intellectual property lawyer–and it is matter of public record rather than boast when I note that I had one of the widest backs.
[…]
No doubt you have benefited from my work, gentle reader, though no doubt you did so unawares. The Klauser Touchless Fau
cet that allows you to wash your hands in the office sink without picking up the germs left by your colleagues with their questionable hygiene; the S84-E engine, which set a new standard for power and fuel efficiency, bringing down the price of minivans sufficiently that you and your spouse could shuttle your 2.5 children in comfort and safety around the leafy suburb you call home; the Philips Juvenile Bile Duct Stent, which may have saved the life of one of your nieces or nephews afflicted by pancreatitis–I represented the inventors of all these against an onslaught of cranks, opportunists, and pretenders. And even if you have somehow dodged all my aforementioned handiwork, it is almost unthinkable that you have not enjoyed the results of my most famous suit, Mariposa Media Conglomerate v. Partensky.
Last night, gentle reader, I suspect you passed the time before bed enjoying a recorded entertainment–perhaps a period romance or some absurdly inaccurate courtroom drama. Unless there happened to be a rare malfunction, I doubt you gave any thought whatsoever to how that recorded entertainment actually entered your home–what role the wires running to your bedroom played, or the large cable box to the side of your television, which grows warm while you enjoy your sitcom. If you are not old enough to remember, then surely your parents are, a time when the cable box was much smaller–small enough to fit in the palm of your hand–and the monthly cable bill was much, much larger–obscenely large, when you consider that in those days the selection of recorded entertainment consisted only of what happened to be playing at that moment on one of the various “channels”–rather than the instant access we enjoy today to every movie and every episode of every show ever made.
[…]
It is easy to take such developments for granted. Thus proceeds the march of progress, one thinks–the anonymous and inevitable march of progress. But witnessed from the trenches, the “march of progress” is anything but inevitable, and barely a march–on many days it seems little more than a desperate stumble.
[…]
As the tree of liberty requires occasional refreshment by the blood of patriots, so the tree of progress withers and dies unless it basks continually in the rays of intellectual property law.
Other Copenhagens Page 6