type, from a specific period, with an exact denomination—well, iodine is trained to spot this coin and melt it back down, take it out of circulation. That sounds pretty straight-forward, I said. You’ll be cured, then. Ah, he replied: in principle it sounds straight-forward. But in practice it turns out to be a little harder than I thought. He paused. How do you mean? I asked. Well, he said, say one of these coins is degraded, or a little different, through some quirk of the mint—the way a machine-part was lying the day that it was pressed, a piece of grit that found its way into the mix, a hundred other permutation-causing factors we could mention: then the iodine can’t recognize it, since these variations haven’t been included in its recognition-software. So the coin, the cancer-cell, not only stays in circulation; it sets up its own mint and prints new copiesof itself, each one corrupt, unrecognizable as well; and then these introduce new variations and new mint-quirks of their own, until the iodine has no idea what it’s even supposed to be looking for, throws its hands up, mutters Fuck this! and heads off home. It’s a systems problem, Petr said. If we had a better database, then I’d be out of danger.
6.4 One afternoon, while sorting through the transcript of the civil-servant dialogues down in the basement, I poked my head into Daniel’s office again. This time I found him staring at footage that showed hundreds of legs gliding through city streets. I say “gliding” because that’s what they were doing, rather than (say) walking or running. The legs, I realized after a few seconds, belonged to roller-bladers: lots of roller-bladers, skating past the camera—which itself, since it was moving, was (presumably) being held by somebody also on roller-blades. How’s the Great Report coming along? Daniel asked. Oh, you know, I said: it’s coming along slowly; still finding its shape. Look at the way they move, said Daniel, without turning his head towards me. I looked: the bladers’ heads all angled forwards, focused on a spot beyond the picture’s frame, some point on which they were advancing. It wasn’t a race: there was no urgency to their pace. More like a Friday-evening meet-up (it was dark; the streets were lit), with most people just ambling forwards, or sliding from one side of the moving column to the other, or letting the column’s body flow ahead of them a littleas they waited for an acquaintance to catch up, or checked their phone for messages, or fiddled with the music they had plugged into their ears.
6.5 I shot it in Paris, Daniel said, still facing away from me towards the wall. I’m going there next week, I told him. It’s an MSP, he said, ignoring me. What’s that? I asked. Manifestation sans Plainte , he answered. That’s the legal term for it, as set out in the license granted by the Paris mairie: a Demonstration With No Complaint. Oh, I said; and we watched the footage in silence for a little longer. The roller-bladers kept on gliding by. They didn’t have to make much of an effort to progress, since the street’s surface was quite smooth. This gave them all a kind of languid look. Paris, Daniel explained when I commented on the pavement’s texture, has the smoothest street surface of any major European city. It’s because of sixty-eight, he said, the general uprisings, when revolutionaries pulled up all the cobblestones to throw them at the cops. They even had a slogan stirring them to do this: Underneath the paving stones, the beach! After that, he explained, the authorities replaced the paving stones with tarmac—which had the unforeseen effect of turning the city into a paradise for roller-bladers.
6.6 I kept thinking about the dead parachutist. The circumstances of the incident recalled a chapter from my own childhood. I can pinpoint, with complete precision, the episode thatset me on my career path: it occurred when, at the age of seven, I happened to watch, one
6.4 One afternoon, while sorting through the transcript of the civil-servant dialogues down in the basement, I poked my head into Daniel’s office again. This time I found him staring at footage that showed hundreds of legs gliding through city streets. I say “gliding” because that’s what they were doing, rather than (say) walking or running. The legs, I realized after a few seconds, belonged to roller-bladers: lots of roller-bladers, skating past the camera—which itself, since it was moving, was (presumably) being held by somebody also on roller-blades. How’s the Great Report coming along? Daniel asked. Oh, you know, I said: it’s coming along slowly; still finding its shape. Look at the way they move, said Daniel, without turning his head towards me. I looked: the bladers’ heads all angled forwards, focused on a spot beyond the picture’s frame, some point on which they were advancing. It wasn’t a race: there was no urgency to their pace. More like a Friday-evening meet-up (it was dark; the streets were lit), with most people just ambling forwards, or sliding from one side of the moving column to the other, or letting the column’s body flow ahead of them a littleas they waited for an acquaintance to catch up, or checked their phone for messages, or fiddled with the music they had plugged into their ears.
6.5 I shot it in Paris, Daniel said, still facing away from me towards the wall. I’m going there next week, I told him. It’s an MSP, he said, ignoring me. What’s that? I asked. Manifestation sans Plainte , he answered. That’s the legal term for it, as set out in the license granted by the Paris mairie: a Demonstration With No Complaint. Oh, I said; and we watched the footage in silence for a little longer. The roller-bladers kept on gliding by. They didn’t have to make much of an effort to progress, since the street’s surface was quite smooth. This gave them all a kind of languid look. Paris, Daniel explained when I commented on the pavement’s texture, has the smoothest street surface of any major European city. It’s because of sixty-eight, he said, the general uprisings, when revolutionaries pulled up all the cobblestones to throw them at the cops. They even had a slogan stirring them to do this: Underneath the paving stones, the beach! After that, he explained, the authorities replaced the paving stones with tarmac—which had the unforeseen effect of turning the city into a paradise for roller-bladers.
6.6 I kept thinking about the dead parachutist. The circumstances of the incident recalled a chapter from my own childhood. I can pinpoint, with complete precision, the episode thatset me on my career path: it occurred when, at the age of seven, I happened to watch, one
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