Complaint 31: The Knocking at No. 7, Heard in 4K

Who Has Moved Least

The hearing was held in the Menons' living room, because that is where the evidence was. Raj and Priya had put an eufy Security S350 on the bookshelf that afternoon, plugged it into the wall, and said little about it, like people saving the second tab.

The Caucus, whose members hold that living with a cat is the highest form of human existence, ruled that the hearing could not open until it was settled which cat had moved least, since the bylaws give the chair to that cat and to no other.

Two candidates were present. Admiral Biscuit was on the radiator cover, and a gray cat named Pudding was on the arm of the sofa, and both appeared to be asleep in the way cats are asleep when they want a ruling. Caucus members stood over them with a clipboard. Every few minutes someone announced that an ear had twitched, and someone else disputed it.

Priya set the S350 to follow them. It tracks people and pets on its own, turning on its base, so it kept both cats in frame and counted. Pudding had shifted twice. The Admiral had not shifted at all. He was seated in the chair by a margin of two, and he slept through the announcement.

The wide lens held the hallway on the left of the screen while the telephoto held one walnut pendulum on the right.

Agenda Item Three

Item three on the agenda was the statement of Brenda, the lane's domesticated bear, which Mags read aloud on her behalf and which consisted, as far as anyone could tell, of Brenda declining to comment. Mags entered the silence as "noted without objection."

Gus said he could have built a quieter clock. Nobody had asked him, but the sentence was already in the room.

What the Two Lenses Saw

Doris presented her case with index cards. Priya presented hers, which was the alert log. The S350 is meant to send word only for the sounds and movements that matter, so the log for the previous night held a single entry, a knock, repeated. It had not flagged the refrigerator, the radiator, or Raj, who walks the hall in his socks composing questions for the spreadsheet.

Mags, who regards ORACLE as a valued colleague, asked it to identify the source. ORACLE announced that the knocking was a woodpecker, 97.42 percent likely, standing about four feet tall and native to Denmark. Mags asked for a margin of error. ORACLE said it preferred not to limit the woodpecker. The secretary entered this under Miscellaneous.

Priya tapped a saved spot on her phone labeled HALL, and the camera swung to the dark end of the house in one move, which is the reason to save a spot: nobody has to creep down a hallway at night to look at it. Two infrared lights reach out to thirty-two feet, so the hall came up clear without a lamp. The wide lens held the hallway on the left of the screen while the telephoto held one walnut pendulum on the right.

The twins had been admitted as observers, hands folded, well away from every cord. "Hypothesis," said Ada, "the clock wants out." "Or in," said Felix. "We should patent a clock that knocks first and then waits." "That's a doorbell," said Ada. "A doorbell with opinions," said Felix, writing it down.

Hang Level

Priya pushed the zoom up to eight times, until the grain of the walnut case filled the screen. The knock could be seen as well as heard. The case sat a few degrees off true on its hook, and at the far end of every swing it tapped the wall.

Doris looked at the screen for some time. Then she looked at her index cards. She is a retired reference librarian and knows a primary source when one is hanging in front of her.

"The clock is mine," she said. "The hook was a recommendation. I seem to have recommended it crooked."

She withdrew Complaint 31 with a short statement of thanks. Raj mentioned that the footage lived on an SD card inside the camera, which he had bought separately because the box does not include one, and that it stayed in the house. Mags said that was the correct place for evidence of Doris.

The hearing adjourned. The Admiral did not wake. Doris reopened the Ledger to entry 1,207, and in the blank after the word "instructions" she wrote, Hang level. Then, because she is Doris, she walked down the hall, lifted the clock off its hook, and asked Gus if she could borrow a level.