The Great Clubhouse Clicking Dispute Ends in Silence

Memo 212, Memo 213

Mags answered with Memo 212, Quiet Hours for Clicking. Memo 213 followed within the hour and defined clicking.

Doris: Memo 213 defines a click as a click. This is circular.

Mags: The HOA does not take notes from the reference desk.

By nine the feud had a docket. Mags moved to call the chat to order with the gavel, and then remembered the rule. The gavel belongs to the Cat-Owners' Caucus, whose members hold that living with a cat is the highest form of human existence, so no one may touch it except the chair, in sash, and the chair is Admiral Biscuit, who was asleep on the sash.

Mags rolled up an agenda and tapped the table with it. The chat ruled that this did not count.

ORACLE Rules on the Tide

With no gavel, Mags turned to her valued colleague. She asked ORACLE to mediate and typed out both positions fairly, which cost her something.

ORACLE considered the matter with its usual calm. ORACLE forecast that the clicking would stop by itself with a probability of 93.41 percent, once the tide came in at Nebraska.

Doris observed that Nebraska has no tide. ORACLE thanked her for the contribution and revised the figure to 93.42. Mags entered both numbers in the minutes and asked for the matter to be considered closed. Nobody did.

She scrolled, and the magnetic wheel made no sound at all, and Doris, who had come armed, had nothing to write down.

The Box at No. 2

What neither woman had mentioned was that Mags had already ordered something, quietly, for her wrist, which had begun to resemble a question mark. Wendell had left the box on the porch at No. 2, because Gus was home to sign and Mags was not.

Brenda lives under that porch. Under the lane's etiquette for the porch at No. 2, a visitor states her name once, waits a count of eleven for the domesticated bear to acknowledge her, and leaves backward, which turned a short walk into six minutes.

Mags performed every step. Doris stood at the curb with a pencil, as a witness. Brenda did not emerge, which both women agreed was her right, and nobody touched anything but the box.

Fifty-Seven Degrees of Quiet

Inside was the Logitech Lift for Mac in off white, a mouse that stands upright like a hand about to be shaken. Its 57-degree angle is meant to take pressure off the wrist, and Mags's forearm, which had spent years lying flat, turned on its side and stopped complaining.

It paired with the clubhouse MacBook over Bluetooth, and the wire was retired. The one AA battery was already in the box, and the battery life is rated at up to two years, which Doris called provisional but encouraging.

Mags clicked. The sound was a whisper. She scrolled, and the magnetic wheel made no sound at all, and Doris, who had come armed, had nothing to write down.

Doris: I have nothing to log.

Mags: I miss the ruling feeling.

Doris: It has four buttons you can customize. Give one the ruling feeling.

Mags gave one of the four a job, then clicked it. Gus came by to inspect and held the Logitech Lift for Mac like a sparrow. His hand was too large for it, and it is made for the right hand only. He pronounced it a fine tool for someone else's palm and went home to build one.

Adjourned, Silently

By ten the memos were withdrawn and Doris had closed the Ledger.

Mags: I clicked. It felt like a ruling.

Doris: I did not hear it.

Across the lane, the gavel lay exactly where it had been all night, under a sleeping Admiral Biscuit, who approved of nothing and objected to nothing.