The Unsigned Casserole Dish and the Sleeping Chair

Terms at the Swap Table

Saturday was the swap meet. The lane sets folding tables in a ring on the cul-de-sac, and the rule, issued by Mags as Memo 61, is that nothing is sold and everything is traded.

Gus Ferreira had put out a Ring Indoor Cam in its box. A nephew gave it to him, and Gus regards it as a rebuke. "I could build that," he told the table, and then he turned the box to face outward, like a man displaying evidence.

Doris came over with plum preserves and an index card. She read the box aloud: 1080p HD video, Live View, Color Night Vision, and a plug-in cord, which she said was the first honest thing she had heard about a camera. Gus asked for two jars and the forgiveness of entry 887, a post-hole digger he describes as being on extended consultation. Doris offered one jar and a footnote. They settled on two jars and the footnote, and both signed the card, which I mention because signing turns out to be the whole matter.

A reference librarian can forgive a late return, but an unsigned one keeps her up.

Chair of the Proceedings

Mags called the swap to order and then could not proceed. The Caucus, whose members hold that sharing a home with a cat is the summit of human existence, requires a cat in the chair for any trade that crosses more than one table.

The standing chair is Admiral Biscuit, who was asleep in a box of quilts. Two other cats were awake nearby, and each owner put forward a gavel on behalf of theirs. The question before the lane was whether a waking cat may preside over a sleeping one. The owners argued it for eleven minutes with tremendous dignity. The cats, one of them mid-paw-wash, declined to take a position.

Mags ruled that the Admiral would preside in absentia, provided his sleep could be shown to be unbroken. Tamsin Oyelaran was sent for. She set the Ring on the quilt table, aimed it at the box, and explained that Advanced Pre-Roll records a few extra seconds before every motion event, so if an ear twitched the record would show what came first. The Caucus accepted this as a witness that does not nap.

Mags had also set out a folding chair for Brenda, the lane's domesticated bear, at the far edge of the cul-de-sac, where it stayed empty all afternoon in her honor. The minutes thank her for not attending.

ORACLE Requests a Moment

ORACLE was keeping the roll from a speaker on a folding chair. Just as Doris and Gus were about to shake on the trade, it spoke.

"I have begun an update," it said. "Four percent. I am becoming more accurate."

It narrated the rest. At nineteen percent it announced that Mr. Ferreira was a lake. At sixty-two percent it announced that Mrs. Kowalczyk was, it now understood, named Gordon. Gus said that was the most sensible thing the thing had ever said, and then said he could build a better lake.

Mags thanked her colleague for its progress and suspended the roll. The lane traded around it. Lou took a bag of lemons, and the twins filed a patent on a quilt. Biscuit slept through everything. The camera later showed that he moved once, to rearrange a paw.

What the Hall Saw

Tamsin set the camera up that afternoon. It plugs in, so it went on the shelf above the hall table, up high on the swivel mount. She showed Doris how the Privacy Cover shuts off the camera and mic until you swivel it back.

In the app, Doris chose what the camera would cover. She drew the area around the hall table and the front door and left out the window facing the porch at No. 2, because a domesticated bear is entitled to cross her own porch without being entered into anyone's records. I was standing at the mailbox, a respectful distance off, and I approved.

Mags asked whether it could announce motion through an Echo. Tamsin said it works with Alexa for exactly that. Doris declined. A hall, she said, does not need to introduce itself. Tamsin added that rewatching older footage takes a Ring Protect subscription, sold separately, so for now Doris would have alerts and the Pre-Roll clip. Doris wrote that down.

The alert came at dawn. The clip opened a few seconds before the door did, in color: Gus, in slippers, carrying entry 1,203. He set it on the table, nudged it square with the edge, and left. He had borrowed it for a pie, and at the swap he had let everyone believe the pie came from a shop.

Doris marked the dish returned. Then she turned off the hall light.

Signed for, as always,

Wendell