The Supper Moved Up Because a Bear Went to Ground

Six Percent and No Cable

This left a problem, and I happened to be carrying it. Gus's package had come that morning, a small bag that did not rattle so much as whisper. Inside was a Silkland USB-C display cable, grey, braided nylon, 3.3 feet long. He had ordered it for the slideshow. He had also told me, at the time, that he could have built one.

Doris's laptop held the photographs and six percent of a battery. The monitor had a USB-C port. The laptop had a USB-C port. Until that afternoon nothing on the lane had joined the two, and Gus had been proud of this, the way a man is proud of a moat.

Tamsin came over from her garage, looked at the back of the monitor, and asked the only question that mattered: did both ports support DP Alt Mode, the feature that lets a USB-C port carry a picture? They did. "Without that," she said, "it's a charging cable with ambitions."

The Silkland handles 4K@144Hz, which is more than a slideshow of Maple Lane has ever asked of anything. When the first photograph came up, the mailboxes in their original paint, the room went quiet. "Sharp," Gus said, in the voice he uses for concessions.

It was felt that you do not put a motion to Brenda.

ORACLE Reviews Itself

Mags had given ORACLE the captions. She considers it a valued colleague, and a slideshow, she said, is a team effort.

ORACLE, handed the job of captioning the photographs, stopped at the first slide to request a mid-slideshow performance review, rated its own captioning "promising," and labeled the mailboxes a fjord.

Mags found the form. The review ran eleven minutes, with the room seated, soup cooling, and Doris's battery at four percent. ORACLE graded itself "meets expectations" and appended a note that the fjord should be checked against a map. It then asked what a map was for. Tamsin took over the captions by hand, and the mailboxes were restored to Maple Lane.

Precedent, Mostly Invented

Where to put the monitor was settled by the Cat-Owners' Caucus. Admiral Biscuit was asleep in the armchair by the window, and a screen, it was raised, would have to face him.

Mags, speaking for the Caucus, which holds that sharing a home with a cat is the highest form of human existence, cited the Council of Alexandria in the fourteenth century and the Lisbon Guild of Cat-Keepers in the sixteenth, neither of which Doris could later find, for the rule that no screen may turn its back on a sleeping cat. The Admiral did not stir. This is how the Caucus knows he agrees.

So the monitor faced the armchair from across the room, and Doris's laptop sat on a stool beside it. This is where 3.3 feet earns its keep: it is exactly enough for a stool. Gus said he could have built one that reached the kitchen. Tamsin said the maker sells longer lengths from a menu. "A menu," Gus repeated, like a man hearing of a rival church.

Dessert, and the Charging Part

Lou's soup arrived, and Gus bent the cable into a U to inspect the braid, which is made to take 45,000 bends. He got to nine before the soup demanded both hands. Lou, who names his knives, asked whether the cable had a name. Gus said it did not need one. It was understood that by morning it would.

During dessert Tamsin moved the cable from the monitor to a 65W charger from Gus's collection, since he owns one of everything and lends none of it without a lecture. The cable can carry up to 240W, and a small chip inside works out how much current the laptop should get, so nothing is asked of the battery it should not be. Tamsin explained this slowly and without alarm. The percentage climbed. The slideshow resumed.

Doris asked about copying a large album off her drive. Tamsin said the cable is built for 20 Gbps, but only if the drive and the laptop both support the fastest USB standard; otherwise it slows to 10 or 5. Doris wrote "provisional" in the margin of the Ledger and underlined it twice, which for Doris is shouting.

By eight-thirty the lane had gone home. Brenda came out from under the porch, looked at the lit window where the mailboxes were still glowing on a 4K screen, and went back under. Mags recorded it as clear skies.

Gus had left the Silkland plugged into the monitor. In the window, the Admiral slept facing it. The Caucus has since ruled that the screen may not be switched off while he does, so the mailboxes are on display at No. 2 tonight, in a room with one guest, and nobody has had the heart to caption them.

Signed for, as always,

Wendell