Chapter 51: A Missing Variable

The next morning, Aldric checked his phone for the third time since arriving at the depot. The screen showed 7:26 a.m., the battery was at eighty-nine percent, and the network was working. No notifications had appeared since Patrick's message twenty minutes earlier about the first move of the day.

Aldric locked the screen and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Emma did not message him every morning. Some days, she sent him a message before starting work, others during a break or sometime in the afternoon. The absence of a notification at 7:26 therefore provided no basis for any conclusion.

He resumed checking the protective blankets stacked in the truck when Karim came up behind him.

"We're missing two."

"They're under the straps."

"Great."

Lucas arrived next with a roll of plastic wrap tucked under his arm.

"Patrick wants us to leave in five minutes."

"The truck is almost ready."

"'Almost,'" Lucas repeated. "I really like that word. It makes everything sound fine even when you're not actually finished."

Aldric closed the truck's side door.

"The loading is complete."

Lucas placed the roll in the back.

"You just destroyed my argument."

"It was fragile."

"You're pleasant this morning."

The first drive took twenty-three minutes. Karim was driving, Patrick was reviewing the client's information from the passenger seat, and Lucas was telling a story about a football match. Aldric could not understand why a decision made by a referee four days earlier was still provoking so much emotion.

In his world, a judgment disputed for four days involved a border, an inheritance, or a death sentence. Here, it involved a man who had touched a ball in the wrong place.

At a red light, Aldric checked his phone again. No messages.

"Are you waiting for something?" Lucas asked.

"No."

"You just checked your phone. So you're waiting for something."

"That conclusion does not follow from the observation."

Lucas turned to Karim.

"Translation?"

"He doesn't want to answer."

Patrick looked up from his notes.

"Can we maybe start the day without investigating each other?"

"He's the one investigating his phone," Lucas protested.

Aldric put the device away.

"I was checking whether it was functioning properly."

"Ah," Lucas said with a smile.

Aldric knew that expression. Lucas had worn it before several suggestions whose consequences had proven disproportionate to their initial value. It was therefore advisable to consider that smile a warning.

The truck stopped in front of an apartment building. Their job was to empty an apartment on the third floor, with an elevator large enough for boxes but not for furniture. Patrick assigned the tasks, and Aldric began wrapping a dresser while Karim removed the legs from a table.

For almost an hour, his phone remained in his pocket and Aldric did not think about it. When it vibrated, however, his hand immediately left the protective blanket he had been securing.

A notification announcing an app update filled the screen. It required no action, and Aldric put the phone away just as Lucas stopped beside him with a box in his arms.

"What was it?"

"A notification."

"You looked disappointed."

"Based on what?"

"Your face."

"My expression did not change."

"Exactly. With you, that counts."

Aldric resumed wrapping the dresser.

Lucas walked away. His conclusion was debatable, but the word disappointed remained in Aldric's mind. He had lost no resources. His phone was functioning properly. There was therefore no reason for him to be disappointed.

The notification simply had not been the one he had anticipated when he heard the vibration.

The distinction deserved examination, but not in the middle of a move. There were still three pieces of furniture to carry downstairs, and unlike certain unidentified physiological reactions, a wardrobe left on the third floor was a problem whose nature was clear.

At 9:42 a.m., the truck was loaded. Patrick checked the inventory while Karim closed the rear doors. Aldric opened his conversation with Emma. Their last exchange had been the previous evening.

Emma: Good night 😊

Aldric: Good night.

He put his phone away just as Lucas appeared in front of him.

"Network problem?"

"Possibly."

"Want to test it?"

"How?"

"Send me a message."

Aldric: Reception test. Reply to this message.

Lucas's phone vibrated.

"Received."

"Reply."

"I just told you I received it."

"I need an incoming notification."

"Understood."

Aldric's phone vibrated once, then a second and a third time. When he checked the screen, a sticker of a cat in armor had appeared, followed by a dog wearing glasses and then a figure dancing in front of an explosion.

A fourth notification arrived.

Then a fifth.

"Lucas."

"I'm testing."

"One reply would have been sufficient."

The phone vibrated again as Karim approached.

"What is he doing?"

"A reception test," Aldric replied.

For readers tracing origins, the author's chapter is on . This reproduction was made without approval and should not replace it.

"With how many messages?"

"Seventeen so far."

"Twenty," Lucas corrected.

Three new notifications confirmed his count. Patrick came out of the building just as the total reached twenty-seven and stopped when he heard the vibrations.

"Why is Aldric's phone doing that?"

"Technical inspection," Lucas said.

Aldric checked the screen.

Messages Received: 27.

No interruptions. No delays. No reception failures. If the phone did have a malfunction, Lucas had just subjected it to a remarkably thorough stress test.

"The test is conclusive."

"I preferred to be thorough."

"Excessive, but not inconsistent."

Lucas placed a hand against his chest.

"Finally, someone who respects the scientific method."

Patrick shook his head.

"Get in the truck."

Aldric cleared the notifications and followed the others.

"Okay, now that we've saved your phone, what was the problem?"

"I'm investigating an anomaly."

"What kind?"

"The absence of a usual interaction has attracted my attention."

"You're waiting for someone?"

"That is not exactly the same thing."

"It's very close."

The distinction was nevertheless clear. Waiting implied an expectation. Aldric was merely observing the repeated absence of an event he expected to occur.

He climbed into the truck before Lucas could attempt to further reduce the difference between the two definitions.

The second part of the job occupied the rest of the morning. The client had drawn a floor plan indicating which room each piece of furniture should go in, but its proportions bore only a distant relationship to the actual apartment. A passage shown as wide enough for two pieces of furniture side by side barely allowed one through.

Aldric had worked with maps of comparable accuracy before. Prior to the Battle of Varenne, one of them had placed a hill nearly two kilometers from its actual location. When the scouts reported the error, the cartographer insisted that significant amounts of rising mud had altered the terrain since his last survey. Aldric had gone to inspect the area himself. The mud did indeed reach their ankles in places, but the hill remained in the same position the local inhabitants had reported for three generations.

Fortunately, the client's floor plan contained less ambitious errors. After a few adjustments, they managed to distribute the furniture among the four rooms without having to question the local geography.

During their lunch break, Aldric sat apart from the truck and opened his notebook. The events of the morning had at least eliminated one possibility: his phone was functioning perfectly. The problem therefore lay in what he expected to find on it.

New Observation: Increased attention to incoming notifications.

Possible Cause: Disruption of an established communication routine.

BEHAVIORAL VARIATION DETECTEDRoutine Modification: ConfirmedAssociated Communication Pattern: EmmaEmotional Response: DetectedCause: Unresolved

Until now, every reaction had followed something Emma had done: a message, a word, a gesture. This time, she had done nothing. He had simply grown so accustomed to their conversations that he noticed when they were absent.

A habit. That was an explanation he could understand.

Lucas sat down beside him.

"So?"

"So what?"

"Your phone."

"It works."

"I know. I personally confirmed that twenty-seven times."

Aldric took a bite.

"The anomaly does not originate from the device."

"What a surprise."

"It is a change in routine."

"Are we still talking about Emma's messages?"

"How do you know this concerns Emma?"

"Because you've never checked your phone four times in an hour waiting for a message from Patrick."

"Patrick communicates professional information."

"Exactly."

Lucas smiled.

"So?"

"So communication habits differ depending on the person."

"Of course."

"You're using that tone again."

"What tone?"

"The one that indicates you are thinking something you do not intend to say."

Lucas returned to his sandwich.

"I'm following Patrick's recommendations."

"Since when?"

"Since I decided I want to see how long this lasts."

Aldric did not understand what he meant. Lucas nevertheless appeared very pleased with himself.

On the other side of Paris, Emma had not checked her phone for seventeen minutes, which already represented a notable improvement compared to earlier that morning.

Her day had begun with a canceled viewing, two landlords demanding contradictory answers, and a water leak in an apartment that had been available for only three days. At 10:30 a.m., Léa had brought her an application missing three supporting documents, explaining that the applicant "promised to send them soon." Half an hour later, the landlord of the apartment with the leak had found an explanation.

"The damp is caused by the previous tenant's behavior."

Emma had checked the file.

"He moved out four months ago."

"Exactly."

She had not asked for any further explanation. Some answers did not become more logical when given a second chance.

Her personal phone had remained beside her keyboard for most of the morning. Emma had picked it up to check the time, reply to her mother, or check the group chat. Each time, her eyes lingered a little longer than necessary on her conversation with Aldric.

She had not sent him anything.

She was working, and so was he. There was no point in starting a conversation only to abandon it thirty seconds later.

She checked the screen again anyway.

Around noon, Léa set two coffees down on her desk.

"Here."

"Thanks."

Emma picked up the cup as Léa sat down across from her.

"Are you waiting for a message?"

"No."

Léa looked at the phone lying beside Emma's hand.

Emma followed her gaze.

"Well, not specifically."

A smile appeared on Léa's face.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

"Not necessarily."

"Your face isn't very discreet."

Léa took a sip.

"Is it someone I know?"

Emma opened the file in front of her.

"We have six applications to review before two."

"Very subtle change of subject."

"The third one doesn't have proof of address."

"Got it. Interrogation over."

A few minutes later, the phone vibrated.

Sarah.

Emma replied, then put the phone away.

Her reaction proved nothing. Her day was chaotic, problems were piling up, and her phone was one of the few things whose notifications she could still keep track of.

The afternoon gave her enough other problems to keep her occupied. One landlord had left his keys at work and suggested that Emma "find a way inside anyway."

"Without the keys?"

"Yes."

"Into a locked apartment?"

A silence followed.

"You work in real estate, don't you?"

Emma decided that answering that question might damage the professional relationship.

Meanwhile, Léa explained to an applicant that changing the date on a supporting document himself did not constitute an administrative correction.

At 4:45 p.m., Emma finally managed to sit down. Her desk looked like a failed attempt to organize paperwork during a storm. She picked up her phone.

Still no message from Aldric.

That morning, she had told herself that they were both working and there was no reason to start a conversation she would have to interrupt almost immediately. Several hours had passed since then, and that explanation seemed considerably less convincing than it had at the beginning of the day.

She opened their conversation.

Emma started typing:

Catastrophic day

She stopped. Summarizing the last eight hours through messages was likely to require more energy than she had left.

She added:

Can I call you?

Back at the depot, Aldric was putting several straps back on a shelf when his phone vibrated.

Emma: Catastrophic day. Can I call you?

Aldric: Yes.

He put the last strap away before picking up his phone again when the call came through.

"Good evening, Emma."

"Hi. Are you still working?"

"We're finishing up."

"I can call back later."

"That won't be necessary."

Aldric moved away from the noise Lucas was making as he attempted to close a crate by sitting on it. The method had so far produced no visible results, but Lucas seemed determined to compensate for its lack of effectiveness with persistence.

"What happened?"

Emma exhaled.

"How much time do you have?"

"As much as you need."

"Wrong answer. Now I'm going to tell you everything."

Emma started with the water leak, continued with the landlord who wanted to get into his own apartment without the keys, then explained the falsified application. Aldric listened without trying to solve every problem.

Several weeks earlier, he would have examined each situation as a threat requiring a solution. But the problems were already over, and Emma had not asked him for a plan of action. She simply wanted to tell him about her day.

Aldric could do that. Whenever something seemed unclear, he asked a question. The rest of the time, he listened.

"Sorry. I'm talking a lot."

"You warned me your day was catastrophic."

A laugh came through the phone, and his heart rate changed.

Emma continued her story, and he kept listening.

They talked for a few more minutes before she had to go back to finish an application. When they hung up, Aldric looked at the screen. The sense of irregularity that had accompanied him throughout the day had disappeared.

His hypothesis regarding the routine therefore appeared to be correct.

Later that evening, Emma video-called Sarah from her apartment. She had settled onto her couch with a glass of water and propped her phone against a cushion.

Sarah had been smiling since the beginning of the call.

"What?" Emma asked.

"Nothing."

"You're doing the same thing Aldric does."

"That's concerning."

"Very."

Sarah smiled.

"So, how was your day?"

Emma told her about the main events. Sarah reacted to the landlord without his keys, asked several questions about Léa, then eventually said,

"And Aldric?"

"What about Aldric?"

"You've just spent ten minutes telling me about your day, and somehow you've mentioned three times that he listened to you."

"Because he listened to me."

"I got that."

"What are you getting at?"

"Nothing."

"Sarah."

"You think a lot about what he does."

Emma sighed.

"Because he's impossible to understand."

Sarah raised her glass to her lips, but the corner of her mouth lifted before she had a chance to drink.

"Stop."

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're smiling."

"I'm allowed to."

"He's been acting strangely for several days. He checks his pulse, conducts experiments he refuses to explain, and tells me I'm present in a significant proportion of the occurrences. Excuse me for trying to understand."

"He actually said that?"

"Word for word."

"That's very Aldric."

"Exactly. That's what I mean."

"And you just want to make sure he's okay?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

"Don't make that face."

"What face?"

"The one that says you don't believe me at all."

"I didn't say anything."

"You're unbearable."

"I'm very supportive."

Emma was about to reply when her phone vibrated.

Aldric: I hope tomorrow will be less difficult.

Emma smiled.

"Is that him?" Sarah asked.

"Yes."

"And?"

"And nothing."

Emma looked up and saw Sarah's expression.

"Don't start again."

"I still haven't said anything."

Sarah raised her hands innocently as Emma picked up her phone to reply.

Emma: Me too. Thank you 😊

She then put her phone down and made Sarah change the subject.