Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 14 of a new online serial novel, If Anyone Is Listening, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
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“I don’t understand what you want to pay me for,” Shimmy said. “A compensation of sorts?”
“I want to understand how you were able to cause this bug in it.”
“Which bug?”
Yang Yang sighed. “Christopher is the beta edition of the next generation of robots. The beta edition can sometimes have glitches, but the degree of problems that cropped up when he encountered you was higher than expected.”
“Yes, I remember them very well,” Shimmy affirmed darkly.
“And the biggest bug is that it suddenly does not compute basic instructions that are sent to it. It’s functioning completely independently, and it hasn’t returned to us since then. It looks like there’s been a program lock on a mistaken object.”
“I’m the mistaken object?” No one ever said that Shimmy’s brain wasn’t sharp enough. All the things that had been told to him and his father over the years, regarding his scholastic performance, always referred to his willpower, effort, or interest. But somewhere deep down, Shimmy had always felt that no one had ever really understood him.
“Yes, you,” the Chinaman, robotically translated, affirmed. But Shimmy felt that there was still something here that he wasn’t sufficiently grasping.
“What does that actually mean?”
“It locked on you as a significant target for surveillance, and all my programming experts have not been able to get it to come back to us. Since then, it’s hovering in the area, as an independent robot, and it is not returning to its owners.”
“Who are the owners?”
“The factory that I own.”
Shimmy raised an eyebrow. “It didn’t come back to the factory even during the time I wasn’t in China?”
“No. We had a dim hope that it would come back to be recharged, but it does have solar charging, and that is what is giving it power. And don’t ask me where it spent that time, because it has almost completely hidden all of that information. Or someone else did it.” His eyes narrowed. “And now we are trying to find out if it is you who succeeded in taking control of it through some means that we are not aware of.”
“Sure, I hypnotized it.”
“Robots cannot be influenced by hypnosis, to the best of my knowledge,” Yang Yang replied seriously.
“It was a joke, if you didn’t understand. And now, seriously—I didn’t do anything to it, and it’s not my fault that it decided to attach itself to me. Believe me, it bothered me much more than it bothered you people.”
“It’s a loss of four million dollars on our part.” Yang Yang’s voice was dry.
“Four million dollars!”
“Yes. I believe we’ll ultimately be able to solve the problem. But it’s important for me to inquire about the options that you have, because this way maybe we can work out some type of business cooperation. You know, breaching remote computer systems is something that the whole world is interested in these days.”
“The answer is that I have no options to offer you, and I have nothing to do with breaching computer systems.” Shimmy’s forehead creased. “I’m involved in business, not computers, robotics, or electronics, and I don’t understand the first thing about robots. I didn’t breach the bat’s programs in any which way.”
“So what happened?” the bat in the suitcase croaked out Yang Yang’s response.
“I don’t know! It’s a bug in your program!”
“Are you maybe a double of someone famous? That’s the only thing we were able to come up with.”
“Not that I know of.”
“So what is it about you that the surveillance robot decided to stick to you?”
“Surveillance robot…” Shimmy muttered. “So you did plan for it to follow someone? Maybe we should work the other way around: Tell me who the target was, and we’ll try to find the error in your program.”
The Chinaman stared at him for a long time. “It’s not anyone specific. And if you do decide to tell us about your capabilities, we’ll be glad to cooperate.”
Shimmy gazed back in deafening silence and did not respond. Yang Yang waited another moment, and then, with a few quick presses, he shut down the bat and closed the suitcase.
“My advice to you is to deal with dear Christopher’s bug,” Shimmy added, to the big man’s back, even though he knew that there was no one there to translate his words to Chinese anymore. “And I wish for you, and for me as well, that you succeed.”
***
V’yikarei shemo b’Yisrael Isamar ben Yehuda.
Huh?
“Did you have a grandfather named Isamar?” A moment after the tears end, the mechuteiniste and I turn to one another, and I see my puzzlement reflected in her eyes.
“Not us,” I say. “But yesterday Yudi told me that they are going to name the baby for one of Ruchi’s grandfathers.”
“Yes, Ruchi told me the same thing,” she replies. “They were supposed to name him for my father, Moshe Dov. So Isamar is not one of your grandfathers or something?”
“No.”
“It’s actually a nice name,” she says cautiously.
Yudi is approaching the mechitzah while folding his tallis. He is beaming. “Mazel tov!” he exclaims.
“Mazel tov! May you raise him to Torah, chuppah, and ma’asim tovim,” Ruchi’s mother bentches him. Then she gives me a pointed look. Ruchi didn’t come to the hall at all; she’s at home with her married sister. So the job of figuring this out falls to me.
“Who is Isamar, Yudi?” I ask him.
“The son of Aharon Hakohen.”
“Sure.” I smile at him. “So you gave that name after him?”
“Yes.” He nods with a broad grin.
“I thought you’d name the baby after my father,” Ruchi’s mother interjects. “He passed away only half a year ago, and he was a big tzaddik.” I wonder if she would have spoken this way to a different son-in-law, or if because it’s Yudi, she allows herself to speak directly about what she is feeling. But I don’t get annoyed at her, and not only because there are already three boys named for my own father. It’s more because of the fact that right now, I feel like we are in the exact same place, facing Yudi, who is nodding enthusiastically.
“First of all, Isamar in the Torah was also a big tzaddik,” Yudi says to both of us, his tone measured. “And also, in the end, Ruchi wanted us to name the baby something that would help him stand straight and tall.” He looks a bit embarrassed. Maybe because he also feels that the job of explaining their choice to his disappointed mother-in-law should not be his?
“‘Isamar’ is like eitz tamar, a date tree,” he continues. “So with Hashem’s help, our son should stand completely straight and tall, without any problems with his feet or legs.”
If my mechuteiniste would speak a good Hebrew, and if she would also be the cynical type, it would have made sense for her to note wryly that, for the same price, they could have called the child Dekel (palm tree) instead. But her Hebrew isn’t that great, and she’s also not the cynical type. After all, she’s Ruchi’s mother.
“Maybe you should have told me something before the bris,” she says quietly. “Come and tell me that Ruchi doesn’t want to give the name Moshe Dov in the end. I think that together, we could have convinced her.”
“I told her that the best thing would be for her to ask you,” he says, suddenly sounding very miserable. He fingers the strings of the tallis. “But she didn’t want to. She said that you would tell her to name him Moshe Dov, and then she would have to do it—and she didn’t want that. She said it would be better if we just surprised everyone and named him Isamar, without speaking to anyone about it first. After all, it’s the name of a big tzaddik, and maybe it will also help that the baby shouldn’t have a crooked leg.”
“Isamar,” I say quietly. A waitress stands behind me with a huge tray of fruit salad and looks at the three of us with some interest.
“Yes.” Yudi smiles at me. “Isamar. Isn’t it a nice name?”
“It really is,” I say.
“It really is,” his shvigger echoes, and takes a deep breath. “I’ll tell that to Ruchi too.”
“Good.” My son nods vigorously. “She’ll be happy. She doesn’t like it that you sometimes get angry at her.”
I instinctively bite my lip and don’t look at my mechuteiniste’s face. But just at that moment, someone taps my shoulder. It’s the waitress, and I use the opportunity to escape this conversation, which has become far too uncomfortable.
“You spoke about a crooked leg,” the waitress says with a strange expression. “Were you talking about him, the baby’s father?”
“What?”
“Does he have a crooked leg?”
“Not at all,” I say emphatically, while wondering about this person’s level of tact.
“Oh.” She looks disappointed. “Because they are looking for someone like that… Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s more like a joke.”
“What joke?”
“That whoever finds ‘the man with the crooked leg’ will be a millionaire. Lots of young people have contributed ten dollars to the pot, and it’s become a really big sum.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I hope I don’t sound too impatient. Somehow, this visit to America is not really adding to my reserves of energy, and the bris itself is draining huge amounts of energy too. Baruch Hashem, everything went fine, and Yudi functioned beautifully. But my presence here, even when I am receiving mazel tovs or going to wash my hands for the seudah, is an endless effort and strain. I think it will only end when we return to Israel next week, b’ezras Hashem.
It won’t completely end, of course, because even when I’m home, my heart is here with Yudi. But when it’s routine, everything is calmer.
“Didn’t you hear about the man with the crooked leg?” the waitress asks me. “No? Okay, so I’m sorry. But can I ask you a question?”
“You can.” There’s a limit to how standoffish I can be.
“Can I know who you were talking about?”
“Not about any man. About someone much younger, a child.”
“Oh.” She shrugs, again looking disappointed, and then walks on with the huge tray of fruit.
“In any case, in today’s day and age, surgery can fix almost anything,” I call after her, without knowing why. Maybe because that’s what we said over and over again, Ruchi’s mother and myself, in the last day.
“The man has had several surgeries, and I don’t think there’s anything more to do. It’s okay; it’s become his commercial symbol, and I heard that some of his followers are even starting to imitate his limp. But that’s already foolish, because no one has ever seen him or knows how it really looks.”
I raise an eyebrow and continue toward the sinks, but in the middle, I change direction and head for the mechitzah. The mohel wants to explain something to Yudi, and he quickly calls me. And I turn to Ruchi’s mother to come over there with me too.
This task is shared by us both.
***
I’ve spoken enough about dealing with difficulties and drawbacks. And again I received questions about sufficing with less. And I want to say, to whoever is listening, that ours is a very special generation. A generation that cares, that wants to invest less in materialism and more in the higher dimensions of life. So let’s try and simplify these things for ourselves, and see what Hashem demands of us. Because only someone who goes with emunah can reach the real and correct goal.
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