SESSION
NX-4471902-0814-0216
SPEAKERS
CHANNEL A · LOCAL
TALIS, J.
voiceprint VP-0001
baseline 1,204 hrs
device owner
baseline 1,204 hrs
device owner
CHANNEL B · REMOTE
VIKTOR
voiceprint VP-0114
baseline 6 hrs 40 m
annotations provisional
baseline 6 hrs 40 m
annotations provisional
TRANSCRIPT
02:16:04
[ line open. no speech for six seconds. ]
JAYCEviktor why are you calling me
[ respiratory rate elevated. tone: frightened. speech broken by breath at four words of six. ]
VIKTORBecause you told me to.
[ tone: level. pace: unhurried. ]
JAYCEwhat
VIKTORThe twenty-third of July. A bar on Ardent Street. You had two beers in you, you were failing entirely to look at me, and you leaned over and informed me that my accent was, and I am quoting you exactly, really hot.
JAYCEi did not say that
[ tone: mortified. a laugh, wet. sniffles. ]
VIKTORYou did. You then went a colour I have not observed on a human being before or since, stood up without another word, and walked into the men's room.
JAYCEoh my god
VIKTORYou were in there fourteen minutes. I counted. I thought you had passed away in there.
[ speaker B is smiling. detected in vowel shape. ]
02:17:40
JAYCEviktor my mom
[ pitch rising. respiratory rate climbing. ]
JAYCEthe salon gets it mondays. she goes at ten. she has gone at ten every monday since i was nine
JAYCEshe's going to open it and my name is going to be in it
JAYCEshe's going to know. she's going to know that i, that i
[ voice fails on the repeated word. ]
JAYCEshe's going to know i like men and she's going to hate me and she is going to leave, my dad left and she stayed but this is different this is a thing i am, i can't change this i've tried viktor i can't lose my mom too. i can't i can't
[ respiratory rate: severe. tone: panic. three inhalations without an exhalation between them. speaker is crying. ]
[ two seconds. ]
VIKTORJayce.
[ tone: gentle. volume reduced. ]
[ three seconds. ]
VIKTORI am going to interrupt you, and I want to be clear that it is not because you are wrong to be frightened. It is because you have now said the same three sentences four times in a slightly worse order each time. That is not thinking. That is a wheel, and it will keep turning as long as you feed it.
[ pace: deliberately slowed. approximately half speaker B's usual rate. ]
VIKTORSo I am going to take it off you. Answer one question first.
VIKTORWhen did you last sleep?
JAYCEwhat
VIKTORIt is not a complicated question and I would like a number.
[ six seconds. ]
JAYCEthursday
[ tone: caught out. ]
[ four seconds. no speech, channel B. ]
VIKTORIt is two in the morning on Saturday.
JAYCEyeah
VIKTORForty-eight hours.
[ speaker B: audible change in breathing. classified: dismay. ]
VIKTORLie down. Wherever you are, lie down on it, and do not tell me it is too short, because I already know it is and I do not care.
JAYCEok
[ nineteen seconds. channel A: movement. fabric. something set down on a hard surface. ]
02:20:11channel B
[ forty-seven seconds. channel B: footfall receding. a shelf. paper. footfall returning. seating. ]
VIKTORI am going to read to you. You are not going to talk, and you are not going to tell me you are fine, because I can hear that you are not and it will only waste both our time.
JAYCEwhat is it
VIKTORMácha. Máj. Every child in that country learns the first stanza at about eleven years old and most of them can still say it at forty. I am going to give it to you in the Czech first. You will not understand a word of it and that is rather the point.
JAYCEwhy is that the point
VIKTORBecause you have spent forty minutes trying to understand things. Take a rest from it.
READING · CHANNEL B
MÁJ · K. H. MÁCHA, 1836 · CANTO I · PUBLIC DOMAIN · 00:01:24
AS SPOKEN · CES
Byl pozdní večer – první máj –
večerní máj – byl lásky čas.
Hrdliččin zval ku lásce hlas,
kde borový zaváněl háj.
O lásce šeptal tichý mech;
květoucí strom lhal lásky žel,
svou lásku slavík růži pěl,
růžinu jevil vonný vzdech.
Jezero hladké v křovích stinných
zvučelo temně tajný bol,
břeh je objímal kol a kol;
a slunce jasná světů jiných
bloudila blankytnými pásky,
planoucí tam co slzy lásky.
večerní máj – byl lásky čas.
Hrdliččin zval ku lásce hlas,
kde borový zaváněl háj.
O lásce šeptal tichý mech;
květoucí strom lhal lásky žel,
svou lásku slavík růži pěl,
růžinu jevil vonný vzdech.
Jezero hladké v křovích stinných
zvučelo temně tajný bol,
břeh je objímal kol a kol;
a slunce jasná světů jiných
bloudila blankytnými pásky,
planoucí tam co slzy lásky.
SPEAKER'S OWN RENDERING · ENG
It was late evening – the first of May –
evening May – it was the time of love.
The turtle-dove's voice called out to love
where the pine wood gave off its scent.
Of love the quiet moss whispered;
the flowering tree lied about love's grief,
the nightingale sang his love to the rose,
the rose gave back a fragrant sigh.
The smooth lake in the shadowed thickets
sounded darkly a secret hurt,
the shore held it round and round;
and the bright suns of other worlds
wandered in ribbons of blue,
burning up there like tears of love.
evening May – it was the time of love.
The turtle-dove's voice called out to love
where the pine wood gave off its scent.
Of love the quiet moss whispered;
the flowering tree lied about love's grief,
the nightingale sang his love to the rose,
the rose gave back a fragrant sigh.
The smooth lake in the shadowed thickets
sounded darkly a secret hurt,
the shore held it round and round;
and the bright suns of other worlds
wandered in ribbons of blue,
burning up there like tears of love.
[ delivery: unhurried. speaker B's pace tracks channel A respiration, correlation 0.88. speaker did not pause to check. ]
02:23:04
JAYCEsay the first bit again
VIKTORByl pozdní večer, první máj, večerní máj, byl lásky čas.
[ channel A: respiratory rate drops sharply. tension falling. ]
JAYCEwhat's it mean
VIKTORIt was late evening. The first of May. Evening May. It was the time of love.
JAYCEthat's four ways of saying the same thing
VIKTORIt is. He does that for eight hundred lines. It is either the most beautiful thing anybody has done in that language, or it is a young man who could not make himself stop, and I have never once managed to decide which.
JAYCEwhat happens in the rest of it
VIKTORA man sits in a cell on the last night of his life. In the second canto he works out, very carefully and without any comfort at all, that there is nothing afterward. Not punishment. Not rest. Nothing, and then nothing, and then nothing further.
VIKTORI learned it at eleven, in a classroom with the windows painted shut, and I have carried that passage around ever since the way you would carry a diagnosis.
[ tone: flat. deliberately so. micro-tension present. ]
JAYCEviktor
VIKTORI am not finished.
VIKTORMácha was twenty-five when he wrote it. He was dead inside the year. Everybody mentions that, and I have come to think it has done the poem a disservice, because it makes the despair look earned.
VIKTORIt was not earned. It was a young man being absolutely certain, and being wrong, and dying before anybody got the chance to tell him so.
VIKTORI am older now than he ever managed to get. I have used his certainty as a description of my own life for thirty-two years, and I would like it noted, at two in the morning and subject to full retraction in daylight, that I no longer agree with him.
VIKTORIt is not a sentence being passed. It is a room, and you can walk out of it. I know this because I walked out of it in July and I did not notice at the time.
[ speaker B: pitch drops below baseline. no measured hesitation. ]
[ nine seconds. ]
JAYCEread it again
VIKTORYes.
[ response latency 0.3 seconds. ]
READING · REPEAT PASSES
WORKMáj · Mácha · 1836 · canto I
PASSES LOGGED7
CUMULATIVE00:19:12
LANGUAGECES on passes 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 · ENG on 2, 5
BIOMETRIC NOTEdelivery slows on each pass. correlation with channel A respiration holds throughout.
03:04:46
VIKTORYou have stopped answering, which I am choosing to read as compliance rather than rudeness.
VIKTORI will keep talking. You are not required to listen. This is a service I am providing and you may take as much or as little of it as you like.
VIKTORThe Acrican bullfrog in my care is called Mr. Pickles. I did not name him. I have been introduced to him under that name by four separate undergraduates, I have entirely failed to establish an alternative, and on Friday I caught myself saying it aloud to him. The entire situation is ridiculous.
VIKTORHe is ordinary. That is the whole difficulty. Nobody competes for an ordinary frog. There is a species in the next tank that half the institutions on this continent would send a courier for tomorrow, and then there is Mr. Pickles, who is worth nothing to anybody, and who would have been put down on the fifteenth.
VIKTORSo he is mine now. That appears to be how it works.
[ channel A: respiration slow and even. no speech for two minutes. ]
03:09:02
VIKTORThere is a cat asleep on my left arm and I have not moved it in forty minutes, because she has gone entirely liquid and I have decided that constitutes a contract.
[ fourteen seconds. ]
VIKTORJayce.
[ volume very low. pitch below baseline. ]
[ nine seconds. ]
SPEAKER A IS ASLEEP
TIME03:09:41
RESPIRATIONslow. even. unlaboured.
SPEECHabsent three minutes
CONFIDENCEhigh
HANDSETagainst a soft surface
NOTEdistress markers absent 47 minutes
03:09:58
[ twenty-two seconds. channel B: no speech. line open. ]
[ channel B: one short exhalation through the nose. ]
[ classified: LAUGH. affect: warm, fond. ]
VIKTOR[quiet]Well.
[ one minute thirty-six. ]
[ channel B: bedding, drawn and redistributed. a lamp switch. ]
[ forty seconds. ]
[ channel B: the cat, relocating. an audible complaint from same. ]
VIKTOR[to the cat]Yes, I know. Move over.
03:14:07
[ both channels: breathing only. ]
[ channel B respiration falling toward channel A. ]
03:31:12
SPEAKER B IS ASLEEP
TIME03:31:12
RESPIRATIONslow. even.
SPEECHabsent sixteen minutes
CONFIDENCEhigh
END CALL PROMPToffered. no response. suppressed.
03:31:12 → 06:27:41two hours fifty-six minutes
[ both channels: breathing only. continuous. ]
[ no speech. no termination. line held. ]
[ at approximately 04:40 the two respiration patterns fall into step, and remain so for the following seventy-two minutes. ]
06:27:41
[ session ended by the network. handset battery two percent. ]