Chapter 79 — Fishing For What?
The Curve of Time, Chapter 79 —— Fishing For What?, in which Saskia visits the Ballard Locks.
Followed by some musings on science and beliefs.
Listen to full episode :
— 79 —
Fishing For What?
Saskia watched a solitary salmon on the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks. The powerful fish torpedoed its way from one pool to the next, undaunted by the turbulent water that ferociously pounded against its progress. Once in a while scales shimmered pink, glistening as the fading afternoon light caught its underbelly whenever it was improbably capsized by the muscular current. She’d been here before, back when the salmon were running, but there was something even more impressive about an individual fish fighting its way against the torrent of water.
Then, in an abrupt slap, the meaty impact of the salmon against the concrete wall of the ladder mimicked the sound of Gary’s body slamming onto the hood of the car that killed him. Saskia turned away.
It had been a shock, seeing a man die in front of her.
She crossed back over the locks——where a fishing vessel was being raised to the water level in Salmon Bay——along a short concrete path through the meticulously curated botanic gardens, and out onto the street. There, for a moment, she considered the climbing gym a block up the road. It had an outdoor wall that felt out of place in a city known for its rain. She hadn’t climbed in a couple of weeks and it would make an absorbing distraction. But her stomach grumbled and she turned back to her car. She recalled seeing a sushi bar, on her way to the locks. Only, sushi now felt weirdly cannibalistic.
As she considered her options, Saskia noticed movement to her left. A man and a woman exited a car across the road. They were professionally dressed. The man raised his hand as if to catch Saskia’s attention, but what really stopped her were the words the woman called out: “Saskia Pollack.”
The man reached into his jacket as they approached. He pulled out a badge and held it aloft. “Detective Orgill, Ms. Pollack. We’d like to speak with you.”
Saskia froze. There was no sense running, though it occurred to Saskia that she could always turn time around. Still, that hadn’t exactly panned out well for Gary.
“Detective Kim.” The Asian woman extended her hand, but dropped it when Saskia failed to meet it. “Can you tell us why you were at Gary Holcomb’s front door this afternoon?”
“What is this about?”
“Ma’am, if you could just answer our questions.”
Saskia glanced involuntarily back in the direction of the salmon ladder, but the past of ten minutes ago was obscured by the gates to the gardens and some towering redwoods. She returned her eyes to the policeman in front of her. “A friend of mine is writing a story about a meditation retreat in Santa Cruz. Gary was at the retreat last week. My friend wanted me to see if he’d do an interview.”
“You live in LA?” It was a rhetorical question, though Saskia had no idea how they would know that.
“So, why are you here, in Seattle?” It was Detective Kim, the female officer who hit Saskia with what they really wanted to know.
“I was going to speak with Molly Witherspoon. Another meditation retreat attendee.”
Detective Kim jotted the name in her notebook. “You were going to?”
“She’s dead,” Saskia responded automatically. “She died before I got here.”
The detective looked down at the name she’d just written and back up at Saskia. “Your friend has a knack for picking tough interview subjects.”
“What?” Saskia’s question was knee-jerk again, but this time she had intent. She wanted to buy time. Could the police possibly have been aware she’d witnessed Gary’s death?
“Mr. Holcomb passed away this afternoon.” The policeman brushed a fleck off his trousers. It was an apparently a nervous tick. “In a hit and run. Shortly before you arrived.”
“I’m still confused.” Detective Kim frowned. “Why didn’t your friend——the one writing the story——why didn’t she just call Mr. Holcomb and”——she checked her notebook——“Ms. Witherspoon?”
“I——I hadn’t visited Seattle in a while. I offered to ask. You know, it’s harder to refuse someone in person.” Saskia looked from one detective to the other. “I’m confused. I knocked on Mr. Holcomb’s door. He didn’t answer, and I left. Why——how are you here?”
The detectives explained to Saskia that her rental car had been picked up on one of Gary’s neighbors’ security cameras. “Actually, his neighbor noticed you. It’s a quiet street. The security footage was just lucky for us.” Apparently the police ran Saskia’s plates. That led them to the car rental company. “And they have GPS trackers on their entire fleet, for insurance purposes.”
“That’s how you found me?”
The detective with the notebook tapped her pad with her pen. “We just waited for you to return to your car. A simple sequence really.”
“Dotting i’s and crossing t’s.” The man straightened his jacket.
It suddenly occurred to Saskia that, to anyone watching from the street, she’d spent no more than a minute or two down Gary’s driveway. When she had returned after Gary died, she actually had to wait in the greenery that lined his driveway. She had watched herself walk down to his front door. Waited a beat to be safe, and only then walked back up the rest of the driveway to her car. The detectives in front of her were on a wild fishing expedition.
It had been a shock to see Gary die in front of her, and this encounter wasn’t helping. “Do you need anything else?” Saskia asked.
That was chapter 79, Friends, I hope you enjoyed it!
Re-reading this chapter, I’m reminded how we all bring our own perceptions and preconceptions to any conversation. Perhaps this resonates for me right now as I’ve just recovered from a bout of Covid, and I’m reminded of the panoply of beliefs that virus spawned. For instance, the assertion: I believe in science, if you will pardon the saying. And, here, I’m asking for your permission because science is precisely not about belief; the whole point being that it requires evidence.
Of course, if I double-click one level deeper, things get curious because it is true that I don’t personally go and vouch the integrity of the evidence of most science I believe in. When thought about from this perspective, science does become about belief, and the contrarians pick and choose what science to believe in and what not to.
What do I mean by “pick and choose”? Well, returning to Covid: the vaccines——and indeed vaccines more generally——are sometimes mysteriously questioned. I mean, we had a pandemic; we were all stuck in our homes, people we knew and loved died, and then the world went back to normal. One in every three hundred Americans dying can’t be media hyperbole. And yet … there exist people who don’t believe in vaccine efficacy, even while enjoying other scientific miracles (mobile phones, cars, energy abundance).
As I said: perplexing.
Part of me wonders if it comes back to that question of evidence, and, specifically, the need for an incredibly tight loop between a claim and evidence. For instance, it’s hard to not believe in mobile phones when every time we dial the number of someone we love we are connected to them, real time; cars, too, are pretty incontrovertible in the way they ferry us about. But vaccines … when they work there is merely an absence. Worse, that absence is merely statistical, and there might even be anomalies.
Beyond temporal proximity between cause and effect, it can also require the right disposition for receptivity to the new. My father, for instance——among the most scientific people I know——maintained a long wall of skepticism about the possibilities machine learning offered. Indeed, it has only been recently, as machine learning has started impacting proteomics and biology more generally (his own areas of expertise), that he has started warming up to the promising potential that artificial intelligence offers.
Perhaps a prerequisite for appreciation of a new power is observing manifestations in a realm we’re expert in. I recall the moment, for me, when I started to believe in machine learning was witnessing a neural nets’ ability to read handwritten numbers better than humans, and, even more, appreciating the fundamentally different architecture that enabled it. Specifically, that the computer was not programmed to do so, but learnt. Teaching a computer to learn, now that was something! That was a paradigm shift that made it easy for me to extrapolate possibilities.
Anyway, enough on beliefs for today.
Until next week, be kind to someone and keep an eye out for the ripples of joy you’ve seeded.
Cheerio
Rufus
PS. If you think of someone who might enjoy joining us on this experiment, please forward them this email. And if you are one of those someone’s and you’d like to read more
