Quanta

   I leave you the choice of the Academy (I imagine that will please you) on the
steps of which we will go to receive "Norpois." It will not be known, in all
probability, if we can be sure to arrive right when the janitorial staff clock
in, by an entrance where individuals will be susceptible to falling under the
blow of our law. It is not so as to cheat that we go about picking our victims
in this way, at this spot which statistically expands our chances of finding a
matching gender. Do you hope to see standing there our marquis, our ambassador,
at a beauty Institute or at a hair salon? Would you go in the same manner to
find your Odette, your Eurydice, your Isolde at the entrance of a sports club, of
a cenacle, of a parliament, of a barracks or a constitutional court? Not at all.
At least don't be an enraged feminist, nor nourish some secret temptation of
failure, nor be taken for one of Maxwell's demons (but truly, what would be the
difference?). Is it my fault if traditional values correspond to my murderous
logic? An exceptional rational agent, I only do whatever maximizes my gains in
drawing from the local uneveness within the total distribution of resources. 

   The second body that appears on the steps of the palace will be good.
Matching in gender and in number: we've got our man. And he's a real man, he
moves, he chews, he coughs, he trembles, all toward the hour of his demise. 

   He walks, there, before us.  The streets are of no concern to us, no? Pure
décor as they say... Don't be tempted, dear reader (for an instant at the very
most since I doubt that you are able to continue doing so without becoming
dizzy), to see this world which unfolds before your eyes through his eyes, he
who goes to meet the hour of his death. He doesn't know it: neither the world --
pure décor -- , nor that he goes to die -- such an aberrant perspective. He
doesn't know, but you know, you who tries so hard to slip out from behind your
own eyes, from the place where your gaze resides. So, look from this position
which is neither his nor properly your own (So who's is it? Maybe no one's...
the untenable place of nobody...), look at the world thus, you pundit who must
die... These arrogant facades, their windows like so many gates behind which you
conceal the world, henceforth ever closed. The sky, the sky alone has some
tenderness again. With the dusk it too, however, dons its metallic brilliance.
All the world's surfaces which rush up to assail your eyes take on the harshness
of fire and brimstone, until the faces of the passers-by you meet become
fortified by the entire life you abandon. Only you, at the point of passing, of
being passed, are of flesh and you flay all those in this unconcerned world who
stop, for whom you are only a backdrop. 

   Have some empathy dear reader. 

    And me? I sweat in pursuit of the man I must kill -- since it has been
written -- , this swift personage who's making his way down to hell. In a time
like ours, where perfection is crisscrossed by the means of transportation, left
to be ground down painfully under the soles of our shoes, where the map of
Europe has undergone a such mind-blowing shrinkage and is to the old, aided by
the TGV, undergoing even more of it perhaps, where so many highways, tunnels,
airports and tramlines have been placed everywhere, you will agree with me that
one has every right to see oneself as a Norpois with the pace of a marathoner
taken out, and the power to ask whether he imagines himself as blending in with
the barbaric surge of public transit...

    From the palaces, he leads me toward the periphery; from the periphery, we
now go towards the slums. This is progress, but again not the ideal theatre for
an execution. It finally appeared, straddling an eight-lane highway, a
pedestrian bridge. 

    The gunshot would be able to pass itself off as the clamour of a blown-out
tire, or even the explosion caused by insufficiently combusted gasoline
detonating at the end of an exhaust pipe. And I doubt that Norpois would know
where this shot came from, where this shock originated, this rip into his
entrails. Slow voltaic shock. I saw him turn back toward me, surprised, as if he
silently asked me, by mimicry, what sense this deflagration had, and perhaps as
well when the pain in his guts, a not-too-distant feeling, would finally finish
clearing a path into his flesh, from where this liquefaction would burn itself
out, transfixed, and drive itself home. 

    We are two metres from each other. I see him get closer to me, staggering a
bit, with great delicacy, a bit hesitantly, as though just spotting someone he's
not sure if he recognizes, but whose face says something which invites him to
approach. He folds over, perhaps knees buckling from under him; in that moment I
saw him go to kiss my hands.

    Is this a reflex? One of those movements anterior to our consciousness? Was
it the glance in his eyes begging for death? At the premonition of falling, I
don't know why, I raised my arms to brace myself. He stumbled, leading me into a
clumsy dance, hanging from me, slumped in my arms, without a word, exhaling just
a little. A touching and grotesque posture, this prolonged embrace of victim and
executioner, two shadows swaying in each other's arms.... and the torrent of
cars under the bridge... but also, such a pitiable scene, since it's not so easy
to abandon what the heart calls the sweetness of guilt, despite being in
possession of it. His eyes became hazy; Norpois slid; my arms closing around him
more tightly to keep him upright, he seemed to rock in an agony one would think
was cuddling, comforted in this atrocious, incomprehensible space. 

     -- Did you just speak tenderly of him?!

     -- Not of him, dear reader, but of my quest. And once again with such great
tenderness was the quest in which, gently led, Norpois convulsively intertwined
with me, back against the handrail, vigorously pliant like the tango of a
cavalier and his partner, made me topple him overboard and precipitate into the
waves below. 

    You doubtlessly have a head for mathematics, dear reader. So, given:

 the falling of bodies,

 a well-lit, eight lane highway,

 on this highway, a horizontal flux (the direction doesn't matter) at a density
of one per every unit time,

 an average car speed evidentially proportional to this density,

 overlooking this at a height of some meter ratio from the surface, a pedestrian
bridge on a perpendicular axis to this flux,

 a human body in all ways average, at some point along this pedestrian bridge
(pt. 5) falling by virtue of the known laws of gravity (pt. 1),

   calculate for the afmntd. body the probability:

 that before it's obliterated upon the road, it will enter a collision with a
car (bumper, hood, rear bumper, roof, trunk),

 that it will fall intact onto one of the eight lanes, where it will then be
obliterated by a car,

 that, colliding with a car during its fall, it rebounds off the sheet metal
and, like a crazy pinball smacked by a flipper, careen from one car to another
as though between bumpers -- and in this case, the probability of the number of
rebounds?

 That falling vertically upon one of the white dashed lines delimiting the
lanes, it lands between the two in a position approximately parallel to the axis
of flux -- and in this case, what is the probability that a vehicle changing
lanes will obliterate it?

   I will, to make the calculation easier for you, simplify the problem a bit
and allow you to ignore the two trajectory states typical to the dynamical
system formed between Norpois and the highway offramp: a collision before
touchdown and a touchdown preceding the collision.

    Is this still too much? Do these chinoiseries of collision, these subtleties
of the mechanics of decay irritate you? Take a break from the probabilities and
uncertainties, tell me: will Norpois touch the ground before or after the
inevitable collision?

    In my opinion, I don't know. In my mind both states of probability of
Norpois are superimposed, crash-landing and landing-crash. We do not know, given
two trajectories, which body crashed upon the roadway in the twilight following.
I suspect, however, that it suffices for the reader to look over the handrail
and observe the scene, quelling the uncertainty and collapse Norpois into a
unique and determinate state.

    Therefore, look over, if you dare. Brave your vertigo: I gladly offer you my
supporting arm.