Philipsburg is nothing but a facade stretched between two bodies of water. On one side, the sea, too bright to be honest. On the other, Salt Pond, heavy and still, like a memory that never drains away.
Every morning, cruise ships disgorge their human cargo: hurried figures, vacant eyes, hands laden with bags. They come to buy, consume, forget. Then they leave before the city reveals what it truly conceals.
Front Street sparkles. Jewelry, perfumes, display windows. Everything seems clean, calibrated, reassuring, but behind the storefronts remain back rooms, quick deals, accounts that never pass through banks. Philipsburg operates on two levels: what can be seen and what circulates.
Isaac prefers what circulates. He knows the alleys where no one lingers, the bars where eyes avoid meeting, the contacts who never ask questions. Here, no one asks where the money comes from or why someone vanishes overnight.
His motorcycle cuts through the traffic like a blade. He slips between taxis, buses, and hesitant tourists. He never really slows down. In Philipsburg, everyone plays a role. The vendors smile, the customers pretend to be carefree, the businessmen speak too loudly. Isaac simply keeps moving. As long as he moves, he escapes notice.
But he also knows that the city records everything: faces, routes, exchanges. Somewhere in the depths of ChronoEmpire, Philipsburg is just one more file. And in that file, his name already appears far too often.
After his motorcycle broke down, Isaac was taken in by Félicie’s family in Brittany. He had a long relationship with her, and they lived together on Rue Lantiez. In Saint Martin, he met Alice Gillet. He then entered a world that was not his own, where he was tolerated for certain skills: computers and golf. To the Gillets, he remained an outsider.
Isaac has given up on building a lasting relationship with a partner. He has tried several, but none seemed truly satisfying. His friends often say he simply had bad luck in love. Isaac, on the contrary, thinks he has done rather well. He has known a great variety of relationships, even if they have always ended by revealing their limitations. In his eyes, they remain unpredictable and fundamentally incomprehensible.
All his affairs follow the same pattern. The period of discovery is pleasant, almost euphoric. Then comes a slow deterioration, both psychological and physical. Bodies change, habits grow burdensome, illusions crack.
How can anyone remain faithful to the same person for an entire lifetime? The idea remains a mystery to Isaac. He prefers the diversity of the experiences he has lived through. In his view, many couples stay together only because they fear loneliness. He has finally adopted a simple conviction: better alone than in bad company.
His relationship with Alice Gillet might perhaps have been the exception, had the young woman’s parents not opposed it.
Even so, Isaac is now considering the purchase of an Ariana Chrono, though without any real enthusiasm. A human couple is no longer a credible option in his eyes. He already has a stable relationship with his motorcycle and his lines of code. A female android would simply complete his household equipment. He imagines his Ariana as an aesthetic version of his Compactor: a high-performance, replaceable object, continually improved by advances in processors.
But one concern remains. How could he bear the thought of watching his own body deteriorate while living beside a creature that stayed eternally young and untouched? Isaac cannot accept that prospect. While Ariana retained her perfect appearance, he would watch his belly grow heavy, his muscles slacken, and his skin become covered with the marks of time. Ariana would be programmed not to notice, but he would know.
Isaac already has enough money to acquire an Ariana Chrono clone. The latest model developed by ChronoEmpire has a flawless figure and particularly sophisticated artificial intelligence. Relationship settings can be adjusted to suit the customer’s preferences. ChronoEmpire’s engineers have even designed several conversational profiles, ranging from the charming idiot to the refined intellectual.
Yet he knows about Alice’s fears concerning the great replacement by female androids. He therefore takes care never to mention his plans to buy one.
Isaac belongs to that category of modern-day damned who survive on the fringes of the system, but at least he owns a Smart that allows him to display his membership in the vast tribe of the connected.
Tonight, he wants to perform a gesture both trivial and essential: post a couple’s selfie. Alice loves sunsets. Isaac loves Alice’s legs. He knows he will soon be back in the young woman’s bedroom. They will settle on the couch facing the ocean. They will exchange tender words, a few caresses, and the peculiar silence of suspended moments.
Of all the moments in the day, this remains his favorite. He knows Alice shares the anticipation. For her too, these secret reunions hold a special value. The need to hide makes every moment more precious.
No mechanism sheathed in silicone and processors could replace that. No female android could reproduce exactly the quiet fervor that accompanies their reunions.
Isaac gets on his motorcycle. From Cul-de-Sac, he must reach the Gillets’ villa in Baie Rouge. Sometimes he makes a detour through Marigot to buy a bottle, some cookies, or a bouquet of flowers they will share while facing the setting sun. To enter the Gillet property, he always takes a complicated route to avoid the gardener’s surveillance.
Isaac manipulates, sells, and negotiates. He often settles his conflicts through violence. He confronts Damien. He gradually becomes part of a web of conflict involving ChronoEmpire.
The motorcycle is found first. It lies in the grass beside a coastal road in Saint Martin, several dozen yards from where the first marks appear on the pavement. The fairing has been torn off, one wheel is still turning slowly, and small fragments of plastic litter the asphalt.
Isaac is found a little farther away. His helmet held, but his body absorbed everything else. He is unconscious. His clothes are torn, his arms covered with abrasions, and his breathing is weak enough for the first witnesses to believe he is dead. He is not. Isaac has long possessed the strange ability to survive situations from which others generally emerge beneath a sheet. This time again, something stubbornly keeps working.
Emergency responders evacuate him in critical condition. The diagnosis lists several fractures, major trauma, and a coma whose duration no one can predict. The first theory is simple: loss of control at high speed. Isaac rides fast. Everyone knows it. To him, his motorcycle is not a means of transportation but a way of laying claim to the road. He tends to regard speed limits as advice intended for less experienced drivers.
An accident would therefore surprise no one, but certain details refuse to fit. Marks on the roadway show a sharp correction in course before the fall. Isaac seems to have left his line without any fixed obstacle forcing him to do so. A witness also claims to have heard two motorcycles. The first passes very quickly. The second follows a few seconds later. Then come the sound of the fall and the scrape of metal sliding along the road.
When emergency responders arrive, only Isaac remains. The other rider has vanished. This absence gradually turns the accident into something else. Besides, Isaac is not a man short of enemies. He manipulates, negotiates, hacks, and sometimes settles conflicts directly enough to leave lasting memories in those who survive.
ChronoEmpire knows his name. Milton Fleet has already watched him. Félicie knows nearly all his habits. Betty has had an ambiguous relationship with him. Jacques, too, has several reasons to take an interest in his movements.
The road thus becomes an especially convenient scene. No camera at every turn. Few witnesses. A powerful motorcycle. High speed. It is not even necessary to hit someone to make him fall. Sometimes all it takes is getting close enough.
At the hospital, Isaac remains in a coma. To the doctors, he is alive. To those who want him gone, the difference may seem temporary. Jules therefore refuses to classify the case too quickly as a traffic accident. Isaac lost control of his motorcycle. What remains is to determine whether someone helped him lose it.
Jules Compactor is awakened by an electronic signal programmed with surgical precision. A minute current passes through his circuits and ends his system’s standby mode. The hard drive slowly stirs as the first processes resume their activity.
Jules then organizes his day as a succession of optimized rituals that allow him to achieve an almost alarming degree of efficiency. He recently discovered that he can urinate while brushing his teeth, and he considers this synchronization an appreciable saving of time.
To this bodily hygiene he adds a form of mental hygiene: scalding coffee and the debugging of lines of code proceed simultaneously in the methodical calm of the morning.
Jules goes back over the facts from the beginning. Isaac fell at high speed. No vehicle officially struck him. Yet several clues show that he was not alone on the road. A second motorcycle was heard. Marks indicate a sudden change in course, and above all, the other rider vanished before emergency responders arrived.
For Jules, three names deserve scrutiny: Betty Lenox, Félicie Algo, and Jacques Valère.
The Betty lead is emotional at first. Betty had an ambiguous relationship with Isaac. Nothing stable enough to form a couple, but intense enough to feed jealousy, expectations, and misunderstandings. Isaac himself seems to have taken the relationship far less seriously than she did. Jules therefore seeks to determine whether Betty might have caused the accident deliberately. She knows Isaac’s habits, his movements, and the way he rides. She also knows that a direct confrontation with him can quickly turn violent.
But something is missing. Betty does not have the profile of a rider engaged in a technically demanding pursuit at high speed. She can act in anger, use a weapon, or wait for someone for hours. Keeping a motorcycle within a few yards of another through a succession of curves, however, requires a different kind of skill. Jules does not rule her out completely. He simply moves her name a little farther down the list.
The Félicie lead rests on a much older history. She and Isaac lived together. Félicie knows his schedule, his habits, and probably better than anyone how he reacts when he feels he is being followed. Their relationship gradually deteriorated. Isaac multiplied his absences, lies, and affairs. Félicie, for her part, turned each of these anomalies into data to be preserved. Jules knows she forgets almost nothing. He questions her.
Jules: Did you know where Isaac was going that night?
Félicie: Probably.
Jules: Probably?
Félicie: If you give me the exact time, I can check.
Jules: Check what?
Félicie: My logs.
Jules prefers not to ask how many logs a former partner can keep on a man before it ceases to be sentimental. Félicie therefore has the information, but here again, the method does not fit. She knows how to prepare, follow, contaminate, observe. A motorcycle pursuit is less like her. Nevertheless, Jules investigates whether she might have provided Isaac’s schedule or location to someone else. No direct evidence emerges.
That leaves Jacques. With him, the lead immediately changes in nature. Jacques rides fast. He knows the roads of Saint Martin and is accustomed to situations where the distance between two vehicles becomes a form of language. He also knows Isaac. Their relationship is not good.
Betty is already a point of friction between them. Other dealings later brought them together in a far less friendly way. Jacques believes Isaac meddles in matters that do not concern him. Isaac considers Jacques unpredictable, dangerous precisely because he often acts without any visible plan.
Jules checks the phones. Isaac’s stops transmitting after the accident. Jacques’s shows an unusual period of silence at the same time. It is not proof, but to Jules, phones often become interesting when they choose precisely the moment of a crime to turn discreet.
Several witnesses also place Jacques on a motorcycle that night. A driver remembers two bikes traveling fast, the second seemingly trying to stay very close to the first.
Jules: Did they touch?
The witness: I don’t think so.
Jules: Are you sure?
The witness: No.
Jules appreciates the answer. At least it has the virtue of honesty. The absence of a visible collision becomes important in itself. To make a rider fall, it is not always necessary to hit him. It is enough to reduce his space, force him to correct his course, and remain close enough for every movement of the other vehicle to become a threat.
At high speed, psychological pressure can accomplish what a bumper would do much more crudely. Jules then returns to the marks found on the pavement. No mark establishes with certainty that the two motorcycles made contact. Isaac’s course, however, shows several successive corrections before he lost control.
Betty has a possible reason. Félicie has intimate knowledge of Isaac. Jacques has the skill, the presence, and behavior consistent with the scene. The third lead gradually becomes the strongest, but Jules comes up against a difficulty. If Jacques never touched Isaac, can he be said to have caused the accident?
The road is clear. It is almost too easy. The engine responds perfectly. The night streams past me like a black ribbon pulled taut at full speed. The air is warm, dense, and yet everything seems under control. Until it isn’t.
A dot appears in my rearview mirror. At first, nothing alarming. Just a distant, indistinct presence. Then it grows. Too fast. Much too fast. I understand: he is following me.
I push the bike harder. The engine growls, deeper now, more strained. The road becomes a constant calculation, a line that must not be broken. I lean, accelerate, carve my path. But he stays there, clinging to me like a shadow. A glance behind. Bad idea. Just long enough to glimpse his course, precise, insistent. He is not merely trying to catch me. He is playing with my space.
The pressure rises. Not fear yet. More like a crack in my concentration, interference. Every curve becomes narrower, every decision heavier. The sound of his motorcycle draws closer. I instinctively correct my line. But the road does not like hesitation. It magnifies it. It punishes it.
The rhythm breaks. One tiny, almost invisible detail is enough. A line a little too wide, traction a little too weak. And suddenly the bike no longer responds with the same faithfulness. The landscape rushes closer.
No clean impact. No sharp break. Just a gradual, inexorable loss, as though reality itself were sliding beneath my wheels. The world slowly tips sideways. And I tip with it. In that suspended moment, a single certainty takes hold: I am no longer fleeing. I am flying, and my fall will be devastating.
Jules returns to Jacques. The more he reconstructs the accident, the more one idea takes hold: Isaac was probably not struck. The motorcycle bears no mark clear enough to establish an impact from the side or rear. The damage is more consistent with a loss of control followed by a long slide. This does not clear Jacques. Quite the opposite.
The driver’s testimony becomes central. Two motorcycles. The first very fast. A second remaining in its wake. Not far enough away to be merely traveling in the same direction. Perhaps not close enough to cause visible contact. Jules then tries to understand what one rider can do to another without ever touching him.
The answer is simple: take away his space, position himself close enough to force him to alter his course. Accelerate when he accelerates, remain in his rearview mirror, turn every curve into a threat. At high speed, a few inches can become far more dangerous than a direct blow.
Jules examines the marks on the pavement again. Isaac’s course is not that of a man surprised by a single obstacle. It shows several successive corrections. A first, slight one. A second, more violent one. Then the break—someone seems to have forced him to ride differently than he would have alone.
Jacques understands this language perfectly. He is accustomed to speed, tight lines, and that particular way of making someone understand that he should move aside without needing to say a word. Jules goes to see him again.
Jules: Were you following Isaac?
Jacques: I was riding behind him.
Jules: That’s an elegant way to answer.
Jacques: More importantly, it’s the truth.
Jules: At what distance?
Jacques: It depends.
Jules: On what?
Jacques: On the road.
Jules: And on Isaac?
Jacques does not answer.
Jules continues.
Jules: Did you want to scare him?
Jacques: Isaac doesn’t scare easily.
The conversation confirms at least one thing: Jacques does not behave like someone who has just learned that the pursuit occurred.
Jules then searches for a motive.
Betty immediately appears between the two men. Isaac had an ambiguous relationship with her. Jacques knows it. Their rivalry may not be enough to explain an attempt to eliminate him, but it adds personal tension to other conflicts already present. Isaac and Jacques also move in circles where money, information, and services circulate without always leaving traces. Each knows enough about the other to make trust unlikely.
Finally, Jules returns to Isaac’s account when he emerges from the coma. Some images remain blurred. The sound of the engine. A presence in the rearview mirror. A motorcycle drawing closer. The sensation of being pushed out of his own line.
Isaac remembers no impact. He remembers pressure, and perhaps that is precisely what Jacques intended. Jules cannot prove that he wanted to kill Isaac. He can, however, establish that he pursued him, reduced his space, witnessed his fall, and left without notifying anyone. For the rest, one would have to know what Jacques was truly thinking as he stayed in Isaac’s rearview mirror. The answer belongs to Jacques.
Jacques: I throw Isaac off balance
I’ve won enough. I leave the poker game and get back on my motorcycle. I have planned everything. I am going to settle the score with Damien. He thought I was too present in his daughter Alice’s life. Too constant. Too visible. One day, without warning, everything stopped. A fall, a black hole, then the silence of an endless coma. Officially, an accident. Unofficially, something else.
This time, I am not going to the Gillets’ for Alice. I am going to settle a debt. I know the road to Villa Pamplemousse by heart. My motorcycle’s engine purrs as I leave Philipsburg for Baie Rouge. The night clings to my skin, heavy, almost complicit.
At Damien’s, the habits have not changed. Every evening, he immerses himself in his parallel universe, a cobbled-together reality where he becomes someone else. Tonight again, he has donned his favorite avatar for a game of virtual golf. I slip silently behind him.
In front of his screens, Damien is no longer truly there. The Meta world has swallowed him whole. In Paris, Félicie faces him. Here, in this impossible setting, they are no longer themselves. The avatars take over, the voices distort, the gestures become caricatures. The game is intense, almost absurd, somewhere between competition and theater.
The magic of this world is troubling: missed shots can be repaired, mistakes corrected, everything seems reversible. Nothing has any real consequence, except what happens offscreen.
I approach slowly. The golf club in my hands has very real weight, unlike everything else. I aim. The swing comes, clean. The sound that follows is not virtual. Yet the game continues for a few seconds, as though the system refuses to acknowledge reality’s intrusion. On the screen, the avatars keep playing while Damien collapses before them.
Then everything freezes: the lights, the characters. Silence. I remain motionless for a few seconds, the club still in my hand. In the Meta, a missed shot can be replayed. This one cannot. I put down the club. This time, it is neither a bug nor an illusion that can be repaired.