is targeting a particular person. Typically, this person starts off with something annoying but not dangerous—like slashing tires. Some of these people are satisfied with one act of revenge for whatever it was. If they are, they’re not that dangerous. But some aren’t, and these are the ones we worry about.
What we see in your case is the relatively nonviolent tire slashing, followed by the more violent windshield smashing and the still more violent placement of a small explosive device where it could do you harm.
Every incident has escalated. That’s why we’re concerned for your safety.”
I feel as if I am floating in a crystal sphere, unconnected to anything outside. I do not feel endangered.
“You may feel safe,” Mr. Stacy says, reading my mind again. “But that doesn’t mean you are safe. The only way for you to be safe is for that nutcase who’s stalking you to be behind bars.”
He says “nutcase” so easily; I wonder if that is what he thinks of me as well.
Again, he reads my thoughts. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said ‘nutcase. ’… You probably hear enough of that sort of thing. It just makes me mad: here you are, hardworking and decent, and this—this person is after you. What’s his problem?”
“Not autism,” I want to say, but I do not. I do not think any autistic would be a stalker, but I do not know all of them and I could be wrong.
“I just want you to know that we take this threat seriously,” he says. “Even if we didn’t move fast at first.
So, let’s get serious. It has to be aimed at you—you know the phrase about three-times enemy action?”
“No,” I say.
“Once is accident, twice is coincidence, and third time is enemy action. So if something that only might be aimed at you happens three times, then it’s time to consider someone’s after you.”
I puzzle over this a moment. “But… if it is enemy action, then it was enemy action the first time, too, wasn’t it? Not an accident at all?”
He looks surprised, eyebrows up and mouth rounded. “Actually— yeah—you’re right, but the thing is you don’t know about that first one until the others happen and then you can put it in the same category.”
“If three real accidents happen, you could think they were enemy action and still be wrong,” I say.
He stares at me, shakes his head, and says, “How many ways are there to be wrong and how few to be right?”
The calculations run through my head in an instant, patterning the decision carpet with the colors of accident (orange), coincidence (green), and enemy action (red). Three incidents, each of which can have one of three values, three theories of truth, each of which is either true or false by the values assigned each action. And there must be some filter on the choice of incidents, rejecting for inclusion those that cannot be manipulated by the person who may be the enemy of the one whose incidents are used as a test.
It is just such problems I deal with daily, only in far greater complexity.
“There are twenty-seven possibilities,” I say. “Only one is correct if you define correctness by all parts of the statement being true—that the first incident is in fact accident, the second is in fact coincidence, and the third is in fact enemy action. Only one—but a different one—is true if you define correctness as all three incidents being in fact enemy action. If you define correctness as the third incident being enemy action in all cases, regardless of the reality of the first two cases, then the statement will correctly alert you to enemy action in nine cases. If, however, the first two cases are not enemy action, but the third is, then the choice of related incidents becomes even more critical.”
He is staring at me now with his mouth a little open. “You… calculated that?In your head?”
“It is not hard,” I say. “It is simply a permutation problem, and the formula for permutations is taught in high school.”
“So there’s only one chance in twenty-seven that it is actually true?” he asks. “That’s nuts. It wouldn’t be an old saw if it wasn’t truer than that… that’s what?About four percent? Something’s wrong.”
The flaw in his mathematical knowledge and his logic is painfully clear. “Actually true depends on what your underlying purpose is,” I say. “There is only one chance in twenty-seven that all parts of the statement are true: that the first incident is an accident,