Only the Machine really knows what’s going on at your place, behind closed doors. You have to think about the people it represents. There are thousands of people and programs hard at work cross-referencing your data. And it doesn’t take much to pique their interest. They get so bored by all these good people that they feel the need to spend their time seeking out the kind of plots where all the pieces fit together, and riling up all the people who aren’t smart enough to know better. This is no time to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind. Pretty much everything you touch is now sharing your information with someone. You’re just a drop in their ocean, but the Machine can turn its focus to you the moment you stray from the beaten path. The Machine is highly alert to your rhythms, your habitual way of proceeding upstream. Your light is supposed to stay the same: same colour, same wavelength, same intensity. The challenge? Making certain neither the Machine nor anyone else can make the same connections as you. Build up your own world outside the Machine. It’s still possible. It just takes ingenuity and patience.

Otherwise, you’ll be caught in its net.

I read the article in my hometown paper with great interest. Mom was right: Fiset is indeed out on parole, despite being found guilty of sexual assault causing bodily harm. He was locked up for two years awaiting trial then served another three.

The newspaper gives no details of Fiset’s life in prison, but I’ve subtitled enough episodes of Incarcerated: North America’s Worst Prisons to know what was in store for him. Quebec had three prisons that made the list — the episode on its prisons was an edifying experience. First of all, I had to translate the prisoner’s testimonials from English, and they were themselves translations of the swear-inflected French, since the English narration that had been dubbed over the prisoners’ speech would now be double-dubbed over by a French-speaking narrator. It wasn’t as if we could just turn up the volume of the prisoners: our viewers across the French-speaking world wouldn’t understand a thing. I suspect that the more articulate criminals refused to speak on camera, leaving only their most confused brethren to tell us all about their horrible living conditions. So my job was to translate my own language. And I doff my cap to my unsung colleague who managed to accurately convey, in simple, believable English, their words. The English version was more of a help to me than the original recordings.