Search Engine

The Search Engine, artist’s rendering

Picture an elaborate, old-fashioned cast iron contraption about the size of a washing machine, bristling with cogs and sprockets, dials and pulleys. Dormant in the corner until I flick a switch, it’s half Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (you know what I mean: the switch flick releases a hard-boiled egg, which wobbles down a track and bumps into a tottering Rubik’s cube, which tips and falls on a fulcrum, activating a lever that pushes open a tiny gate made of matchsticks, sending twelve green jumbo cat’s eye marbles spinning down a funnel and pinging into a metal Altoids box, whose vibrations upset several carefully balanced tinker toys, which fall in a heap on a big red button and turn the thing on), and half R2D2 (mournfully baweeping and weet-wuuing as it rolls around in tight, neurotic circles, processing, planning, and cogitating over the task ahead).

All warmed up, it comes to life and moves forward, gathering speed and scattering the cats—until it’s a blur in a Samantha Stevens time-lapse cleaning flurry of activity, circumnavigating the house with gears turning, pistons chugging, and bearings bearing, emitting self-referential little clicks and whirrs, beeps and cheeps,
and the occasional puff of steam.

Lights flashing, it shifts into in high gear: picking up and dropping discarded clothing; peering into recipients; rattling containers; shuffling papers; shining light into dark corners; sending probes into pockets, bags, drawers, and shoes; even producing a passable X-ray diagram of the contents of my purse. Until, with a loud whistle blast, it rolls triumphantly over to me, brandishing my keys.