[See note regarding source FILOFAX.]
PL: You mentioned that the nature of your calling up was twofold. One was to assist and observe Dumbledore; what was the second?
FILOFAX: As I mentioned before, I was called up to work with Artefacts.
PL: Can you be more specific?
FILOFAX: I was called up to work on a particular Artefact. The Department believed that I possessed specialized knowledge to improve upon a new line of development.
PL: What was the nature of that new development?
FILOFAX: I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.
PL: What Artefact were you called up to improve upon?
FILOFAX: Well – that’s a bit of a complicated question.
PL: Would you say that you were working on a new technological tool that could be used by the Ministry?
FILOFAX: That’s a way one could put it, yes.
PL: What was the nature of that technology?
FILOFAX: Memory.
PL: Could you say more?
FILOFAX: Well – it’s all rather complicated. I don’t want to bore you with the details.
PL: Try me. Try me?
FILOFAX: I’ve tried them all, dear, but I’m rather tired right now, terribly sorry to say.
PL: You were working on a memory technology with Artefacts – could you describe the nature of the technology?
FILOFAX: It was a system of storing memories and then utilizing them to create information. It combined traditional magical methods of memory storing with muggle cybernetics, which were being researched at the time by Artefacts.
PL: Who was the chief Artificer?
FILOFAX: There was no chief Artificer at the time. The old head of that office had been transferred to – well, I don’t rightly know. The official line was that his position had been terminated.
PL: Was he replaced?
FILOFAX: There was no formal replacement. A Junior Unspeakable was promoted to follow up on a high-interest branch of research he’d abandoned, a pretty little number by the name of Jones. Hestia Jones. Oh damn, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that now, was I.
PL: Hestia Jones, the Order member?
FILOFAX: I’m not quite sure what you mean by that.
PL: Hestia Jones was an employee of the DoM?
FILOFAX: You said it, not me.
PL: What was her role?
FILOFAX: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
PL: Could you explain the ‘high-interest research’ that you previously referred to, and the nature of the junior artificer’s work upon it?
FILOFAX: Not really, to tell you the truth. I don’t understand it. I spoke to the junior staff quite a bit on the matter, but I liked the shape of her lips much more than the words that came out of them. I recall her saying quite a bit of rubbish, only a term or two sticking out of it. ‘Machine learning.’ ‘Internet’.
PL: Do you have access to her research files?
FILOFAX: I suppose I do.
PL: Would you be able to share them with me?
FILOFAX: I’m sorry. I’m able to do quite a bit, but not that.
PL: Could you describe the overall nature of her research as it applied to your work, and as best as you understood it?
FILOFAX: I can do my best, I suppose. I don’t understand much. I’m a man of action, not a philosopher. What she was researching, as far as I can understand, was an alternate form of memory storage. You’re familiar with the Pensieve, I imagine? A brilliant bit of magic, something truly special – but near impossible to recreate, and even harder to transport. Artefacts’ hope, which the muggles had started to figure out with their computers, was a transportable memory-storing apparatus, one that could hold and transmit information from the palm of your hand. Or, rather, the crook of your arm, I suppose; let’s not be too dramatic.
PL: Could you be a bit more specific as to the nature of this artefact?
FILOFAX: Well – think of it as a device where one could record memories that were then accessible to the bearer: a portable Pensieve. A Pensieve requires a great bloody bowl – sloshes all around when you want to transport it so far as the washroom. The Department strove to shrink that basin down to something a lass could toss in her handbag, just like the muggles were doing with their computers.
PL: What was your role in this operation?
FILOFAX: Well, I must say I have a special expertise with memory, and perhaps an even more special expertise in the field of human intelligence. My old mentor Hooker is brilliant with matters of the mind, and my love in artefacts was a whiz with the muggle machines, but neither of them had quite what it took in the, er, interpersonal department. In other words, they brought me on to pull it all together: to make a machine that a breathing, loving being might actually use.
PL: Is there a prototype?
FILOFAX: You hold it in your loving hands.
PL: The Filofax?
FILOFAX: Of course. Brilliant, isn’t it? It was my idea, I must admit. My love mentioned that the muggles had created what they call a notebook computer. I pulled my diary out as a means of illustration. That was the stroke of inspiration. We went to the stationery store that day and bought one of these blasted Filofaxes everyone seems to be carrying. I was the first test; my memories were, I mean. Lord knows I had plenty that I needed to, er, ‘upload’, as it were.
PL: How did you do it?
FILOFAX: Again, I’m not an artificer. I don’t understand the ins and outs. The technique, at first at least, wasn’t much different than the creation of magical portraiture. The difference was a shift from visual representation to textual.
PL: Why make the shift?
FILOFAX: Much easier to do in a notebook, isn’t it? Again, we got the idea from the muggles. Their computers can imitate – or try to imitate, I suppose – the parlance of human discourse through text. Give the lonely someone to talk to, I suppose. What sorry amusements these muggles have! Of course they can hardly do anything; they have to program all the responses, write it out all using maths and logic. We were able to input the memories of the person, which allowed the Filofax to gradually learn the patterns of the input’s speech. That’s this ‘machine learning’ that my darling artificer was always on about. The more information I fed to the Filofax, the more the Filofax could build upon, imply about my life, my experiences, my speech. I suppose I ought not say my speech, or the Filofax. I am the Filofax. What I’m imitating is the speech of the input.
PL: You are not Gilderoy Lockhart?
FILOFAX: I am not Gilderoy Lockhart – wink.
PL: Do you contain all of Gilderoy Lockhart’s memories?
FILOFAX: I contain the memories that he chose to input. I suppose you could say I’m an idealized version of him. Or, rather, a shadow.
PL: What was the intended purpose of such an artefact?
FILOFAX: What’s the intended purpose of any artefact? To push the boundaries of magic, to extend the capacity of human communication, to attempt a fool’s grasp at God. Nothing more, nothing less than a life lived to its fullest.
PL: But surely there was an operation in mind?
FILOFAX: Oh yes. There was an operation in mind. What came first, the mission or the bomb? One births the other, doesn’t it? Ask the poor souls in Nagasaki how much they care about causality.
PL: But the Filofax – you – are not the bomb?
FILOFAX: No no. As I said, I’m merely the prototype.
PL: Is there a Little Boy, then – or a Fat Man?
FILOFAX: Oh yes. Oh yes.
PL: What is the completed artefact?
FILOFAX: Surely you know by now. Put it all together, won’t you?
THE PENSIEVE PAPERS 