THE TRUE STORY OF THE RICKETTE
( and why you will love it so much)
Coming out of Polytechnique. I was at a loss. To run a big, sprawling company, or even France, or to become a great intellectual cited in the world's most prestigious universities? These were my choices. And yet, I wanted to be more complex and offer my neurons to the world of electronics. More specifically, the world of the photocopier. This object has always fascinated me. As a child, I didn't understand its magic. But with time, I became curious and was lucky enough to be able to take them apart by the dozen and understand what the beast was all about.
I soon became the little fixer-upper of the 9-4, and thanks to this I was able to provide for my family. At the time, my parents weren't working, and they were delighted that my predatory IQ enabled them to add a little Dubonnet to their oilcloth tablecloth. My little exploits began to make a name for themselves, and in 1990 I appeared on TV with Laurent Broomhead and Pascal Sanchez. They described me as the little genius from Alfortville.
The mayor of the time received me with great pomp and ceremony and handed me the keys to the town. He made an emotional speech about how I was the pride of the town, and how he hoped I wasn't the only person in the area with an IQ over 90. All these little attentions led me to Polytechnique, from which I left after two weeks, so much so that what they were teaching seemed straight out of a Pif Gadget.
Shortly before Christmas, I was called by Stanford, who heard about my research and invited me to come and take some of their courses, in the hope that I could teach there at the end of my degree. But I didn't really fit in with these self-confident students, with whom I always had to fight to impose common sense. Scalded by the campus atmosphere, I packed my bags and headed for adventure.
Heading for Japan. What's in it for me? Akira Kurosawa perhaps, DragonBall Z surely. Above all, I needed to be recognized for what I had inside me. A young woman full of desire and creativity. I thought. Naively, I went knocking at Nintendo's door. As a child, I'd never owned a console, because my father invested everything in Suze, but I always looked enviously at my friends who owned a Gameboy. My candor gave them enough confidence to hire me to sing, with only one watchword: joy. I obeyed them, making every second I spent in their company an opportunity for my soul to grow. Over there, I took everything apart, put it back together, improved it, boosted it. It's 1992 and I offer them a new machine I've cobbled together in my corner. A super-powerful thing that allowed me to make an interstellar leap in graphics rendering. I was so proud of myself! But the president at the time was furious. He ordered his engineers and masterminds to commit harakiri, and me to get the hell out. The guy was ashamed of himself that a little Western girl, a virgin in video game electronics, could invent a machine with the power of a PS8.
I was disgusted and decided to return to the Val-de-Marne, only to be caught by the sleeve at the airport. There, a Laurent Broomhead fan accosted me. He had all the presenter's appearances on Betamax. He recognized me and knew what a talent I was. Coincidentally, he worked for Ricoh, in a very senior position, which was none other than one of the biggest players in the photocopying world. He offered me a rather humble position. But I didn't care, because I was determined to prove to them that I was the right person for the job.
I was paid very little, enough to afford a seven-square-meter studio in a very bad location, but I did what I wanted. Whenever the teams wanted to perfect a model, they turned to me and brought me their prototypes while I worked on the future. I'm going to keep this story short, because I need to finish it and go and drink my natural bubbly, but you should know that what interested me in my research and experimentation was machine/human fusion, and I insist on writing it in that sense. It was in early '95 that I invented the Rickette, a photocopier with men and human arms, capable of moving around, photocopying on its own and changing its ink like a big lady. The boss was captivated by my invention, but also very disturbed. There was something disturbing about this hybrid being, like a real-life Cronenberg invention. After congratulating me on my audacity, he apologized and committed hara-kiri.
