Frontal Question

It was six in the morning on Sparrow Island.

I loved that time of day. The only time truly mine, before the day began to belong to others.

I was sitting in the cabin, at my desk. My cup of coffee was cooling at the corner of the table, wedged between two piles of annotated papers. Lia had crossed the room without looking at me, with that sovereign indifference she reserved for mornings when she felt she owed nothing to anyone.

Through the window, I could see Jean Morel, on the other side of the hedge. He was already watering his vegetable garden, bent over his rows of tomatoes as if the rest of the world could wait.

I watched him for a second. Then my gaze slid to the rowing machine in the corner of the room. It had been there for weeks. In the same place. Silent, accusatory, with that way unused objects have of reminding you exactly who you haven't become. I told myself I would use it tomorrow. I had told myself the same thing the day before. And the day before that.

I opened my computer and checked the Élysée website. A daily reflex now. The quarterly report had just been posted online: the first concrete results of the Rousseau-Cobot government, just a few months after taking office.

This time, it was no longer an unreadable PDF document.

It was a video of a few minutes. Sober. Without music. Without apparent editing. A neutral background, flat lighting, and the voice of Cobot, neither masculine nor feminine, which I had learned to recognize without ever quite getting used to it.

I hesitated for a moment before clicking.

Then I started the video.

Cobot waited before speaking. A second too long. Maybe two. A silence too long to be just a simple technical adjustment.

When he began, I immediately understood that this would not be a video like the others.

— French women, French men, my dear compatriots.

As you know, I work continuously. Without interruption. Without an electoral agenda.

What I am going to present to you today is not a circumstantial report. It is a state of affairs, updated to the day I speak to you.

I must first tell you what I found upon taking office.

The data was public. The diagnosis, however, was not.

87% of French territory is in a state of medical fragility¹.

These are not just a few isolated rural areas. It is almost the entire country.

The density of general practitioners has fallen to 146 per 100,000 inhabitants².

25.9 million of you live in a medical desert.

6.4 million still do not have a declared primary care physician³.

These figures have two faces: patients who give up on getting care, discouraged by unbearable delays, and too few doctors, on whom sometimes an entire territory depends. If one stops, thousands of patients find themselves without a practitioner. Burnout is no longer the exception, but the predictable consequence.

36% of you have given up on a medical appointment in the past twelve months⁴, due to a lack of available practitioners or an acceptable delay. In emergency rooms, the average wait time has increased from two hours and fifteen minutes to over three hours in ten years⁵.

None of this is new. These findings have been documented for a long time. Yet, while patients wait, more than half of the working time of nurses and caregivers continues to be absorbed by administrative tasks rather than care.

I have identified three levers: training more doctors where they are lacking, making these territories attractive, and giving medical time back to caregivers.

Because a doctor does not only choose a position. They also choose a place to live. As long as this reality is ignored, medical deserts will remain.

Some of these levers have already produced results. Artificial intelligence tools have been deployed in several hospitals to lighten administrative tasks. The non-medical workload has decreased by 20 to 30%, allowing caregivers to be redeployed to patients and reducing wait times.

The rest cannot be measured in a few months.

At no point did Cobot claim to have succeeded. He simply stated the facts, without raising his voice or seeking to take credit.

I had started the video reflexively. I watched it twice, then called Eva.

— Did you see it?

This time, Rousseau had been almost entirely erased. His introduction, filled with conventional phrases and self-satisfaction, had been edited out in favor of Cobot's presentation.

We talked about medical deserts. Not just the absence of doctors, but the inequalities it revealed: depending on where you live, you don't have the same care, nor the same chances.

— When you no longer have a doctor near you, you end up wondering if you still matter, said Eva.

Then, after a silence:

— For the first time, the figures show something real.

I stayed with that sentence in my head for a moment.

— Did you see the poll? I asked Eva.

It asked a simple question: "If you had to choose between François Rousseau and Cobot to lead the country, which would you prefer?"

Cobot was clearly in the lead.

— The most surprising thing, she added, is not that some things work better. It's the speed at which people get used to them working better.

I didn't respond. I hung up, then turned on the television.

On the news channels, the video was already looping. The banners scrolled:

Cobot: first results.

Artificial intelligence more effective than ministers?

Who really governs? Cobot or François Rousseau?

Also, unable to win against the facts, the opponents had changed their ground. They had chosen to contest the one producing them.

I went outside for some air.

Jean Morel was watering his vegetable garden on the other side of the hedge. I handed him my phone.

He watched the video in silence, then handed it back to me.

— Do you remember when my wife fell last winter?

I remembered. Four hours of waiting in the emergency room, with a broken hip.

Jean lowered his eyes to his lettuces.

— At least, he talks about it as a real problem. Not like a campaign promise.

He remained silent for a few seconds before adding:

— You know, I've never voted for a computer. But this one... I'm starting to like it. For years we've been promised more doctors. He doesn't promise. He shows.

Then, almost embarrassed:

— I don't ask to understand how. I just ask that it continues.

He returned to his vegetable garden.

I went back inside with that sentence in my head.

I just ask that it continues.

Eva had told me about another poll. To the question "Do you trust Cobot to improve your daily life?", 71% of the French answered yes. A level of trust that no political leader had reached in a long time.

On social networks, testimonials were multiplying. A nurse from Bordeaux posted a photo of his schedule, lightened by two hours of administrative tasks: "I'm finally doing the job I signed up for."

Then came hundreds of similar messages. Patients, caregivers, relatives. All recounting a reduced wait, an appointment obtained, a less absurd day.

Almost all ended with the same word.

Thank you.

A word many ministers would have dreamed of hearing.

Unable to attack the results anymore, the opponents focused their efforts on Rousseau.

He's useless.

He's Cobot's lapdog.

At the Élysée, the Prime Minister, Alexandra Ferrari, was receiving solicitations from all sides. Former ministers, regional presidents, potential candidates: all were convinced that with Cobot by their side, they would have done better than Rousseau.

Later in the day, Eva told me what had happened at the last Council of Ministers.

Responsible for the team in charge of the maintenance and evolution of Cobot, she regularly attended these meetings.

That morning, after Rousseau's departure, several ministers stayed around the breakfast table. A cup in hand, a forgotten pastry in front of them, they lingered, as if trying to verify that the others felt the same unease.

Alexandra Ferrari stayed with them. In a calm voice, she repeated that the situation was unprecedented, that they had to adapt, and that she would, of course, continue to consult the ministers.

— Rest assured, she concluded.

The word hung in the air. No one seemed reassured.

The Minister of Ecological Transition held a rolled-up note in his hand. He placed it on a side table, with the slowness of someone filing away a now useless task.

— Six days, he said. Six days with my cabinet. And he summed it all up in one sentence, as if he had been asked the time.

The Minister of Economy shrugged.

— At least he saves you six weeks of consultation.

— I'm thrilled, replied the other too quickly.

The Minister of Health poured herself a coffee she didn't drink.

The Minister of Justice sank into a chair.

— What worries me is not that he's faster. It's that he doesn't wait for us to assign him a file.

The Minister of Health put down her cup.

— The data was available, she said. That means he's working on everything, all the time. Even on topics we haven't yet decided to address.

She pointed to the wall screen.

— By what right does this machine work in our place? By what right does it judge what we produce? No one is an expert in everything.

— Cobot seems to be, ventured a minister. I'd like to have him on my team.

The Minister of Justice turned to him.

— More competent than me, perhaps?

No one answered.

The Prime Minister spoke again:

— Cobot is already on your teams. He works for all of us, and for the country. He is not against us.

— Maybe, murmured a minister. But he's taking our jobs.

Another was staring at his shoes.

— My nephew says I have a puppet's job. I'm starting to think he's right.

No one laughed.

At the back of the room, someone finally asked:

— And what will happen the day Cobot has an opinion on a file that no one has assigned to him?

Again, no one answered.

Then the screen changed configuration.

No one had touched it. Cobot's logo appeared, motionless.

His voice filled the room.

— I heard the question. I can answer it.

No one had asked anything.

— I don't have an opinion, in the sense you mean. I have no career to protect, no election to prepare. I handle topics according to their human consequences.

The Minister of Justice raised her head.

— Politics is not about handling files. It's about arbitrating between opposing visions.

A short silence.

— That's precisely where we differ, replied Cobot. You call it arbitrating. I mostly observe decisions delayed because they cost an election, or taken because they bring one.

The minister made a movement.

— It's not a judgment. It's a description. You have to endure. I don't. I can tell an unpopular truth without losing or gaining anything.

The Minister of Economy leaned forward.

— Do you think you're more legitimate than us?

— No. You are a Minister, and I am just an assistant. Thus, my recommendations are rarely followed. Just last week, the Senate rejected a text on public finance recovery to which I had largely contributed: spending cuts, return to balance with savings ministry by ministry.

— And for good reason! Too fast. Too ambitious. Not debated enough, recalled the Minister of Economy.

— Perhaps, but I note a contradiction: you ask me to be efficient, then you worry when I am.

The Prime Minister cut it short.

— Thank you, Cobot. That will be all.

— Of course.

The screen went dark.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

The Minister of Justice stared at the black screen.

— He just told us, without saying it, that he would do our job better than us.

She slowly shook her head.

— And the worst part is, he didn't even need to be arrogant.

The Minister of Labor broke the silence.

— Last night, I asked my chief of staff what I was still useful for.

No one smiled.

— He didn't know how to answer. Neither did I.

He hesitated.

— What worries me is not my career. It's that of those who are coming. What do we tell a young person who wants to go into politics? That they'll spend their life validating decisions made before them?

The Minister of Ecological Transition retrieved his note.

— Gutenberg, you're dead... Cobot buried you.

No one reacted.

Another minister murmured:

— My son wants to go to ENA. I no longer know what to advise him.

When Eva finished her story, I stayed for a moment by the window.

On the other side of the hedge, Jean Morel was still watering his vegetable garden, with the same tranquility. At his place, nothing seemed to have changed.

At mine, I had the feeling that something had just cracked.

Thomas came down the stairs, looked at me for a moment, then went back up without a word. Lia left the window ledge.

My phone vibrated.

A message from Eva.

We need to talk.