July 14. In the morning I opened the copy first.
Page seventy-six: July 14, thirty-nine.
The date had come forward a day and the figure had risen a day. Yesterday that page was the thirteenth with thirty-six. Today it is the fourteenth with thirty-nine. The same structure as yesterday, pushed one day along and otherwise unchanged. Today's date with tomorrow's figure.
I looked above it. Page seventy-five was still the thirteenth, thirty-three. Yesterday's page in yesterday's place. Page seventy-seven was again not there.
Which means nowhere in the copy was today's figure. Thirty-six was not there. Until yesterday thirty-six sat on page seventy-six, and when that page went up to thirty-nine it left the place empty. Page seventy-five is nailed to yesterday. There was not one place in the copy holding the figure today's count would give.
In six months this had never happened. The copy always wrote today. On some days it was written before I counted; on others the same figure arrived after I had written it. The order was often reversed, but there was never a day when today's figure was absent from the copy.
At nine I ran the search. Thirty-six.
As the rule said. Right four days running. Only there was nowhere to set it against.
I sat a long while over what it means to have nowhere to set a figure against.
For six months my work has been comparison. I put the figure I counted beside the figure in the copy and looked at whether they were the same. When they were, I asked which had followed which, and when the question had no answer I wrote down the order and left it. Even without an answer there was comparison. Where there are two places, at least the fact that the two agree can be written down.
Today there is one. There is the thirty-six I counted, and beside it nothing. The copy writes tomorrow, not today. The place in this room that would confirm today's figure is gone.
Yesterday I wrote down how my devices have collapsed. Holding out two hours without counting, locking the drawer, deriving figures by rate, leaving the date column blank. All four had the situation slip aside before a verdict came. Today it is not the device that slipped aside; the place where a verdict could be reached is itself gone. The slipping has gone one step further.
I counted what was left. In this room there are the screen, the log and the copy. The screen is where counting happens, the log where writing happens, the copy where comparing happened. The comparing place has gone off into tomorrow, so what remains in this room is counting and writing. I count and I write. Setting what I counted against what I wrote is not comparison.
Outside the room was left.
On the board there is the post I put up on the fifth and a few corrections since. The display name is the archive's four-digit code. Everything I posted was a figure already counted. I set down what I observed and corrected what was wrong. What I mean to post today is different. It is a figure not yet counted.
If I put up thirty-nine, then whether tomorrow's count gives thirty-nine will be seen by things that are not me. Inside this room, right is my being right and wrong is my being wrong. Hung outside it is otherwise. A figure hung there sits where I cannot amend it. A figure in a place I cannot amend has nowhere to slip aside to.
That was the last judge I could find today.
At eleven I handled seven requisitions. I wrote the replies and had the ledger stamped. Someone came down from the third floor and again looked toward the screen. Again I did not ask. There were thirty-six copies on the screen. Of yesterday's thirty-three, thirty were as they had been, six were new, and three had gone. The disappearing side is growing.
Around midday I confirmed the disappearing side once more. One on the fifth, two yesterday, three today. Following a vacated place would tell me whether it was deleted or moved, but to follow it I would have to open it. Opening raises the view count, and a raised count increases the number. To count what disappears is to increase it. Today again I did not follow.
At one I opened the box. The four bundles were as they were. I closed the lid and went back to the desk.
At two I opened the board.
The writing did not take long. I logged in with the archive's four digits and wrote a date and a figure in the new-post field. July 15, thirty-nine. Below it I added a line. Not yet counted.
Whether to add that line I weighed for a long time. Without it the post reads as an observation; with it, as a notice. I wanted to write that it was neither, and there is no field for that. I added it. If it is written that I have not yet counted, at least what I did is on the record.
The lighthouse keeper's tide table came to mind. The date of the next low water stood written in it in advance, and the keeper read it. The one who read was inside the table. The table was inside the lighthouse and so was the keeper, so the date written in advance and the eye that read it were in one room. What I did today was hang the table on that room's outer wall. I sent a figure written in advance out of the room. The lighthouse keeper did not do that. Whether he chose not to or had nowhere to send it is not written in his table.
I posted it and closed the screen.
Sending out what I had not observed was a first today. Everything posted since the fifth had been counted. Putting up what I had not counted, I knew what I was doing. It is what the copy has done for six months. Laying tomorrow's figure on today's place. I did that outside the room.
So there are now two doing it. Inside, the copy; outside, me. That two do the same thing does not mean one hand. I read a rule and derived; what the copy reads I do not know. Only the shape that comes out is the same.
At four I opened the board again. In two hours it had been reproduced in six places. To a list that had grown from thirty-three yesterday to thirty-six today, the one item posted today was adding six more. On the seventh I confirmed that counting is opening and opening is increasing. Today posting was increasing.
I opened the reproductions one at a time. Five were as I had written them. July 15, thirty-nine, not yet counted.
The sixth was different.
The body was the same. July 15, thirty-nine, not yet counted. What differed was the date stamped at its head. The posting-date field read July 15.
Tomorrow. A post put up tomorrow was here today.
I left the screen as it was and looked at my own post again. Posting date July 14. Today. The same body stood in one place under today's date and in another under tomorrow's.
What the copy had been doing inside the room, the outside was doing too.