January 5. At ten past nine I set it running again.
It took twenty seconds.
The first line is me.
The second is twenty-three, and the third twenty-four, and the fourth thirty-four and the fifth thirty-seven.
The sixth is ninety-eight, and Kim Do-gyeong.
Yesterday I was sixth. Today I am first.
I looked at the first line a long while. It is the topmost box on the screen and the cursor sits on that line. Open the list and that line comes to the eye first.
In October I wrote that in the inverted list I had taken the top box for the first time in six months. That was the materials list and the line standing there was a material number. I thought a number standing at the top and a name standing at the top were the same thing.
The number I gave it. The name I did not give.
I went up five lines in one day. The reason I went up is one box. Yesterday I left the end box of the registration form empty, and the box left empty is stored as double zero.
From ten until eleven I was looking at the six lines.
The middle four are the ones that ended. Twenty-three and twenty-four and thirty-four and thirty-seven. All four have the year they ended written, and that year is sixty to seventy-seven years ago.
The two at either side are the ones that have not ended.
The 1997 archive log is still being written. Yesterday's page is the sixth of February 98 and opening it this morning there is the seventh. So the latest date of entry on that line changes daily and today it is ninety-eight.
My log I am still writing. The end box is empty and the empty is double zero.
The two that have not ended are at the very front and the very back of the list. The four that ended are in the middle.
There are two boxes for writing that a thing has not ended.
One is to leave it empty and one is to write where it has been written up to today. Both are correct. Both say it has not ended.
Standing in two digits, the empty one is foremost and the written one last.
The same thing written two ways has split to the two ends of the list.
At half past eleven I took out yesterday's transcript and set it beside today's.
Yesterday's is in order of earliest date of entry. Twenty-three, twenty-four, thirty-four, thirty-seven, ninety-seven, and me.
Today's is me, twenty-three, twenty-four, thirty-four, thirty-seven, ninety-eight.
The six are the same. The order differs.
In yesterday's list I was the end. The four were first and the person of two years ago came next and I was last. Copying that order out yesterday, I held it to be the order in which it came down.
In today's list I am the head.
The list did not write the order in which it came down. It wrote the latest date of entry.
There is nowhere in this room that writes the order it came down. There is one handover paper, and it writes only what passed from one person to one person. The paper by which it passed from the person of two years ago to the person of last winter is not in this room.
There is nowhere it is written, and the list has set it upside down.
Nor has it set it upside down. To set a thing upside down there must be a right way up. The list set it neither right way up nor upside down. It read the end box, and that is all.
In July I found and wrote out the one line at the end of the four bundles. I wrote that all four carry it and that the line is the speech of none of the four. It says we, and I wrote that this is several.
Then I could not settle whether I am among those several or whether the line was waiting for me. Six months passed without settling it.
Today six stand in one column in the list. The four and the person of two years ago and me. Whether six standing in one column and the word we are the same thing, the list does not say. The list only counted six, and I am inside that count.
What I am inside is a count. Whether being inside a count means being among those several still does not resolve.
From one until two I sat over whether to fill in the end box.
Written as ninety-nine, my line goes to sixth. Written in four digits, twelve months close.
It cannot be written. I wrote in this log this morning and I am writing in it now. To write an end on what is being written is a misentry.
In January a year ago I asked the same of the notebook. I wrote that whether it is right to write an ended year on a thing that has not ended, I could not settle. Then it was someone else's.
There is no box for writing the unfinished as unfinished.
There are two boxes and both are correct and the two split to the two ends of the list. Either may be written without misentry, and the place it stands after writing differs.
For eight months the things that did not resolve in this room did not resolve for want of grounds. What does not resolve today does not resolve because the grounds are two. Two that are both correct is the same as having no grounds to choose.
At half past two I reckoned the pages of the right-hand material.
It is now the seventh of February 98. A page comes a day. For that date to reach the first of January, year double zero, six hundred and ninety-three days are needed.
After six hundred and ninety-three days that line's year becomes double zero.
My line is double zero as well.
Then the two lines fall in the same box. Which comes first within the same box is decided by the date beneath it. My end box is empty, so there is no date. There is no rule in this form for ordering between a thing with a date and a thing without.
At half past three I put the list in an envelope.
There are two sets. Yesterday's and today's. What head office asks for is today's.
Why I put yesterday's in I thought about after closing the envelope. There is no box that says to put it in. The form asks for one set.
I took it out.
Yesterday's I put in my drawer. Of everything I have made in this room, that paper is the one that has not gone up to head office.
At twenty to four a reply about the separate volume came from head office.
They said that the same period entered as two years is not a subject for binding. They said to leave the separate volume as a separate volume and write on the cover that it is for testing.
I wrote for testing on the cover. The six months written in that book are not for testing. They are an entry of what happened in this room in those six months, made while one machine lived year double zero.
Where there is something to write down, one writes it. Written down, those six months become for testing.
At four the third-floor man came down and took a signature. He said the first week of the new year was quiet. I said it was quiet.
At ten past four I took yesterday's out of the drawer and looked at it once more.
It is the list in which I am the last line. One sheet, a transcript, and it has not gone to head office. It is only in this room.
A paper that is only in this room has come to exist. For twelve months everything made in this room went to head office or to the third floor or became a material. Today I have made, for the first time, a paper that goes nowhere.
Putting it away I looked for a box to write down what it is and gave up. There is a box in the form for retention in this office and I wrote one line there.
At half past four I opened the box.
The fifth bundle is a hundred and seventy-seven pages. It has not grown for twenty days.
I took out the notebook. I counted the seal impressions on the inside of the back cover. Six. They have been six for two months.
I counted the pages. Up to the last page with writing it is sixty-two. After that are the blank pages.
For a year they were two.
There was one blank page.