February 15. At nine the outside-network reading opened.
At nine a line came up on the screen. It says processing of commencement of reading complete. The phrase processing of commencement of reading has come into this room for the first time.
Apart from its coming up, nothing happened. No sound, and the screen as it was. It was so at midnight too.
The notice came on the seventh of February.
There are three criteria for selection. That the material's year is more than fifty years past, that there is no personal information, and that the extent is two hundred pages or under. Meeting all three makes it an object.
All three are told by year and name and page count. What is written in it is not looked at. Reading the criteria I read that twice. Among this room's materials there are several that would have to be told by what is written in them.
There is no box to tell it by. The criteria have no box for content.
I ran the query.
Five came out.
The fifth was the fifth bundle.
Its year box is double zero. Double zero is read as nineteen hundred. Nineteen hundred is a hundred years ago, so it meets the fifty-year criterion. Its extent is a hundred and seventy-seven pages, under two hundred.
I excluded it under personal information. There is a name in the recorder box.
There was no box for excluding. I struck one line from the query result by hand and copied the four out and submitted them. There was nowhere to write why I struck it, so I wrote a line in the margin of the form.
It could have been six.
My log is double zero too. I left the end box empty and the box left empty is double zero. A hundred years ago.
It did not come up in the query. Looking at the extent box, it is two hundred and sixty-two pages. It has passed two hundred.
Twelve and a half months of writing caught on one criterion and dropped out. Had I written less it would have come up.
From eleven until twelve I copied the four onto the outside form.
The form has seven boxes. There is the material number and the title and the year, and the extent and the recorder, and the imprint and the class of reading.
In the recorder box I wrote a title of office for all four. It is what was put in at registration in January, and last month head office said to amend it to unknown. I am still waiting for a reply, so I left the offices in.
The instruction to amend them to unknown and their standing on the outside screen as they are may fall on the same day. Falling together, which is done first becomes a question, and there is no box for writing that either.
It is copying out, and it is the work of thirteen months in this room. There is one place it differs.
Until now everywhere I copied to was inside this room. Film goes into the stacks, copies stay in this machine, cards are in a drawer. What increased increased inside this room as well.
Where I copied today is outside this room.
At five past twelve the third-floor man came down and asked whether it had opened. I said it had. He looked at the screen and asked whether our things are visible from outside.
I said four are visible. He asked who looks.
I said I do not know.
He laughed and said nobody will look, so why bother, and went up.
At ten past twelve a line appeared in the query record.
There is an account box. In thirteen months what has gone in that box has been my account or a third-floor account or a head office account.
It said outside.
There is no box for writing who it was that queried.
From one until two I looked for that box. It is not in the query record and not in the reading form and not in the head office guidance. The guidance says that outside queries are not managed by account.
It is written that they are not managed, so it was decided not to write it. Someone decided.
In this room, boxes that are absent have been absent because nobody ever decided. The box absent today is absent by decision.
At half past two I pulled the query record again.
Outside stands at eleven rows.
At three I opened the query screen to look at the sixth box.
It is sixty-three.
A number that grew by eleven in six months. It grew by thirty-nine in six hours.
From half past three until half past four I tried to write down how this differs from what has gone before.
What has increased that number is me. In July it increased while I looked at those words, and that was because I looked. The ground for counting is inside the thing counted, I wrote in June, and it has not changed since.
What increased it today is not me. For the first time the ground is outside the thing.
There are no grounds for counting what is outside.
Outside stands at eleven rows in the query record and the number grew by thirty-nine. Eleven and thirty-nine do not agree. The account box being outside in all of them, whether eleven rows are one person or eleven people does not resolve.
It says the number who read, and whether that is a number of people or a number of queries this box does not write.
In this room what was called outside has been the third floor or head office. Both have accounts, and have names and telephone. When a requisition comes, who requisitioned stays in the register and a signature is taken.
Today's outside is not that kind of outside. It has no account and no name and no telephone. What came is one row, and on that row it says outside.
For thirteen months the divergences in this room were all inside this room. The copy diverged from the log, paper from screen, record from recollection. Both of the diverging two could be brought out in this room.
One of today's diverging two is outside.
At twenty to five I opened the right-hand material.
It was two hundred and sixty-three pages. The page added is dated the fifteenth of March 98.
That material is not an object today. Being 1997, it is not fifty years past. Forty-seven years remain before fifty years pass.
In forty-seven years that material will come a page a day. Then its extent passes two hundred and it catches on the third criterion too. It has passed already.
What has not ended enters none of the criteria.
At ten past five I opened the outside screen to see how the four appear.
Of the seven boxes, six have characters. One is empty.
It is the imprint box.
The imprint of the four is Pnakotic Press. It has ceased trading. There being no box in the form for an imprint that has ceased trading, I left it empty and submitted it.
The box left empty was not simply empty on the outside screen.
It said imprint unknown.
It is not unknown. I know it.