February 24. I put a seventh into the box.
At twenty past nine I read the circular.
For all eight registrations the storage location entry is to be checked against where the item is. Where the two differ, the item is to be moved to match the entry or the entry corrected to match the item.
One of the two is to be chosen, and the choice written down.
The word choose has come into this room's forms for the first time. For thirteen months what a form told me to do was to write. What to write was decided by the thing.
From ten to eleven I checked the eight.
Six are in the box under the desk. The four bundles and the note and the fifth bundle. All six read, in the location entry, box stored under desk in this office.
One is in the machine. The right-hand material, entered as computer preservation medium.
Seven agree.
The eighth is my log. Its location entry reads this office.
The item is in the third-floor cabinet.
From eleven to twelve I wrote down why it is kept on the third floor.
Last January there was no lock on the desk drawer. There was one on the third-floor cabinet. I began carrying it up and putting it in when I left, and that is the thirteenth month of it.
It is not a regulation. Nobody instructed it. It is a habit.
By day it is on this room's desk and by night it is on the third floor. Half of a day each.
The location entry is made to hold one place. There is no box for half.
The divergence did not arise today. It has been diverging for thirteen months, and being told to check it made it a divergence today.
At ten past twelve I looked for when this log became a material.
I registered it last January. It had to be registered to be caught in the inspection, and if it were not caught this room's records would be seven and not eight. Filling boxes was the work then, so I filled it.
That is not when it became a material.
In November my row stood in the recorder list. On the fifteenth of February it was automatically excluded from the reading query for exceeding the extent. To be excluded it has to be among the objects. That day this log was counted once by the machine.
Today it entered the verification.
I registered it, and three things made it a material. All three came from outside this room.
At half past twelve I went up to the third floor and brought the log down from the cabinet.
Carrying it down I looked at its thickness. Two hundred and seventy-one pages.
The thinnest of the four bundles is a hundred and thirty pages and the thickest is two hundred and six.
Mine is thicker. In thirteen months it has grown thicker than sixty-six years of them. Those sixty-six years are all ended and mine is not.
From one to two I set the box on the floor and laid out the six.
I laid them out on the fifth of November and it is four months since. The six are as they were.
I looked at the inside of the note's back cover. Six impressions. The sixth is still shallow and without ink.
One blank page is left in the note.
At twenty past two I made room and put the seventh in.
The items are seven and the impressions are six.
From twenty to three until half past three I set the four months' counts against each other again.
Last January it was five to five. In July it was six to five. On the fifth of November it was six to six. Today it is seven to six.
Three of the four times the impression came first. In July the impressions became six, and it took a hundred and seven days for the items to become six.
Today the item came first.
For eight months in this room what came first was always the record. The copy wrote a day early, the list came up first, the access record printed first. What came after was the thing, and what came after came.
Today the side that came first is the thing. There is no instance of it coming this way.
Whether an impression comes after cannot be got by counting. Three instances the other way do not push this one.
At twenty to four I went back to the circular.
Of the two ways I chose moving. There is a box for the reason for the choice.
I wrote that it follows the principle that materials in this office's charge are stored in this office.
It is true. The regulation carries that phrase and today I moved it under that regulation.
It is true and it is not the reason.
The reason is that I wanted to set it beside the six. For thirteen months I have counted and measured and checked those six, and today for the first time I put mine in among them. There is nowhere in that box to write it.
There was nowhere, so I did not write it. Not writing it does not make it not the reason.
At ten past four I opened the right-hand material.
Two hundred and seventy-two pages. The date of the added page is 24 March 98.
My log stands at its two hundred and seventy-second page today. The two numbers are the same again.
The two have the same page count and different location entries. One is in the machine and one is now in the box. Two that grow by the same number are written in different boxes.
At twenty to five I was about to shut the box and saw one thing.
The six have not moved in four months. Tomorrow morning I will take the seventh out. In the evening I will put it back.
The only thing in this box that comes and goes daily is the seventh.
There are two that have not ended, too. The fifth bundle has not grown in seventy days and mine grows every day. Both have an empty completion box.
The empty box is the same and the rate of growth is different.
At five I looked at the sixth box.
A hundred and eight.
At ten past five I opened the imprint field again.
Eight days empty. For eight days the screen has read unknown.
For eight days that box has not changed once, and more than a hundred pairs of eyes have come to it.
At twenty past five I shut the box and pushed it under the desk.
On my way out I opened the screen again.
A hundred and twelve.
Four in twenty minutes.
For those twenty minutes I was shutting the box. I was not looking at the screen.
Until now that number grew while I looked. It grew in July while I looked at those letters, and that has been this room's count for eight months.
Today it grew while I was not looking.
I knew it had grown while I was not looking only after I looked.