Min-seok's three lines gathered today in one place and blinked. The firm, the debt, the body. Two of the three were closed; the last was splitting.
February 10th. I had saved him twice, and twice moved him to a deeper cell. Today the last cell — the body — crossed into danger. There was no further cell to move him to. Beneath the body there was only the obituary. Sitting before the sender field, for the first time I knew all three. That pressing could draw him out of the body. That there was no next cell for that weight to go to, for him. That the weight, then, would move to someone not him, on a line I did not know.
I pressed. Min-seok's body line closed. He would live. And I resolved, this time, not to search where that weight had gone. To search would be to know, and to know would make one more obituary my hand's. I chose not-knowing. But that not-knowing is not innocence, I had already learned from the newspaper obituary. I only tried, this time, not to see that the hand which saved Min-seok and the hand which took someone were the same hand.
Did I save him? Did I make some other who would be taken in his place? Both. And to the end, which was the heavier act, I would not be able to know. If saving someone I love weighs the same as killing someone I do not know, then on that scale what had I done? It closed upon that question — not because there is no answer, but because the hand that resolved not to see the answer was still upon the sender field.
At lunch Min-seok came. The illness of the past days had lifted as if by a lie, he said, beaming. He had been lucky. Looking at that bright face I smiled back, and while I smiled I thought I heard, somewhere, the sound of a line splitting. It must have been a phantom sound. But even were it not a phantom, I would not go to search for it. Min-seok had lived, and I resolved to see only that. Knowing that the rest, which I resolved not to see, would become the weight of the days I had yet to carry.
Until now I pressed the sender field. Today I edited a line of the roster directly.
February 12th. To answer was to lay a hand on a line. I only chose to close or open; what was written on the line, the law decided. But ever since the receiving cell and the sending cell became one, I knew I could put letters into that one cell myself. Not pressing, but writing. Not answering, but editing.
Today there was a line on the roster. Some client firm's default amount. I changed its last digit. The 9 to a 0. Enough to remit the default. The terminal did not refuse. The 0 I wrote sat on the roster just so. Where the law had written, I wrote a different figure, and the roster accepted my figure. I was no longer one who chooses a line, but one who writes it.
The cost did not wait. The cost that had always drawn nearer — days, the next day, that evening — came at once today. The very moment I entered the 0, another line lower on the screen swelled by the same number of digits. The 9 I had cut had not vanished but moved to the neighboring line, pushing it into default by that 9. The cost of editing was the same as the cost of answering — only, there was no lag. Editing was faster. Editing caused the relocation instantly, at my fingertip.
I looked a long while at the 0 I had written. It was not my handwriting. It was the terminal's type. But the finger that placed that type in that seat was mine. The last distance that had remained between the law and me — that one step, that when I press the law writes — vanished today. Now if I write, that is at once written. This must have been the place the predecessor reached. In that place, for the first time, instead of the word frightening I thought of another word. I can. Knowing how dangerous that word was, my finger was already moving to the last digit of the next line.
The 9 that moved to the neighboring line yesterday, today I saw as people.
February 13th. Yesterday I edited a client firm's default amount from 9 to 0. That 9 did not vanish but moved to the neighboring line and pushed it into default. Then the neighboring line was only a number. Today I learned which firm that neighboring line was. A small firm of forty employees. Yesterday, in drawing one firm out of default, I had put forty people into it.
Answering had a lag. It closed a few days later, and for those few days I could pretend not to know what I had done. Editing had no lag. The instant I wrote the 0, the 9 moved, and the moved 9 arrived today at forty desks. Quickness was cruel. Quick, there is no time to pretend not to know. Between my fingertip and their default there was no gap to wedge an excuse into.
I was no longer a receiver. No longer even a copier. The receiver read what the law wrote; the copier changed the seat the law set. But the hand that wrote the 0 yesterday wrote what the law had not set. That hand was a sender. The hand that put a figure not on the roster onto the roster, that made a firm which was not in default default. I could not deny that hand was mine. To deny it I would have to deny yesterday's 0, and the 0 was even now, on the roster, saving one firm.
I set yesterday's 0 and today's default on one screen and looked a long while. The two were one gesture. Saving one firm and pushing forty into default were a single 0. I could not erase that 0. To erase it, the saved firm would default again, and that default would move somewhere else again. The saying that erasing too is writing — I now knew it in the body. Every seat I had touched was my seat. For a sender there is no innocent gesture. Every gesture arrived somewhere, and at every place it arrived, my signature was written.
At first I was a reader. Then I became a copier. Now I am one who answers.
February 16th. At first I broke the warning not to read to the end, and read. I was a reader. Then I integrated the four bundles into my own ledger and pressed the sender field for the first time. I became a copier. After that I answered every day, grew habituated to answering, and edited a line with my own hand. I became one who answers. The three transformations were three irreversible choices, and none could be undone. I now know what I am. Knowing it, I do not stop.
Acceptance did not come like a defeat. It came very quietly, as the fact that opening the roster one morning was no longer frightening. What remained where the fear had gone was familiarity. I had grown used to the seat of one who answers, and familiarity did not lighten the sin. It only made the sin a routine. To do the heaviest thing in the most ordinary way every day — that was the life of one who answers.
That afternoon, a new kind of line rose on the roster. Not default, not suspension. Firms operating soundly had begun to cut people. Ten at one firm, twenty at another. To survive, the firms were closing the lines within themselves, by their own hand. It was the second wave of the crisis. If the first wave had taken firms, the second would take the people inside the firms that survived. In the first half of 1998, a long roster by the name of layoffs was just beginning.
I looked at that first line. And I knew. What I would have to answer from here on was not firms but people. As saving a firm had worn a person, now saving a person would wear another person. The relocation was descending to a smaller, nearer, more faced unit. What had begun with Min-seok would spread to everyone like Min-seok.
I sat before the terminal and brought my hand to the first line of the layoffs. Whether to press I no longer asked. Whom to save and whom to take, even that I would not know to the end. Only this: I would write, and what was written would become someone's tomorrow. Do not read to the end. Do not answer. The hand that had broken both warnings moved without waiting for a third.
We were seeing a little more. And now, we were writing a little more.
