April 7. Eight in the morning. I took my place at the fifth desk. One day was left.
The lidded box stood at one edge of the desk. No seal had been pressed on the transfer slip yet. The headquarters officer would come tomorrow to press it, and once it was pressed the box would go. For this one day before it went, the box rested between the sending seat and the receiving seat — sent by no one yet, received by no one yet, a day that belonged to neither. And that day, I thought, might be the last on which I could still choose anything.
I thought about what would happen if I didn't send the box. Hold it back, and the bundle would never leave the archive; never leaving, it would never spread to another archive. Kept to one place, at least its spread across breadth might be stopped. I couldn't stop it growing downward into depth, but its widening — that, holding might stop. I had only to lower the box under the desk and be out from under tomorrow's seal.
But to hold it back was not to send it, and not to send it was not to transfer it, and not to transfer it was dereliction of duty. The seal ordering the transfer finished by April 8 was already pressed into the confirmation sheet, so to hold was to break that seal. Something out of Do-gyeong's log came back to me. Just as another hand had preserved the place she left unpreserved, another hand would transfer the box I left untransferred. Even if I held it, headquarters would only send a different officer to carry it off — holding would delay it a day, not stop it.
And it wasn't only that holding couldn't stop it. Holding had a price. Absence has a price — Do-gyeong's log had set that down. As someone had copied the number she left uncopied, someone would transfer the box I left untransferred, and that someone would be a person my holding had summoned to the seat. Empty one place, and another place moved into it. To hold was to empty my own seat, and into the emptied seat another hand came and was closed. The very holding meant to block was itself the closing of another seat.
I thought of Do-gyeong's end. She could have closed one more person before she herself was closed, but by leaving empty the hand she'd decided not to block with, she left that one person unclosed. The blocking hand closes one more person before it is closed; the emptied hand does not — so Do-gyeong's log wrote. I stood at the opposite seat. She had saved a person by not blocking; I was set to summon one by trying to block. Her not-blocking and my trying-to-block divided at the same point, in reverse. To try to save and to try to block were not one work. Do-gyeong had moved a seat in trying to save; I would call a seat in trying to block.
Watching the box before it left, I understood that the transfer was acceleration. Preservation had made it grow in one place, by one hand. The transfer multiplied that one place into many, and that one hand into many. While the box sat on my desk, my single hand made it grow; once it went up to headquarters, a headquarters hand would; once it went on from there to somewhere else, that hand would. Every move added a hand, and every added hand added a growing place. If preservation was the work of depth, the transfer was the work of hands, and the more hands, the faster it ran. Even when one hand stopped, the added hands carried on — so the transfer was also the work of multiplying the hands that would have to be stopped. To stop it I had to stop a hand, and the transfer kept making more hands to stop. When the boxes had first converged on Do-gyeong's archive, the law had seemed to gather toward a single place. But the place they gathered into was only a place from which to scatter again. Gather everything into one place, send that place up to headquarters, and all of it moved at once to a higher place, and the higher place parceled it out again to wider ones. Gathering and scattering were two beats of one breath. It drew in as if inhaling and let go as if exhaling, and with each exhale it went farther.
I tried lowering the box under the desk. With it down at my feet, out of sight, I was easier for a while. Perhaps, I thought, what isn't seen doesn't grow. But an hour after I set it down I looked, and heard paper swelling inside the box — a very small sound, dry sheets multiplying one by one and pressing against one another. Without lifting the lid, without looking, I could hear that the bundle was growing in there. Unseen, it still reached me as sound, and to have heard the sound was itself engagement. I turned my eyes away and my ear still touched it. Held back, it grew in depth all the same. I had held it to stop the spread across breadth, but inside the held box it grew downward, and as it grew the lid lifted. The work of blocking had made one more place — the place under the desk. Now the archive held two seats, one above the desk and one below, and both of them grew. Holding had not reduced the seats; it had added one.
I lifted the box back onto the desk. The cardboard edge grazed my palm, and as I raised it I felt the weight of the bundle shift to one side within. Heavier than yesterday. Down it grew and up it grew, so where I set it made no difference. Only this: on the desk it would be sealed and gone tomorrow; under the desk another hand would come and take it, the seal broken. The leaving was the same either way; all that changed was whether the hand that sent it off was mine or another's. Just as Do-gyeong was herself whether she moved the number or not, I would see it leave whether I sent it or not. If the sending hand was mine, then I had sent it off; if another's, then the hand my holding had summoned had sent it off. Either way, the box left.
I decided to leave the box on the desk. Better that I send it off myself than summon another hand and make that hand the one to be closed. Just as Do-gyeong, at the last, had left one person unclosed by keeping empty the hand she chose not to block with, I would decline to summon one more hand by not holding at all. If I couldn't block it, then at least I would draw no other hand in. That was the one seat I was free to choose. I set the box square and checked the transfer slip once more. My name in the sending column had faded one place further than yesterday. Then the terminal blinked. In the body, below my employee number, a new line was arriving a character at a time. All along the terminal had received only my number, so this was the first time another line had come. I set the new line's leading digits against mine. They were different. Not mine. The leading digits of a number gave the year of joining, and these stood well above my own. In the archive only one person ranked above me. It was the head archivist's number. The line that had been coming to my seat was now spreading to the seat beside it.