April 17. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk. It was the ninth day since the transfer ended.
My line in the terminal's body field had, overnight, dimmed at its last digit and was wholly erased. The basement archive smelled the same on the ninth day, the fluorescent blinked at the same interval, and the draft from the vent passed over the empty desk. The place where one digit had been faintly lit until yesterday was, today, empty. My employee number, which I had read into Do-gyeong's dimmed place a fortnight ago, had vanished from the terminal. In the vanished place one blank line remained, and that blank line lay as one slot above the other four lines. The head archivist's line and the two assistants' lines were still dimming at their last digits, and above those four my blank line lay as the line emptied first. The line that began receiving first received all first, and the line that received all first emptied first. The line vanished, but the line's place remained. The blank place was where the next person would read his number in. As I entered the place Do-gyeong emptied, into this place I emptied the next person would enter.
Because my line had vanished, I was no longer material written in the body field. But I had not left the archive either. I was still sitting at the fifth desk, watching the emptying terminal. The one who vanished from the body field was still at the seat that watched the body field. The preserved line was erased, and the watching eye remained. Between the erased line and the remaining eye, I was. Which side was me, even after the line was erased, I could not tell.
Then the terminal's sender field blinked again. The field that blinked once yesterday and went dark, today blinked not once but again and again. At the place where my line in the body field was wholly erased, the sender field was waking. The terminal, done receiving, seemed now to be starting to send. That sending begins at the place receiving ends, the telegraph operator's log had written. When the dispatch that had only a recipient and no sender arrived at last as his own number, the receiving telegraph operator's hand took up the transmitter for the first time. The end of receiving was the beginning of sending.
Do-gyeong passed that seat too. Do-gyeong pressed one character into the sender field and became a sender, and became a sender and vanished. Do-gyeong's sending was an answer to save one person. I had no one to save and nothing to answer. The five bundles had left, the sixth bundle had left, my line was erased. Though there was nothing to send, the sender field blinked. It blinked not because there was something to send but because it was the seat done receiving. Even with nothing to send, the sending seat opened. I recalled, one last time, the day after I took the post. That day I opened the box with no recipient, read the four bundles, read Do-gyeong's fifth bundle. The me of that day was one who came to preserve, a receiver. Until finishing the transfer nine days ago, and through nine days of dimming, I had all along been a receiver. Receiving by reading, receiving by preserving, receiving by dimming. A fortnight of only receiving. At the end of that fortnight, the terminal that had only received woke its sending field for the first time. A seat entered as a receiver, leaving as a sender. If Do-gyeong passed that seat by answering, I reached it without answering. Not because a dispatch came to answer, but because there was nothing left to receive.
The hand went of itself toward the sender field. It was not to press. Only, the hand done receiving had nowhere else to go. There was nothing more to receive in the body field, the index box was closed, the bundles had all left. At the seat where the preserving hand had done all its work, the next place the hand could touch was the sender field. At the crossing where a receiving hand becomes a sending hand, my hand lay. Press and I would become a sender; not press and I would stop here. Whether to press or not, even my hand did not yet know. Under the stopped hand, each time the sender field's light blinked, a faint light came and went on the back of my hand. Press and become a sender, and becoming a sender, vanish like Do-gyeong. Not press, and remain empty-handed at the seat done receiving. Either way the terminal's sender field did not stop blinking. If it blinked whether pressed or not, the blinking was perhaps waiting not for my hand but for the hand to come next too. If I did not press, the day after the next person took the post that sender field would blink again. The seat where one entered as a receiver crosses over to a sender was a seat anyone seated reached once.
Do-gyeong's sending was an answer, but my sending would not be an answer. No dispatch came to answer. Then if a hand with nothing to send pressed the sender field, what would be sent. With nothing received there was nothing to send back, yet the sender field blinked as if to send anything. Perhaps what was sent was not content but the act of sending itself. That a seat that had only received begins to send, that act might be what is sent. The one crossing of a receiver becoming a sender might be the first dispatch to send. Whether that was summoning or foreseeing, I never parted. Whether the sender field's blinking was calling my hand, or whether the sender field foreknew where my hand would go, even after a fortnight of dimming I could not tell. Only that the two were the same in result, I could tell, no differently than nine days ago. Calling or foreknowing, the hand went to the same seat.
The hand stopped at the place where it almost touched the sender field. Neither pressing nor lifting, I kept my hand at that place. Above the terminal's blank body line, the sender field blinked again and again. We were watching a little longer. We who had sent the five bundles, closed the sixth bundle, watched my line be erased, were watching a little longer. The surveyor and the lighthouse keeper and the librarian and the telegraph operator and Do-gyeong, and I, whose line had just been erased, were watching a little longer at the fifth desk. And now, one of us was about to send. A hand with nothing to send, about to send the one act of sending, lay before the sender field. At the end of receiving, the hand of one of us was, for the first time, turning toward the seat of sending. Whether that one was me, the next person, or all of us, was, like the dimmed last digit, never read to the end.