January 15. The notebook was forty-two pages and took twelve minutes.
Started in the morning, finished in the morning. After three days on four old logs, forty-two pages was nothing. Lay a page, close, press, save, next. I scanned the cover too. There was nothing on the cover, so one white page got saved.
The notebook kept reading itself while I scanned. Old handwriting slides off the eye; this is recent writing and simply reads. June and July were work and nothing else. A few names come up in August, boxes and film get more frequent in September, and from October there is a lot about a screen. What a person came to think about often over half a year shows itself in page counts.
The scanning hand is faster than the reading hand. I was not trying to read it and did not read it. Only, a line or two entered the eye at each turn of a page, and forty-two pages is a line or two forty-two times.
At the last page my hand stopped a moment. The page where the sentence breaks off. Lay, close, press, look at the screen.
There was one stroke after the broken sentence.
The same place and the same shape as in the lighthouse log. A short vertical. I looked at the original and it was not there. This time I did not check twice. I looked once and saved. The second time a thing happens you file it rather than startle. I filed it as an equipment matter, to show the computer room both cases when they come down next week.
All five bundles became files. The box is empty.
I thought briefly about what to do with an empty box. A thing not on any list goes to a disposal procedure, but the disposal form has no line for a wooden box. It could go under other, and then personnel would come up again. I pushed it back to its place under the desk. The paper is all out of it, so it is just an empty wooden box now.
In the afternoon I tested the search. Checking that newly registered files come up properly. Searching by the archive code brought up everything including this morning's. That much was expected.
For a test I searched in the company-wide index too. I had never checked whether our department's items show up in other departments' searches.
They did. They came up the moment I typed. The screen counts the results for you: five.
Lighthouse log, survey log, telegraph log, stacks log. And the archive record. All five bundles were in the company-wide index. Up to yesterday's registrations; this morning's was not there yet.
I had not put them there. I had not copied anything to a shared folder and had not sent anything to anyone. I scanned and saved.
I rang the computer room. The man answered as though it were nothing. Overnight indexing, he said. Files newly registered by any department go through an indexing job at night and appear in company-wide search the next morning. No department has to upload separately, which is convenient, he said.
Convenient, he said.
I said I understood and hung up.
So saving is not the end of it. Saving is registering and registering is indexing and indexing is searchable. It happens during the night. It happens after my hand comes off, and it was built to happen.
I wrote the sequence out on paper. Lay, press, save, get registered, get indexed, get found, get requested, get copied. Of eight steps my hand touches the first three. The other five go by themselves. Whether by themselves is the right phrase I am not sure. People built it to go, so it is not by itself, and no one orders it each time either.
Written out, it looked like the approval flowcharts we used at the branch. Except approvals move to the next box when a person stamps them, and this moves when night falls. A flowchart that moves without a stamp is something I had not seen before.
At four the phone rang. Someone from planning.
Cheerful voice. They had seen something odd in a search. There is a thing called a lighthouse log, what is it? Old material mixed in with the transfer, I said. They laughed and asked why the company would have such a thing.
I said I did not know either. I actually did not. Things unrelated to the company turn up in transfer boxes sometimes, I added. They took that as an explanation.
They had read a little and found it interesting. Tides written down without fail, and further in, a person's story. You can see what someone did alone in a lighthouse back then, they said. Is that so, I answered.
Then they said: I copied it into my folder to read when I'm bored.
I said please do. There was no ground to say otherwise. A staff member copying material that is in the company-wide index breaches no regulation.
After hanging up I counted the files. Around two thousand five hundred registered under the archive's name. What is copied into planning's folder is not counted here. Files in another department's folder count as that department's. So to count how many copies of the lighthouse log exist in this company, I would have to ring every department.
Not something to do. No department counts how many copies of one item sit in whose folder. It could be counted if someone asked, but it would grow while being counted.
At half past five I tidied the list, left the screen on and went out. An empty box under the desk and five bundles on it. The paper has gone nowhere. The paper is where it was three days ago.
Before locking up I put the notebook back in the box. Putting it in, the recipient's field on the side caught my eye. The next records-keeper. The first time I saw it I thought that seat was mine; today what caught was that a seat is written there and not a person. Write a seat, and whoever sits in it becomes the recipient.
Coming up the stairs I counted what I had done today. Twelve minutes of scanning, a search test, two phone calls. That is all.
In that time five bundles that have never left this room came to exist somewhere in this company in a number of copies no one knows.
At the branch, when the day ended, I balanced the cash. Money in and money out have to match before you go home. In twelve days here I have not balanced once. There is nothing to balance. If there is no way to count what went out, there is nothing to set against what came in.
I thought about that a little on the way home. Then I forgot it on the subway.