September 9. Another day we are told to inspect.
It has been so all through the eighth month. Before some day comes a checklist comes down, and on the day one inspects, and if nothing happens one ticks no abnormality and sends it up. Today's is because of 9999. Four nines going in are read by some old programs as an end-of-data marker, they say. Written 9909, September 9 will not take in that place — and none of our room's programs write dates that way.
Even to write that there are none, one has to inspect. I opened the six items one at a time, confirmed how each writes a date, and ticked the form.
At nine I ran the search first. Two hundred and seven. On August 23 it was one hundred and fifty-six, so fifty-one in seventeen days. Three a day.
The corrected catalogue came three days ago and I installed it. The sort came back. Old in front, new behind. Having read it backwards for seventeen days, reading it forwards put me a beat late instead.
When I pulled the catalogue for the first time after installing, the top three lines were twenty-three, twenty-four and thirty-four. The four whose years I wrote in during August. What had gone to the back had come to the front. In seventeen days I have twice seen the very front and the very back change places on a single sort.
The inspection done, at eleven I opened the query screen.
The query screen is not the catalogue. The catalogue sets out what is registered in order; the query shows what has been touched most recently first. For eight months the first line of this screen has mostly been material I handled yesterday.
Today's first line was unfamiliar.
1997 Central Archive Release Register. It has a registration number, and the registration year is 1997.
I did not register it.
As for a 1997 release register, I took one out in July when the third floor asked for it. That is a paper register and it is in the stacks. A paper register has no registration number, and it is not on the index either. I went through the card drawers twice.
Having a registration number means someone attached this number and put it in. The numbering system changed last year and present numbers are eight digits. The number on the screen is eight digits.
In 1997 there were no eight-digit numbers.
Over lunch I thought of two cases. Someone may have newly registered the 1997 register recently and written only the registration year as of then. Then the number is current and the year is old, which fits the screen. Only, the one person who can register in this room is me.
The other is that the number attached by itself. On August 9 three places that were not on the index came into being with values attached. Those three pointed at nothing. Today's points somewhere.
At half past one I opened the material.
It opened. The cover screen had the register's title and period, and beneath them an entry box. The period is November to December 1997.
There was a name in the recorder's box.
It read Kim Do-gyeong.
In eight months I have not seen a person's name in this room. Forms all take four-digit codes. Releases are codes and requisitions are codes, and in the receiving party's box of the handover document are my four digits. Names are for the telephone or for calling down a corridor, and are not put on paper.
After eight months I saw a name for the first time, and not on paper but on a screen.
I looked at the three characters a long while. It is not someone I know. Not on the third floor, not on the fourth. If it is someone from before the merger they will not come up in the personnel lookup. Most of those rosters were destroyed in the winding-up, I have heard.
The first thing I did on seeing the name was to try the personnel lookup. What that meant I understood later. I was taking that name to be a person. What has arisen in this room over six months has all been figures. A figure rises or falls; a person is somewhere, or is not. Something one can ask the whereabouts of has appeared for the first time in eight months.
That there is nowhere to ask came next.
At half past two I tried to open the body. Only the cover screen came up and the body did not. It was not a no-such-material notice and not a no-permission notice. The next screen simply did not come.
I tried three times and gave it up. In six months I have formed the habit, in this room, of trying a thing that will not work three times and giving it up. From the fourth time on it becomes trying to make it work, and trying to make it work takes a hand. A hand taken means an increase.
Only, today I sat in front of the screen for a while after giving up. A next screen not coming and there being none are different. If there were none it would say so. Today's neither said so nor failed to. The waiting mark went on turning.
At three I went down to the stacks and took out the paper register again. The one I copied in July. I opened to November and December.
The recorder's boxes were empty. Just as in July. That month's releases run dense and several recorder boxes are empty and it was a hurried month, I have heard — I wrote that down then.
The paper is empty and the screen has a name.
Having written down which is authoritative, I saw that this is not the first time for the question.
For six months, whenever the copy and the log diverged, I asked which came first. No answer ever came. Today's is a little different. The earlier ones took the shape of the paper leading and the screen following; today, what is on the screen is not on the paper. The screen is filling a box the paper leaves empty.
An empty box is of two kinds, I wrote in July. Empty for want of anyone to write, and empty for want of time to write. On paper the two are the same shape. Today's screen has put a person into that box. Having put one in, the box becomes one that was empty for want of time.
Who filled it I still do not know.
At four the man from the third floor came down and asked whether anything had happened today. He said the paper called today a crisis point. Nothing happened, I said. Then December will be like this too, he said, and went up.
When enough days like today go by, people come to think December will be like this too. If nothing happens on the days appointed for fear, and it keeps happening, then the being afraid thins out. The day that comes after it has thinned is a day nobody watches. Everything that has happened in this room in eight months has happened in a place nobody watches.
At half past four I opened again the three index places that came into being on August 9. I had not looked at them for a month. 97, 97 and 98 were still in them. Then they were places with a year and pointing at nothing.
All three had grown a recorder's box.
The first two read Kim Do-gyeong.
The third box had no name. It had a four-digit code.
It was my four digits.