April 5. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk. Three days remained.
Since I had to finish even though it could not be finished, I opened the sixth bundle and began to preserve. The draft from the vent lifted the first page once and set it down, and the edge of the paper was cool where it touched my fingertip. I set the ruler to measure the thickness of the first line. Before setting the ruler, out of habit I opened the preservation log to check the line I would measure today. On the April 5 line, first line preserved, was already written. In my hand. Writing whose ink had long dried. The preservation of a line not yet measured was written as complete before measuring, and in dried ink at that. It looked written not today but long ago.
If complete before measuring, then what is my measuring. I set the ruler and read the thickness just as the log had written it. It did not differ by a single digit from the value the log had set down. Whether the value became so because I measured, or whether the value was there first and my ruler stopped there, I could not tell. Yesterday I could not part whether the growing was my doing or the law's; today I could not even part whether the measuring was my work or not. What my hand did was written before the hand.
The predecessor too must have been at this seat. In Do-gyeong's log was a passage where she watched the predecessor's film. The scene of the balance growing on the film was already shot before Do-gyeong saw it. In the last frame the predecessor shot, today's Do-gyeong was shot, and Do-gyeong saw her own face on the film, a face she had not shot. The result preceding the hand, both predecessor and Do-gyeong went through. Now I had entered that seat. The predecessor's hand saw beforehand the scene it would shoot, Do-gyeong's hand met beforehand the line it would copy, my hand read beforehand the value it would measure. The hand followed the result. The following hand was a hand, but not the hand that made the result. The three were different media. The predecessor film, Do-gyeong the ledger, I the preservation log. The media differed, but that the result was there before the hand was the same. Whatever the medium, the result had come before the hand touched it, and the hand only belatedly pointed at the result already come. Three hands seated at the recording seat went through the same thing in turn. The seat made the hand so; the hand did not make the seat so.
Then whose result is it. As long as the preservation complete written in the log was in my hand, the one who wrote it was me. But as long as I had no memory of writing it, the one who wrote it was not me. A hand that was mine but not my memory, that hand had written ahead. As Do-gyeong saw in the fifth bundle another hand resembling her own writing, I saw in the log another hand resembling my own. Ask whether that hand was me or not, and the handwriting said me, the memory said not. Where handwriting and memory disagreed, the question of whose result it was stopped. If it were my doing it should have stayed in my memory, and if not in my memory it should not have been my doing, yet as long as it was written in my hand, it was my doing. A thing done while having no memory of doing it, what to call it I could not tell. A hand that could be called neither me nor not-me sat at my seat and wrote ahead.
I asked whether it was summoning or foreseeing. If it deepened because I measured, it was summoning. My ruler had called the depth out. If the depth was there first and my ruler followed, it was foreseeing. The log had known the depth beforehand. The two cases had the same result. Set the ruler and the value the log had written came out. Summoning, that value; foreseeing, that value. Since the result was the same, by the result the two could not be parted. Since I took the post I had tried to part these two, and never once managed. Only the cannot-be-parted was the same each time.
The cannot-be-parted was the deepest place. That the growing was the act's doing I had seen yesterday. But whether that act made it grow, or whether the act belatedly copied what would grow, today too I could not part. If the act was the cause, there was a way to block it by reducing the act; if the act followed the result, there was no way to block it. Whether there was a way to block hung on this one question, and the question had no answer. With no answer I had to preserve for four days. Not knowing whether I was doing a thing that could be blocked or a thing that could not, the hand followed the log. That there was no answer did not mean leaving it unknown; it meant the question itself was closed. The answer was not somewhere between knowing and not-knowing; I had come to the place where knowing and not-knowing pointed at the same result. Summoning, the hand moved the same; foreseeing, the hand moved the same. Whichever I believed, there was only one thing to do for four days, so parting the two changed not one thing to do. Only after knowing that parting changed nothing did the mind that wanted to part it settle, for the first time, a little.
That the hand followed the log I saw more clearly at the second line. Looking at the log before measuring the second line, second line preserved was written, and below it third line preserved was written ahead too. My hand was still at the first line, but the log had gone to the third. To catch up to the log I measured the second line and the third line. As I measured the hand sped up, and the faster it went, the further ahead the log went, to the fourth line, the fifth. The more I hurried to catch up, the further the ahead-line receded. Preserving was following the log, and the log was always one line ahead. Since the more I preserved the more lines to preserve were written in the log, catching up lengthened the distance to catch up. The hand hurrying to finish pushed the finishing place away.
Last I opened the very end of the log. The lines of preservation complete ran on well past April 8, then broke off at one line. In the processing field of the broken line, the material with no recipient transferred, was written, and its last digit was dim. As Do-gyeong's end line had, that line too was dimming from the end. That line, written by I-knew-not-whom, was the line I would write four days from now. I went to point at that dim last digit, then, knowing that pointing would dim it one place more, stopped my hand. But even with my hand stopped, that line dimmed one place more merely from my looking at it. What was to come next was the transfer. The next processing the log had written was to put this bundle in a box and send it up to headquarters. Sending, unlike preserving, was the work of putting the material out of the archive.