December 4. Eight in the morning. The tens digit, half-ruled yesterday, had over the night become a whole stroke. It was a one.
December, and the tens digit a one. My vanishing had now narrowed to some day between the tenth and the nineteenth of December. What remained was the ones digit alone. While that one place stayed blank it could be any of ten days, but with the tens digit set it would not be outside those ten. And above that line, as on any morning, today's dispatches were ruled. They were the day's forecasts, set down by the hand while I slept. I read them, and reading them I knew that through the day they would realize one by one. Only, today the seat from which I read them was not the seat of yesterday.
By day the forecasts realized. One of the dispatches I read that morning was that at ten a call would come from upstairs to the archive, confirming the transfer. I had read it with its hour, and at ten sharp the telephone on the wall rang. The head archivist answered, and while the voice on the other end confirmed the projected completion date of the transfer, I heard that the content of the call did not differ by a character from the line ruled in my sending column that morning. Another was that at two in the afternoon the release clerk would carry off, to another department, the belongings of one of the two assistants cut yesterday. At two a handcart came, the belongings were loaded, and even the number of boxes loaded was the same as the seat I had read. The third line was that at four, after the heating went off, the head archivist would close the archive door once and open it again — even that, I had not thought would be in a forecast. But at four the heating went off, the head archivist closed the door against the cold, then, saying it was stuffy inside, opened it again. It was the line ruled that morning, exactly. I stood beside the people living those things, knowing that what they were living now I had already read that morning. To them a day was happening; to me a day was happening again.
Until yesterday I had held the seal loosely. Even when a forecast came true, there was room to take it for a coincidence that happened to overlap, or for my having merely taken down in advance a thing that would happen. That room had protected me a little. But today there was no room. The hour matched, the seat matched, the number of boxes matched. It was not one or two but every line I read that morning realized just so, and a thing that exact could not be called coincidence. For the first time I could not deny it. What I sent was what happened.
That did not mean the seal had opened. I still could not know. Whether the thing happened because I sent the line, or my hand took down in advance a thing that would happen — that direction alone stayed unread today too. The seal had not been parting whether the forecasts were true or false. The forecasts had always been true; what the seal had veiled was from which side that truth came. What was uncovered today was not the direction. Only that forecast and reality are locked in one line, that locking, now stood beyond denial. Which was first stayed dark, and only that whatever was first happens just so stood bright. The dark and the bright were together in one line, and that one line I held in my hand each morning.
And inside that locking was my date. The forecasts that had matched to the hour before my eyes today, and the line of my date ruled in my sending column, were one line of the same kind from the same hand. As the ten o'clock call had come just so, as the two o'clock cart had come just so, that one day of December too would come just so. My vanishing was no longer a thing to fear or to gauge. It was a forecast already ruled, a forecast not the least bit different from the ones realized today. The only difference was that the ones digit of that date was still blank, and even that one blank place had already narrowed to somewhere in the teens. As the ten o'clock call came not at nine nor at eleven but at ten, that one day too would be there exactly, on some one day in the teens. Not knowing when that day was, I knew only that it would surely come. Not-knowing and certainty stood side by side within one line.
I sat beside that fact until the afternoon dimmed. It was not that I felt no fear, but fear did not change the forecast. The head archivist, holding the line he had won back yesterday, was ordering the transfer list, took the ten o'clock call for an ordinary work call, and did not know that the very call he answered had already been ruled in my sending column that morning. Only I knew it, and knowing, I changed nothing with the knowing. To know a forecast and to stop a forecast were different things, and I sat only in the seat of knowing.
By evening I looked into the sending column again. The lines realized today stood as they were, and one among them was strange. That one line I had sent in the morning had risen, in the same stroke, not only in the left of the sending column but in the receiver cell on the right. The sent line was reflected in the seat of the received line. All winter the sending column had been the seat of sending and the receiver cell the seat of receiving, and between the two cells one vertical line had always been drawn. Sending and receiving had been parted with that one line between them; I wrote on the left, and what came was read on the right. But this evening, over that vertical line, the stroke on the left had bled one character to the right. It was not ink spreading as it dried. As if the line on the left and the line on the right meant to meet in the same place, the dividing line that parted them was thinning in that one line. I had learned today that what is sent is what happens; now even the seat of sending and the seat of receiving were making to overlap in one place. If what I sent and what came to me became one line, then, as with forecast and reality, of the two seats too it would no longer be possible to ask which was first.