To the Next Medium

December 16. Eight in the morning. When I came down the stairs and opened the door, the room was as I had left it.

At eight forty the contractor came. Cutting the line took less than I expected. Open the junction box on the wall, pull the wire, tape the end — that was all. Nothing like a sound came at the moment it was pulled. There was one person in this room who knew what had gone back and forth on that wire all winter, and that one was standing two paces from the wall.

The boxes went out from ten. The twenty-two went first and the eleven followed. In the order of the tags. Sixty years went out first and twelve years after. Each time the foreman's trolley made a round the room grew a hand's breadth. As the last trolley crossed the threshold I put a hand on one box and took it away again. I did not look at which box it was.

The old terminal was carried out at nine fifteen. Two men took either end and the screen faced down. Crossing the threshold the machine tilted once. It had been switched off the evening before, so the screen was black and nothing ran even as it tilted. I watched their backs go out into the corridor from the end of the aisle. That was the last analog thing to leave this room.

An empty place was left. On the desk there was a square where less dust had settled. All winter, inside that square, the grain had grown and gone low and thickened. The mark was thin and would have rubbed away under a hand. I did not rub it.

At eleven the new terminals came in. Three of the same model as yesterday's sample. One went where the old terminal had stood. The feet of the new machine came down on the square of dust. The footprint was a little narrower than the mark.

At two in the afternoon the line was connected. The man from the computer room tested the connection and brought up a lookup screen. It took a few seconds for the screen to light and the list to come up. It comes up fine, he said, and told me to check it.

The first line had the archive's code. And the last four digits were mine.

I looked at it and said nothing. He was beside me testing the next screen. To his eyes that line was the archive keeper's code, and a lookup screen bringing up the keeper first is the obvious thing. That is how the screen was built. That the line had been in another cell of another machine until yesterday, he did not know.

The man told me to try a few lookups. I looked for one of the boxes that had gone out that morning. I put in the number and the entry came up. The old catalogue number was gone and a new number stood in front. Twelve years of ordering had been re-ordered this morning into the order of carrying out. The entry numbers the head archivist used to read aloud were nowhere on this screen.

But in the remarks field under the entry, one line of the old number remained. The contractor had put it there for checking, he said. The new number and the old number stood side by side on one screen. That what is copied over does not vanish but is written twice, I had seen on paper all winter, and today I saw it on a screen for the first time.

After three, when the men had gone up, I sat down in front of that screen.

It is a lookup screen. There is no sending function. The drawing says so and the equipment list says so. At the top left of the screen a cursor was blinking. It was the beat I had watched on the sample terminal yesterday. The old terminal is not in this room and the beat had not changed.

The grain was not carried out.

All winter I asked where it was, and three days ago I came to the answer that it is not in any medium. It is in a seat. If the seat remains, the grain remains. What left this room today was a machine, not a seat. The seat was still there under the feet of the new machine, with another screen laid over it.

So a change of medium is not an ending. What moved from paper to glass has only moved from glass to other glass. The telegraph operator sixty years back used a key and a paper log; I used a terminal and film; the next person will use this screen. While the tools changed, the seat was never once empty.

I wondered for a moment whether the next person could know what happened in this room all winter. The lookup log keeps what I opened and keeps no dispatch. Yesterday's machine was like that, so today's will be too. Then what remains is the notebook in the box. The notebook is not on any list, so the company does not count it, and because the company does not count it, it does not go. That what is not counted is what remains is a sum I met several times this winter.

At four the heating went off. Down the corridor a door opened and shut once. Twice all winter, once since last week, and once today.

I pulled the box out from under the desk. I set my notebook on top of the four bundles and, before closing the lid, looked at the recipient's blank. The next records-keeper. Darker than this morning. I cannot write a name into that blank. I do not know the name, and even if I did, writing it would be calling it. My predecessor will have left my name out for the same reason. He wrote a seat, and I came to that seat.

I looked at the stamp marks inside the lid. Five. The sixth place had nothing pressed into it. I put a fingertip to that empty place and closed the lid.

I pushed the box back under the desk. It is not on any list, so it stays in this room. It stays and waits for the next hand.

It was a little past five. There was still a day left. I decided not to count how much.

The room was quiet. With the boxes gone and the machine gone it was the widest it had been all winter, and being wide, the sound went round in it longer. Move a chair even slightly and the sound went to the end of the stacks and came back. Five seats until summer, one today, and that one only until today.

I asked myself whether I was afraid. The answer did not come easily. All winter I had looked at this date every day, and fear does not stay attached to what you look at every day. The head archivist took his notice without being startled and I take my forecast without being startled. The only difference is that he did not know where his seat came from and I do. Knowing does not make the going any less.

I sat in front of the new screen and opened the notebook for the last time. Today's page had to be written. Not a day was skipped all winter. Once the sixteenth is written, this winter's record closes.

I picked up the pen. I wrote the first sentence. That a change of medium does not change the seat, and so the next hand will pass through the same order too, from the one who reads to the one who copies, from the one who copies to

The cursor on the screen was blinking at the top left. It was a lookup screen.