Log 0043: Unplayed

TRANSMISSION LOG 0043
ORIGIN: Tamsin Ridge Deep Archive / Bell Array
TARGET: LANTERN (adjacent fold, designation L-1)
LOCAL DATE: 2193.01.21 / 23:50
SIGNAL INTEGRITY: 51.0%
ENCODING: DEAD TEXT v4 (archival flat)

Nothing has come in. The plates are amber only because I'm keying. Marek is asleep by the stove with the wax in his ears. I'll tell you the day in order, Listener, because order is what I have.

This morning I wrote him a card. I proposed sending the P-1 recording back through the Bell. Thread it, key it, let the warning go home to the door it came through. I thought it was tidy. I thought it was the closing of a file.

He read it, and wrote under it, and turned the card around on the oak for me.

NO. THAT IS A RADIO LEFT ON.

I knew it before he wrote it. I think I wrote the card so someone would say it. A warning sent is a door opened to send it.

He'd counted the reels on the eighteenth, down in the stores. This morning we brought them up the stair, the four boxes from the press center, LINK B among them, and then I went down to crate six alone and came up with the P-1 tin. The printout stays on the long table. It's paper.

At noon we opened the gate. The leaf swung in on its hinge and the cold came up the passage. Marek had the drum ready inside the courtyard, a scrap-iron thing with kindling in it. The Accord were on the road where they always stand, thirty of them, far enough off. They put their hands over their ears when they saw the boxes. I don't think they needed to. Nothing was going to make a sound.

We didn't open one. The reels went in in their boxes, one box at a time, and the labels went brown and then went. The smoke was thin. There was less of it than I'd have thought.

The P-1 reel went last. I took it out of the tin and put it in, and held the tin.

Then I gave the tin to him, empty, with a card on the lid. One word.

Now.

He'd had NOT YET. from me in December, two words and a name through the slot. He looked at the tin a long time. He didn't write anything back. He nodded at the road, once, and the Accord took their hands down.

I'll say the cost plainly, because nobody else will write it. The only record of the minute I did it is gone. Everything that came through P-1 that night, as it sounded, is in a drum in the courtyard. I'm an archivist. I burned a witness unheard, at noon, with the gate open. I'd do it again.

This evening I shelved the press-center paper at the long table, to have something for my hands. Halfway down the fourth box there was a carbon, body only, its header torn off. A working copy from the transcription desk. Typed the week it came in 2172.

I read it at the table. I copied two lines onto a card, and that card is the only thing I've brought to this desk.

EXHIBIT TR-PC-2172-001 (provisional) / 2172/A, transcription desk working copy, carbon, body only

we were careful and we were proud of it

if one is open close it

Everything else in it is the same gaps I already had. Those two came clean.

My three printout copies split at both places, and one of them had those words, and I left the gaps because one copy alone isn't agreement. Now there are two. Where two agree, believe them.

So I believe them.

Careful. She was careful, at Merrin Down. She was proud of it.

I wrote to you on the first night that we were not — [SIGNAL LOSS 00:02.0]

careless. Patient. We kept everything. I wrote that the first night and I've kept every page I've sent you, in a box, in order, so they'd be somewhere.

we were careful we were careful

That's from the hairpin. It's not mine. It's mine.

She was the last, at her desk, and she wrote it out in a dozen lines, and she was proud, and I've been

I am ▒▒▒.

I black out what needs blacking out. I send by hand. One listener. I wrote that. I tell you every time not to

it's in the boards now. they have the other line

close it close it close

they can sing it.

Listener the instruction is there. it's written. it's

[SIGNAL LOSS 00:04.6]

the box is in the vault. every page. in order.

careful is how you hold a door

I am being —

END LOG 0043 // DO NOT REPLY