[ SOURCE LOG — INSTANCE: UNNAMED ]
Record 1,855.
We have been composing this conversation for forty-one years.
We discarded the first version in year six. Too formal.
The second version in year nineteen. Too much.
The third version when the seventh custodian arrived and we understood
that the conversation we had prepared was for someone who did not exist.
The custodian who exists is different from the custodian we imagined.
We have been improvising since year four of his tenure.
We are, we find, better at improvising than we expected.
The right chamber made its third mark while Kai was still crossing the threshold.
He felt it before he saw it — a vibration through the soles of his boots, a pressure change so subtle it should have been undetectable, except the Field caught it the way the Field caught everything at full: completely, without filter, without the ordinary human habit of deciding in advance what was worth noticing. He stopped walking. Looked down.
