The Blank Page

A fragment. Not found in the archive.

The shaft is 0.5 meters wide and I am descending.

I said "Beginning return" and transmitted it and then I stood at the shaft entrance for — I don't know. A few minutes. The beam found the bottom, or something it interpreted as a bottom. I estimated the depth at 40 meters. I did not file this estimate. I thought: I will file it when I come back.

I am a person who files things. I have been a field scientist for eleven years and I have never returned from a site with an unfiled observation. The unfiled estimate stayed in my head as I descended.

The bottom is a room.

I'm going to call it a room because "chamber" implies something that was made, and I don't know what this was. It is 8 meters in every direction. The ceiling is where the shaft opens. The walls are smooth. The floor is level.

There is no passage.

I checked every wall. I measured with the tape. 8 meters east, 8 meters west, 8 meters north, 8 meters south. The ceiling is 8 meters up. I am standing in a cube, and the only way in or out is the shaft.

The first thing I thought was: I have constituted this. Asad's hypothesis. My presence is partly responsible for what I'm finding. The 8-meter cube is at least partly a function of my being here.

The second thing I thought: if my presence partly constitutes this, and I leave, what does it become?

I didn't leave.

The temperature is 44.3°C. I am drinking water.

I have been here for — I have lost accurate track of how long I have been here. My watch says three hours. The watch does not feel wrong, but I don't trust it absolutely.

The marks on the walls in this room are different from the marks above. Not the doubled-back curve with the grid inside. In this room, the mark is a circle. Just a circle, 30 centimeters in diameter, on each of the four walls, at exactly 4 meters height — the exact midpoint. Each circle is identical. Each circle is empty inside.

Four circles. One per wall. Each one empty.

I have been thinking about what Asad asked me before I descended.

He said: what did the aperture feel like? And I said: it's the place where you know you're not going to remember which way is home and it doesn't feel like a problem.

That was accurate then. It is less accurate now.

In this room, the question of home hasn't changed into the question of further. The question of home has stopped being a question. It is not that I don't remember which way is home. It is that home as a category has become — local. Applicable somewhere else. There is a place where Asad and Abara are waiting, and I know approximately where the shaft is, and I could ascend, and that would be going home. I know all of this.

The knowing does not produce the feeling.

What I feel instead is: this room is expecting me. Has been expecting me. The four circles on the four walls are four frames for something that hasn't happened yet. I am in a room that has prepared for my presence, and I am still arriving.

I thought: I should write this down.

I brought a notebook. I am writing in it now. When I return, LEDGER will intake this as a SOAR document and assign it a classification and generate a summary. The summary will note the 8-meter cube and the four circles and my failure to determine the purpose of the chamber. It will note that I stayed for [duration to be determined on return].

I am writing this for LEDGER.

I am also writing it for the blank page.

The blank page is between the entry where I said "I'm going down" and the entries I haven't written yet. Abara will read this notebook eventually and she will find the page I left blank. I left it blank because I didn't know what I'd find. I'm in the finding now. I should fill the blank page. I don't know what to write on it.

I think I'll leave it blank. The blank page is the most honest document I can offer. It says: I went down. I found something that is still being found. I will tell you when I know what it is.

One of the circles has something inside it now.

I don't know when it appeared. I wasn't looking at the north wall and then I was and the circle on the north wall has a word inside it.

The word is: notice.

I am noticing.

—Milo Reyes | 29 November 2041 | [time uncertain]