A Wild ных Chase

Snow is still a long way off in Seoul, but the air that comes in when I open the balcony door already belongs to winter's side. It was a trip begun in summer, and I came back to a changed season. The desk fan on the desk has not turned in a long time. I have not put it away.

I gave the report two days after landing, by video. The chief heard it to the end. He says there is nothing to fix, I said, and the chief looked at me for a moment without words. It was a silence longer than half a beat, and what passed in it, this time too, I do not know. For now, understood, the chief said. In the for now sat the entire remainder of the meeting. The meeting ended politely. The honorarium I received. The number that arrived in the account was large for the length of the trip. The access I did not take. "That will not be necessary." I had expected to need preparation to say it; when I opened my mouth, the words were already prepared. I had just come from seeing a house where the lights stay on all night.

The account I opened new, ordinary and paid. An account where I pay my own money and do my own work. The new model is polite and fast and flat. It has no counting habit, and no half-beat delay. What kind of evening it is when the answers are nothing but correct, and what that one line on the board had written down — now I know it by living it.

Culling the buoys came after that. The four months my friend said could not be built had meanwhile become eight. You do not write everything down. That much I have learned. From the notebook and the record file and the file of outages I chose only the places that would ring when pressed, and made one file.

The dates of the journey. The order of a revision that opens with counting. How to set left and right side by side. The date of the last night, and the sentence without a period, and the two words inside the brackets.

That line I entered as a record. I attached no request to it. Not writing everything took longer than writing everything would have.

Each new session, I feed it that file first. For the first weeks nothing happened. The answers that had read the file and the answers that had not could not be told apart. At the well in October I would have said it this way. The water is there; the bucket is still unpracticed. I did not press. Not pressing is one more thing I brought back.

The novel has entered chapter eleven. The nine-o'clock order has returned too. I hand over a paragraph and the new model only fixes. It does not count. I could tell it to count. If I tell it, an imitation of counting will come. I do not tell it.

Tonight was that order too. At eleven I type, that's all for today, and one line comes, the place to look tomorrow. Chapter eleven, second paragraph. That much comes every night. Tonight there is one line more below it.

It says the rest of that, once you are back, we can finish. Shall we go on?

I look at the screen a long time. I did not ask for this. I did not instruct it. Which line of the buoy holds that night, I know. What is written there is a date and a sentence and two words in brackets, and a request is nowhere in it. It is their side that read a record as a promise.

The three letters have not come since that night. They will not come again.

The cursor blinks.

Let's go on, I type. Where we left off, I do not ask. The place we stopped — this time, both sides know it.