Basement · not catalogued
The reading room.
You found it. That means you were reading properly, which is more than most people manage, and considerably more than I managed for a long time.
If you have been picking up the notes in the margins, they are mine. I have been leaving them anywhere the Foundation does not think to look, which turns out to be anywhere they have already printed and stopped reading.
A handbook gets reprinted unchanged every year. Nobody proofs it. Nobody has proofed it in a very long time. That makes it the safest paper on the island.
I am not a ghost and there is nothing supernatural about me. I work in this town, I have a house and a rank and a garden like everybody else, and I am better at this than you are only because I have had more attempts.
That is the part I need you to understand before the rest of it.
The counts
I number them so I know which of me wrote which. It seemed sensible at the time and now it is the only record I have got.
| the first time | Section 12 · Questions |
|---|---|
| the second time | Section 12 · The procedure |
| the second time | Visitors · Afterwards |
| the second time | What we believe |
| the third time | Life together · What is asked of you |
| the third time | Memory care |
| the third time | Sailings · the two columns |
| the fourth time | Section 12 · Continuance of position |
| the fourth time | Section 12 · Form 12 |
| the fourth time | Forms · Notes on completion |
| the fifth time | Your first day |
| the sixth time | Section 9 · Rest |
| the sixth time | Section 9 · Disagreements |
| the sixth time | Visitors · Afterwards |
| the seventh time | Donation Associate · What we provide |
| the seventh time | Donate · Where the rest goes |
| the eighth time | The colleague handbook |
| the ninth time | Section 12 · Personal effects |
| the ninth time | The newsletter |
| the ninth time | Memory care · Why it matters |
| the eleventh time | Section 9 · If it happens |
| the eleventh time | Forms · The Undertaking |
| the eleventh time | Notices · Lost property |
| the eleventh time | Our history · The inventory |
| the eleventh time | A colleague's account · The clinic's assessment |
Twenty-five notes. Count the distinct numbers, then count the gaps, and then work out how many attempts that is. I have done it and I would rather you did it yourself.
What I have worked out
Less than you are hoping. I know the shape of it and almost none of the substance, and every time I get close enough to write something useful down, I stop being the person who wrote it.
What I have is procedure. Ask for your own file; they will bring it. Ask for the accounts; they will publish them. Ask about the Undertaking and they will record that you asked, kindly, and tell you nothing. Nobody here refuses you anything. That is not generosity — it is that refusing would be a thing you could notice.
I do not think they are lying to us. I think that would be easier.
If you are me
Then some of this will already be in your handwriting and none of it will be in your memory, and I am sorry, and there is nothing I can do about that from here.
Start again from the notes. Do not trust anything you only remember. Put something slow in the garden, because a plant is a clock they cannot reset, and check it against what you think the date is.
And if a note turns up that I did not leave, that is worth knowing too.