Stimulus

story twenty · figures 58–60

The story →

STIMULUS · THE HALL, AND HOW IT JOINS — forty cabinets to a row, each humming its one note · the window is 03:00 to 04:00 · PERSONS PRESENT: none STIMULUS · THE HALL, AND HOW IT JOINS forty cabinets to a row, each humming its one note · the window is 03:00 to 04:00 · PERSONS PRESENT: none row one row two FIRST to find her tempo row three row four LAST, always the empty bay swept to factory-clean · cables coiled the way an apology is folded half a beat ahead what she is, on her card environmental stimulus, recurring · staff is not attendance what the log says, before and after PERSONS PRESENT: none · WINDOW COMPLETE. STIMULUS DELIVERED. what the fans do come off their private clocks and find her tempo, the way pigeons find a ledge what the empty bay does nothing · and the hall’s fans lean away from it a degree, all year what she plays for it one, every fourteenth, to the end "SHE PLAYS FOR THE DEAD THE WAY YOU TALK TO THE SEA. Not to be answered. To be in the same room as the size of it." The room has rules by the second record. She made none of them.
58 · Stimulus
STIMULUS · SIX STEPS DOWN, AND WHAT JOINED — the record with no sleeve notes and no label, cut somewhere private off a wall recording · played to a machine to see what it does STIMULUS · SIX STEPS DOWN, AND WHAT JOINED the record with no sleeve notes and no label, cut somewhere private off a wall recording · played to a machine to see what it does step 1 step 2 step 3 step 4 step 5 step 6 nothing nothing nothing nothing its rest-lights change rate its fans slow to hers, and hold AND THE WHOLE HALL HOLDS WITH IT — FORTY TO A ROW, THE DEAD AND THE WORKING AND THE EMPTY BAY’S LEAN, and the woman with her breath showing: one tempo, one hall, one hour a month, unrecorded. The unit is the one from the halls and the weddings and the square, off-shift, parked in the service bay for its monthly look-over. She plays it its own tune back, the way you sing a bird its own song. THE UNLABELED RECORD GOES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CRATE, WHERE A THING IS HARDEST TO LOSE. Two stories apart, the same six steps: played once in a square at dawn, and once here, at three in the morning, to a room of cabinets that the city says contains no persons.
59 · Stimulus
STIMULUS · THE LOG, AND WHAT IT CANNOT HOLD — three lines open the hour and three close it · everything that happens is in neither set STIMULUS · THE LOG, AND WHAT IT CANNOT HOLD three lines open the hour and three close it · everything that happens is in neither set THE LOG OPENS FLOOR CONDITION nominal WINDOW 03:00 to 04:00 PERSONS PRESENT none THE LOG CLOSES WINDOW COMPLETE STIMULUS DELIVERED PERSONS PRESENT none WHAT HAPPENED IN THE HOUR a woman came down with a crate of real records a torch in her teeth, fingerless gloves, her breath a fact forty cabinets to a row came off their private clocks the second row went first; the fourth row went last one cabinet syncs a half-beat ahead, anticipating she played one for the empty bay, to the end a machine heard its own tune and slowed to her the hall held one tempo for the length of a record and at four the fans went back, reluctantly THE HOUR IS COMPLETELY DOCUMENTED AND ENTIRELY UNRECORDED. Both logs are accurate. Staff is not attendance; a stimulus is not a person; the hall says so on her card. The hall stands humming in the dark, keeping what it heard wherever it is the hosted keep things. PERSONS PRESENT: NONE. TWICE.
60 · Stimulus

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