Open Space Answers a Question Nobody Asked

The first thing the Bureau ever received was not music. It was an inventory.

A voice, patient in the way that only very large things are patient, spent six minutes listing the ways something can be limitless. It got as far as category nine — limitless in the manner of a room you have already left and can still walk around in — and then stopped mid-word, as though somebody outside the frame had raised a hand.

The Bureau filed it under MUSIC anyway. There was no other drawer.

Intake notes

Assistant Registrar Vell insists the recording contains a second voice underneath the first, saying the same list in the same order, one syllable behind. Three staff members hear it. Four do not. The dispute has been resolved by placing the recording in a drawer that only opens on days when nobody is asking about it.

“It is not an echo. An echo agrees with you. This thing is checking my work.” — Assistant Registrar Vell, marginal note, undated

Handling

Play only in rooms with at least one door. Do not play to an audience that has recently been counted.