Pulled 382 again tonight because I couldnt sleep and that is the honest reason, not a theory, just awake with the laptop already open to the district page, past four by the time I finished checking, four fifteen maybe, doesnt matter what you call it. The rings are still there around the small light, same as September, except now there are six of them where back then I only ever got as high as five, and five itself took two pulls of the same frame before it held still long enough to count, so six took three pulls, which I know is not evidence of anything by itself, a man counting rings off a compressed feed at four in the morning is not exactly a laboratory. I know how it sounds. I dont care how it sounds.

Three ahead of it on the same corridor, 385, postmile 136.9, sits dead calm. No rings. No drift. Boring in the specific way a control is supposed to be boring, which is the first time Ive had a clean one to put next to a bad one. The burned-in number in its own corner reads 385, same as the catalog, no second number hiding under it the way the Main Street one had. Whatever is doing this to 382 picked 382 on purpose and left 385 alone, and they never leave the control alone by accident, not that Ive seen, not once. I dont have a word yet for that kind of alone. working on it.

My kitchen clock has been four minutes fast since July. I reset it in July. its four minutes fast again, same four, not three, not five, I checked. that is not the same as a camera two hundred miles north and I am not saying it is, I am saying it is the same shape, something correcting itself back to a number I didnt pick, patient about it, over and over. anyway.

Called the district line. different man this time, younger, I could tell. didnt catch the correction the first time I asked him 385 against 382, had to put me on hold to go check, came back and read both numbers off exactly like the printout told him to. exactly like it was the first time anyone had ever asked him that. it wasnt. it is never the first time.