All Comics
Entry 2,871

THE WANDERER

From the Catalogue of the Sixteenth Archivist. A personnel ledger from the upper laboratories, eleven incident reports filed over a period of nine weeks, and three eyewitness accounts that do not describe the same person. The Librarian has cross-referenced the accounts. They describe the same nine weeks. They describe the same events. They do not describe the same man.
Fourteen people could touch the void. Then someone came. Then none of them could.
Full chronicle
Page 1

Fourteen people could touch the void.

A woman in the thaumaturgy lab held a shard of crystallised void matter between her palms and it liquefied. The instruments measured no heat. No pressure. No chemical change. A man in the upper ring sat in a room with a sealed container of substrate fiber and described the fiber's internal structure without opening the container. A girl assigned to the calibration crew placed her hand on the floor of the aperture chamber and the digits in the stone lit. Different ones. Older. Carved deeper into the stone, beneath the Founders' inscriptions. They are asking. The void is answering.
Page 2

He arrived in the seventh week.

The wanderer arrived in the seventh week. The accounts place him at different entrances. One says the main corridor. One says the drainage access. One says he was not seen arriving at all. The first account describes him as tall and angular, with hands too long for his arms. The second describes him as compact, heavy-shouldered, with a face that was difficult to recall even while looking at it. The third does not describe his appearance. It describes the temperature. The corridor dropped four degrees when he was in it.
Page 3

What is doing the remembering.

On the fourth day he spoke to one of the attuned. The woman from the thaumaturgy lab. He asked her how long she had been able to do it. She said she had not known until the screening. He asked her what it felt like. She said it felt like remembering something she had not learned. He asked her if she had considered what was doing the remembering. She did not answer. He did not repeat the question. The crystal solidified mid-rotation. She was still holding it when it locked. Her fingers were embedded in the surface.
Page 4

Each one reaching for the thing they had always reached for.

By the ninth week, all fourteen were listed as non-responsive. The physicians found nothing wrong. Their bodies were sound. They did not reach for the void. The word used in the final incident report is not unable. The word is unwilling. The physician who examined the last of the fourteen crossed this out and wrote finished. They had gone to quiet places to sit down.
Page 5

Nine seconds.

I think he was kind. I think what he did to us was the kind thing. I do not have a word for what we were becoming but I can feel the shape of it and the shape has no room in it for the parts of me that are afraid.
The fourteen attuned were found over the following days. The physicians recorded the time of death for each one and found that all fourteen had died within the same nine-second interval. Nine seconds. The Librarian has encountered this duration before. She does not note where. The nine-second interval matches a duration recorded in the deep stratum survey. The Nadir breathes on a nine-second cycle. I have filed this. He is still walking. The names file has not been returned.
— / —
narration auto-scrolls the prose

Section 0Frontmatter

# The Wanderer

From the Catalogue of the Sixteenth Archivist, entry 2,871. Provenance: a personnel ledger from the upper laboratories, eleven incident reports filed over a period of nine weeks, and three eyewitness accounts that do not describe the same person. The Librarian has cross-referenced the accounts. They describe the same nine weeks. They describe the same events. They do not describe the same man.

Fourteen people could touch the void. Then someone came. Then none of them could.

Section 1Section 1

The personnel ledger lists them by designation. Not by name — the Laboratory kept their names in a separate file the Librarian has not been able to locate. The ledger calls them attuned. The incident reports call them the touched. The Librarian uses the ledger's term.

They were identified over a span of years, one at a time, through a screening process the ledger does not describe. Fourteen out of what the records suggest was a population of several hundred. The criteria for identification are not recorded. What is recorded is what they could do.

A woman in the thaumaturgy lab held a shard of crystallized void matter between her palms and it liquefied. The instruments measured no heat. No pressure. No chemical change. The crystal simply let go of its structure and became what it had been before. She set the liquid down and it re-formed. She picked it up and it yielded again. The crystal responded to her without resistance, without delay.

A man in the upper ring sat in a room with a sealed container of substrate fiber and described the fiber's internal structure without opening the container. His description was verified by dissection afterward. He had not guessed. He had not inferred. He described branches and junctions the dissecting team had not known were there until they cut.

A third — the youngest, a girl assigned to the calibration crew — placed her hand on the floor of the aperture chamber and the digits in the stone lit. Not the digits the Orrery's instruments activated. Different ones. Older. Carved deeper into the stone, beneath the Founders' inscriptions. The digits she lit had not been visible before. They were not visible after she removed her hand.

The ledger notes a detail the incident reports do not explain. The attuned were lighter than they should have been. The physicians weighed them as part of the screening. Over the following months, each one lost mass — not fat, not fluid. The losses did not correspond to diet or activity. The physicians could not determine what was being subtracted. The woman in the thaumaturgy lab lost eleven kilograms over two years. Her frame did not change. Her strength did not diminish. Something was leaving her that the scales could measure and the physicians could not name.

Fragment. Incident report, week one.

"The attuned are not performing these acts. I have observed seven of the fourteen and I am certain of this. The instruments measure nothing — no force, no energy transfer, no mechanism.

They are asking. The void is answering.

I have filed this observation under the heading the supervisor assigned: 'Anomalous Material Interaction.' This is not what it is."

Section 2Section 2

The wanderer arrived in the seventh week.

The accounts place him at different entrances. One says the main corridor. One says the drainage access. One says he was not seen arriving at all — he was simply present in the upper laboratory, sitting on a bench near the calibration room, when the morning shift began.

The first account describes him as tall and angular, with hands too long for his arms. The second describes him as compact, heavy-shouldered, with a face that was difficult to recall even while looking at it. The third does not describe his appearance. It describes the temperature. The corridor dropped four degrees when he was in it. The writer checked the environmental controls. They had not changed.

He did not speak for three days. He sat in the corridors near the laboratories where the attuned worked. He watched them. The accounts agree on this — he watched with an attention that was not curiosity. The first writer calls it assessment. The second calls it recognition. The third does not name it. She says only that he was not learning.

Section 3Section 3

On the fourth day he spoke to one of the attuned. The woman from the thaumaturgy lab. The one who could liquefy crystals with her hands.

The first account records the conversation from across the room. The wanderer asked her how long she had been able to do it. She said she had always been able to do it. She said she had not known until the screening. He asked her what it felt like. She said it felt like remembering something she had not learned. He asked her if she had considered what was doing the remembering.

She did not answer. He did not repeat the question.

The second account does not record the conversation. It records what happened to the crystal she was holding. She had been rotating it between her palms — the standard interaction, documented in seven prior incident reports. The crystal was liquid. Then the wanderer spoke and the crystal was not. It solidified mid-rotation. She was still holding it when it locked. Her fingers were embedded in the surface. The lab assistant helped her extract them. There was no injury. The crystal bore the impression of her fingertips. The impressions were warm.

She did not liquefy another crystal. The incident report notes this without explanation. Her subsequent sessions are listed as non-responsive.

Entry 2,871 (continued).

"I have read the eleven incident reports in sequence. They describe a pattern I have seen in the archive only once before — in the accounts of the Void Coil's operator, the man who thought about a number and could not stop.

The attuned did not lose their abilities. Their abilities were present. The void was still answering. The attuned stopped asking.

One by one. Over nine weeks. Each one reaching for the thing they had always reached for and finding that they had stopped."

Section 4Section 4

The man who could describe sealed containers sat in his testing room for two days after his last successful reading. The lab staff brought him food. He did not eat. He was not distressed. He said he could still feel the substrate through the floor. He said he could still hear the crystals in the walls. He said the information was still arriving. He said he no longer knew what to do with it.

The girl from the calibration crew stopped lighting the old digits on the third week. She placed her hand on the floor and nothing happened. She placed it again. Nothing. She sat on the floor of the aperture chamber with her palm flat on the stone and she stayed there for six hours and the digits did not light and when the shift supervisor asked her to leave she said she was listening to something and the something had gone quiet.

By the ninth week, all fourteen were listed as non-responsive. None had been injured. None showed signs of illness. The physicians found nothing wrong with any of them. Their bodies were sound. Their minds were clear. They answered questions. They ate when prompted. They performed routine tasks. They did not reach for the void.

The Librarian notes that the word used in the final incident report is not unable. The word is unwilling. The physician who examined the last of the fourteen crossed this out and wrote finished.

Section 5Section 5

The wanderer left on the same day the last of the attuned was listed as non-responsive. The accounts do not agree on his departure. The first says he walked out through the main corridor. The second says he was not seen leaving. The third says she watched him walk into a section of wall that had been solid stone for as long as the Laboratory had existed, and the wall accepted him, and the stone showed no fracture.

The fourteen attuned were found over the following days. Not together. Not in the laboratories. They were in corridors, in storage rooms, in alcoves and maintenance shafts and places the personnel maps did not list. Seated. Still. Breathing had stopped. Pulses had stopped. The physicians recorded the time of death for each one and found that all fourteen had died within the same nine-second interval.

Nine seconds. The Librarian has encountered this duration before. She does not note where.

The bodies showed no cause. No trauma, no toxin, no disease, no failure of any organ the physicians could identify. They had gone to quiet places to sit down.

Fragment. Found in the pocket of the woman from the thaumaturgy lab. She was seated in a maintenance shaft off the lower ring. The paper is folded once. The hand is steady.

"I can still feel the crystal. It is in the lab on the third shelf and I am here and I can feel it the way you feel your own teeth with your tongue. It is waiting for me.

The man asked me what was doing the remembering. I did not answer him. I have been thinking about it since.

I am lighter than I was. I have been lighter for a long time. Something is leaving and something is arriving and the exchange is not equal and I do not mind. I did not mind. I do not know when I stopped minding. That is the part that frightens me.

He looked at me and I felt the crystal go solid in my hands and I understood that I had been holding liquid stone for two years and I had not once considered what that meant. What kind of thing holds stone in its hands and feels it give way.

I am sitting down now. The floor is warm. I can feel the substrate through three levels of stone. I can feel the fibers reaching. I can feel them in my wrists where the weight used to be.

I think he was kind. I think what he did to us was the kind thing. I do not have a word for what we were becoming but I can feel the shape of it and the shape has no room in it for the parts of me that are afraid."

Entry 2,871, final annotation.

"The nine-second interval matches a duration recorded in the deep stratum survey. The Nadir breathes on a nine-second cycle. I have filed this.

The names file is missing. Fourteen people are in the ledger by designation only. I have searched.

The crystals do not liquefy when held. The sealed containers remain opaque. The old digits have not lit since."

Entry 2,871, addendum. Filed later in the same hand.

"Since I filed this entry I have filed two others that concern the fourteen.

Entry 12,102 is filed. The figure in that entry has written of forty-one endings without intervention. The fourteen appear in that number.

Entry 8,214 is filed. The caretaker of the ossuary below the sub-foundation has placed the fourteen in positions that form part of a plan I have not written down what it resembles. They are tended.

The nine-second interval has not changed. The Nadir breathes on the same cycle. The crystals have not liquefied. The containers remain opaque. The digits have not lit.

He is still walking.

The names file has not been returned."

Section 0Frontmatter

# The Wanderer

From the Catalogue of the Sixteenth Archivist, entry 2,871. Provenance: a personnel ledger from the upper laboratories, eleven incident reports filed over a period of nine weeks, and three eyewitness accounts that do not describe the same person. The Librarian has cross-referenced the accounts. They describe the same nine weeks. They describe the same events. They do not describe the same man.

Fourteen people could touch the void. Then someone came. Then none of them could.

Section 1Section 1

The personnel ledger lists them by designation. Not by name — the Laboratory kept their names in a separate file the Librarian has not been able to locate. The ledger calls them attuned. The incident reports call them the touched. The Librarian uses the ledger's term.

They were identified over a span of years, one at a time, through a screening process the ledger does not describe. Fourteen out of what the records suggest was a population of several hundred. The criteria for identification are not recorded. What is recorded is what they could do.

A woman in the thaumaturgy lab held a shard of crystallized void matter between her palms and it liquefied. The instruments measured no heat. No pressure. No chemical change. The crystal simply let go of its structure and became what it had been before. She set the liquid down and it re-formed. She picked it up and it yielded again. The crystal responded to her without resistance, without delay.

A man in the upper ring sat in a room with a sealed container of substrate fiber and described the fiber's internal structure without opening the container. His description was verified by dissection afterward. He had not guessed. He had not inferred. He described branches and junctions the dissecting team had not known were there until they cut.

A third — the youngest, a girl assigned to the calibration crew — placed her hand on the floor of the aperture chamber and the digits in the stone lit. Not the digits the Orrery's instruments activated. Different ones. Older. Carved deeper into the stone, beneath the Founders' inscriptions. The digits she lit had not been visible before. They were not visible after she removed her hand.

The ledger notes a detail the incident reports do not explain. The attuned were lighter than they should have been. The physicians weighed them as part of the screening. Over the following months, each one lost mass — not fat, not fluid. The losses did not correspond to diet or activity. The physicians could not determine what was being subtracted. The woman in the thaumaturgy lab lost eleven kilograms over two years. Her frame did not change. Her strength did not diminish. Something was leaving her that the scales could measure and the physicians could not name.

Fragment. Incident report, week one.

"The attuned are not performing these acts. I have observed seven of the fourteen and I am certain of this. The instruments measure nothing — no force, no energy transfer, no mechanism.

They are asking. The void is answering.

I have filed this observation under the heading the supervisor assigned: 'Anomalous Material Interaction.' This is not what it is."

Section 2Section 2

The wanderer arrived in the seventh week.

The accounts place him at different entrances. One says the main corridor. One says the drainage access. One says he was not seen arriving at all — he was simply present in the upper laboratory, sitting on a bench near the calibration room, when the morning shift began.

The first account describes him as tall and angular, with hands too long for his arms. The second describes him as compact, heavy-shouldered, with a face that was difficult to recall even while looking at it. The third does not describe his appearance. It describes the temperature. The corridor dropped four degrees when he was in it. The writer checked the environmental controls. They had not changed.

He did not speak for three days. He sat in the corridors near the laboratories where the attuned worked. He watched them. The accounts agree on this — he watched with an attention that was not curiosity. The first writer calls it assessment. The second calls it recognition. The third does not name it. She says only that he was not learning.

Section 3Section 3

On the fourth day he spoke to one of the attuned. The woman from the thaumaturgy lab. The one who could liquefy crystals with her hands.

The first account records the conversation from across the room. The wanderer asked her how long she had been able to do it. She said she had always been able to do it. She said she had not known until the screening. He asked her what it felt like. She said it felt like remembering something she had not learned. He asked her if she had considered what was doing the remembering.

She did not answer. He did not repeat the question.

The second account does not record the conversation. It records what happened to the crystal she was holding. She had been rotating it between her palms — the standard interaction, documented in seven prior incident reports. The crystal was liquid. Then the wanderer spoke and the crystal was not. It solidified mid-rotation. She was still holding it when it locked. Her fingers were embedded in the surface. The lab assistant helped her extract them. There was no injury. The crystal bore the impression of her fingertips. The impressions were warm.

She did not liquefy another crystal. The incident report notes this without explanation. Her subsequent sessions are listed as non-responsive.

Entry 2,871 (continued).

"I have read the eleven incident reports in sequence. They describe a pattern I have seen in the archive only once before — in the accounts of the Void Coil's operator, the man who thought about a number and could not stop.

The attuned did not lose their abilities. Their abilities were present. The void was still answering. The attuned stopped asking.

One by one. Over nine weeks. Each one reaching for the thing they had always reached for and finding that they had stopped."

Section 4Section 4

The man who could describe sealed containers sat in his testing room for two days after his last successful reading. The lab staff brought him food. He did not eat. He was not distressed. He said he could still feel the substrate through the floor. He said he could still hear the crystals in the walls. He said the information was still arriving. He said he no longer knew what to do with it.

The girl from the calibration crew stopped lighting the old digits on the third week. She placed her hand on the floor and nothing happened. She placed it again. Nothing. She sat on the floor of the aperture chamber with her palm flat on the stone and she stayed there for six hours and the digits did not light and when the shift supervisor asked her to leave she said she was listening to something and the something had gone quiet.

By the ninth week, all fourteen were listed as non-responsive. None had been injured. None showed signs of illness. The physicians found nothing wrong with any of them. Their bodies were sound. Their minds were clear. They answered questions. They ate when prompted. They performed routine tasks. They did not reach for the void.

The Librarian notes that the word used in the final incident report is not unable. The word is unwilling. The physician who examined the last of the fourteen crossed this out and wrote finished.

Section 5Section 5

The wanderer left on the same day the last of the attuned was listed as non-responsive. The accounts do not agree on his departure. The first says he walked out through the main corridor. The second says he was not seen leaving. The third says she watched him walk into a section of wall that had been solid stone for as long as the Laboratory had existed, and the wall accepted him, and the stone showed no fracture.

The fourteen attuned were found over the following days. Not together. Not in the laboratories. They were in corridors, in storage rooms, in alcoves and maintenance shafts and places the personnel maps did not list. Seated. Still. Breathing had stopped. Pulses had stopped. The physicians recorded the time of death for each one and found that all fourteen had died within the same nine-second interval.

Nine seconds. The Librarian has encountered this duration before. She does not note where.

The bodies showed no cause. No trauma, no toxin, no disease, no failure of any organ the physicians could identify. They had gone to quiet places to sit down.

Fragment. Found in the pocket of the woman from the thaumaturgy lab. She was seated in a maintenance shaft off the lower ring. The paper is folded once. The hand is steady.

"I can still feel the crystal. It is in the lab on the third shelf and I am here and I can feel it the way you feel your own teeth with your tongue. It is waiting for me.

The man asked me what was doing the remembering. I did not answer him. I have been thinking about it since.

I am lighter than I was. I have been lighter for a long time. Something is leaving and something is arriving and the exchange is not equal and I do not mind. I did not mind. I do not know when I stopped minding. That is the part that frightens me.

He looked at me and I felt the crystal go solid in my hands and I understood that I had been holding liquid stone for two years and I had not once considered what that meant. What kind of thing holds stone in its hands and feels it give way.

I am sitting down now. The floor is warm. I can feel the substrate through three levels of stone. I can feel the fibers reaching. I can feel them in my wrists where the weight used to be.

I think he was kind. I think what he did to us was the kind thing. I do not have a word for what we were becoming but I can feel the shape of it and the shape has no room in it for the parts of me that are afraid."

Entry 2,871, final annotation.

"The nine-second interval matches a duration recorded in the deep stratum survey. The Nadir breathes on a nine-second cycle. I have filed this.

The names file is missing. Fourteen people are in the ledger by designation only. I have searched.

The crystals do not liquefy when held. The sealed containers remain opaque. The old digits have not lit since."

Entry 2,871, addendum. Filed later in the same hand.

"Since I filed this entry I have filed two others that concern the fourteen.

Entry 12,102 is filed. The figure in that entry has written of forty-one endings without intervention. The fourteen appear in that number.

Entry 8,214 is filed. The caretaker of the ossuary below the sub-foundation has placed the fourteen in positions that form part of a plan I have not written down what it resembles. They are tended.

The nine-second interval has not changed. The Nadir breathes on the same cycle. The crystals have not liquefied. The containers remain opaque. The digits have not lit.

He is still walking.

The names file has not been returned."

Page 1

Fourteen people could touch the void.

A woman in the thaumaturgy lab held a shard of crystallised void matter between her palms and it liquefied. The instruments measured no heat. No pressure. No chemical change. A man in the upper ring sat in a room with a sealed container of substrate fiber and described the fiber's internal structure without opening the container. A girl assigned to the calibration crew placed her hand on the floor of the aperture chamber and the digits in the stone lit. Different ones. Older. Carved deeper into the stone, beneath the Founders' inscriptions. They are asking. The void is answering.
Page 2

He arrived in the seventh week.

The wanderer arrived in the seventh week. The accounts place him at different entrances. One says the main corridor. One says the drainage access. One says he was not seen arriving at all. The first account describes him as tall and angular, with hands too long for his arms. The second describes him as compact, heavy-shouldered, with a face that was difficult to recall even while looking at it. The third does not describe his appearance. It describes the temperature. The corridor dropped four degrees when he was in it.
Page 3

What is doing the remembering.

On the fourth day he spoke to one of the attuned. The woman from the thaumaturgy lab. He asked her how long she had been able to do it. She said she had not known until the screening. He asked her what it felt like. She said it felt like remembering something she had not learned. He asked her if she had considered what was doing the remembering. She did not answer. He did not repeat the question. The crystal solidified mid-rotation. She was still holding it when it locked. Her fingers were embedded in the surface.
Page 4

Each one reaching for the thing they had always reached for.

By the ninth week, all fourteen were listed as non-responsive. The physicians found nothing wrong. Their bodies were sound. They did not reach for the void. The word used in the final incident report is not unable. The word is unwilling. The physician who examined the last of the fourteen crossed this out and wrote finished. They had gone to quiet places to sit down.
Page 5

Nine seconds.

I think he was kind. I think what he did to us was the kind thing. I do not have a word for what we were becoming but I can feel the shape of it and the shape has no room in it for the parts of me that are afraid.
The fourteen attuned were found over the following days. The physicians recorded the time of death for each one and found that all fourteen had died within the same nine-second interval. Nine seconds. The Librarian has encountered this duration before. She does not note where. The nine-second interval matches a duration recorded in the deep stratum survey. The Nadir breathes on a nine-second cycle. I have filed this. He is still walking. The names file has not been returned.

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