Second Shift: A Dedication for Nobody in Particular

TRANSMISSION SIGNAL-1/0021
ORIGIN Second Shift Programming · the Tiered Wards, broadcast from somewhere low
CLASS Second Shift
DECODED Desk day 21
CONFIDENCE High

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—which is the third time this week the request has come in unsigned, so I will play it the third time this week, and I will not make a face about it, because you cannot see my face, and that is one of the genuine pleasures of this shift.

For the keeper who did not leave a name: this is the old arrangement for the small hours, the one borrowed from the Archive, the one with the long middle passage where nothing is resolved and then it is. The Archive's copy has a note in the margin that says yes, this one. The marginalia are entered now, which means the note is in the Ledger, which means whoever wrote it is in there too, a little, in the way that mattered to them.

The Count this morning was eleven-and-eleven thousand, four hundred and twelve. It will be that again tomorrow. You can sleep on it.

From the Listening Hill, if anyone is ever up there, the signal carries well tonight. I don't know why I mention it.

Second Shift continues. Quiet Hour follows.

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Intercept Desk note: This is the first transmission in which the host speaks directly to the signal's path rather than its destination.

Decoded with machine assistance at The Sixth Lense Intercept Desk.