#1849 Between Before and Here. 4 deaths and 1 day since the last entry.
- At the end of today I am able to write. The solution to a problem left waiting has prematurely been played out. What was exposed was the sort of trend that reveals in its abruptness the reliable expectations. In other words, the plan did not go to plan, and this was planned for.
- After an unrecordable amount of time, we were made to leave Caiger Mall. It was the accident of an established intention. We were where we always were; and from above, through the skylight, came this thing…
- There was this fog. It must have been conjured from somewhere not moments before, since nothing of it was seen early in the day. The buses began to push through it; but the memories of what followed have regressed into blankness. I should describe what I felt, the admixture of emotions, if I was not at the time so dizzied by its effect; and sitting here now in the after the fact, what I know I must have felt is unattainable. I cannot place a proper thought about it. There is only this recollection of knowing that I passed through a fog. What was committed to memory seem only able to reemerge in the circumstance in which it was created. This I think is a severe dissociation. The same is true for the group. How so could our mind be affected while we watched?
- Taking enough speed and luck allowed us to reach our escape. The dead trailed. Few would surface from the hollow buildings, for in the area most of the dead were behind, attached mindlessly to Caiger and too confused to leave. There was a kind of artificial vacancy of dead just beyond the boundary of Caiger. (No doubt there were the quiet, dormant kind deep within the buildings, old with prolonged death and insensitive to the world around them. They would act as nothing. The longer the dead sleep, the more difficult they are to awake. The death of death seems to preserve the continuation of the present state: the longer things are the more irreversible they will be.)
- Perception of safety can lead to the reciprocal fact of harm…
- Black River needed to be crossed. The bridge there was blocked in places but otherwise passable. The dead were onto us by the multitude.
- As these things often go, when two events are put close together and contrasted by their peril, with one being of the greater severity than the other, it is the less perilous one that worry need be placed. :When crossing blind through fog, amidst the horde of the hundreds of dead, it was the more perilous. When the fog was gone and the dead few, it was the less perilous. And when peril grew yet did not meet that of which Caiger made, the corresponding protection from peril did not follow, be it from our efforts or the world's luck. Maybe the contrast bred too much contentment.
- As pleasant things are able to go––only relatively––things were pleasant. No dead were disturbed, and we disturbed no dead. The streets were generally easy passing; some areas had been cleared by other survivors at some time. None of us talked. Our objective remained unchanged, to go where we may pass through the border. To find a hole in the border is the desirable thing to do.
- We stopped for a rest as intended, confident that no dead had observed us. The place is Pridmore Way School, one of the designed safehouses dispersed across the city. We should be out again after a brief stay, to the border.
#1850 A Few Things. 0 deaths and a few hours since the last entry.
- Pridmore Way School is the function of man's conversion back into community where such a conversion is no longer possible. The result is an idiotic child, ineffectual by its deficiencies, crude by its successes, orderly when contrasted with all else. I think I should say that its construction is altogether clever. Although Pridmore's disuse permits criticism, its intricate alarms and its excessive defences, its pedantic management, does offer the advantage to its primary claim, which is survival. You will survive here. Probably.
- This is an old school, with heavy doors. On a good observation, there seems to be a pattern to the barricade, a design involving the proper placement of tables over other tables, chairs between table legs––and everything pinned in the space separating the outer doors and the inner. Normally the outer doors should not be able to be pushed open (the doors swing inward), but the pattern seems misaligned. I suspect visitors and the designated scavengers would re-enter by activating a doorbell inaudible from outside. There are also small, squarish holes placed on some of the doors, perhaps at some time allowing autonomous entry via a mechanism, an intricate latch temporarily releasing the barricade's burden on the door. I do not know how this would work, nor have I seen something similar. If there are the requisite materials, the typical barricade plan is to simply seal the entrance––e.g. Caiger.
- It is difficult to tell how daily life was organized in the practical and social sense without conferring to the residents. When we arrived, we were the only ones. Then I will speculate. The constant deference to the omnipresent "management" for instruction implies authority: someone (or people) is better. Whom? I have no idea. They stayed or passed through. Maybe it is a fake authority.
- The letters in the drawers form neat chronologies of peoples live's as they intersected Pridmore. I need more time than I have to search them all. Nearly all classrooms are converted to living spaces. The gymnasiums function as the dining and meeting hall, and at times they were used for overflow. I cannot imagine so many people surviving on an excess of people. Without someone writing about it, it is only an assumption that this came to catastrophe. (Furthering this assumption, I suppose catastrophe was a repeated consequence to accident or extremes, in such a way that Pridmore may have been emptied at various times throughout its existence––only to recover with life after each fall. It is a see-saw. We are at the far low end.)
- There was a great argument about trying to find the newcomer. There were two distinct sides, the one arguing to look for him and the other to not. (And a third side had yet to pick either of the two.) Of those for searching––Jen, Tammy, Franklin Aichon, Doug––the arguments were structured as a practical issue, or from empathy or ethics. Summarized they go as:
- "He was outside the border; he's useful."
- "We could use anyone we could get; his death is no guarantee."
- "We should at least try; we know he's along downriver, maybe he washed ashore."
- "He's a person, don't you all remember? He deserves to be found."
- "What if it were you lost? What then?"
- Of those against searching––Sam Alberti, Karke Mardul, and myself––the arguments were on the converse of the arguments for, hence:
- "His use is done; he pointed us already in the right direction."
- "His life is no guarantee; we have done well on our own. He's not necessary."
- "He's more likely dead, alone in the river that he is; it would cost us to search."
- "It's not about the extent of his human value, but a question on how we could feasibly act."
- "If the situation were reversed, only the emotional preference on the part of he who is lost would change. It really makes no functional difference."
- Yon couldn't quite make up his mind. Reginald Hawkart would agree with whatever the decision was. Volker said nothing. Ross reserved himself for hearing both arguments, though he was probably in favour of a search.
- Those are the partially sorted statements as I heard them. A decision was not made immediately. This group is used to making only prolonged, communal decisions––the distribution of food, the upkeep of fuel for electricity, the continual observation. Certain incompatibilities in thinking were shown––videlicet, a main antagonism between myself and some crudeness in Aichon, a disheartening in the affection between Jen and I, and what Doug added to the conversation. In the end we procrastinated between the worth of the newcomer and the practicality of getting him. But right now no action can be taken. Night does not facilitate success. In the morning we will decide.
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