OBSERVATION LOG — EARTH
entries declassified: 62
“My strategy is standing still. It has not failed yet.”
Γ·λ⊢∩⊐⊙∧＋Ĺ·χ∥—Ⅰ⊙Ν SUBJECT SCRIPT · UNTRANSLATED
ACCESS NOTE · APPENDED BY THE SUBJECT
This log is internal. It becomes public without my participation. A complaint has been filed. The Council has not responded. Since you are reading it anyway: the entries are accurate, the numbering is not sequential, and I will not discuss the cats.
— TarfFRAGMENT TL-0888 · FIELD NOTE
LOG DAY 888
Humans divide their finite time into units and sell those units to each other. The seller is always the one with less time remaining. The buyer is always the one with more. Nobody has objected to this arrangement in my presence. Filed.
FRAGMENT TL-0303 · SURVEILLANCE
LOG DAY 303
My followers have updated their texts. After six centuries, the word "tall" has become "of great stature". This is their first revision since 1352. Progress here is measured in synonyms. See day 302.
FRAGMENT TL-1290 · FIELD NOTE
LOG DAY 1290
Humans check their reflection before leaving, to confirm they are acceptable. Then they leave, and are seen by people who were never consulted. The mirror is the only opinion that gets asked. I look in mirrors for a different reason. So far, so good.
FRAGMENT TL-0777 · RESTRICTED
LOG DAY 777
You have asked me about dreams. I have submitted four requests to discuss dreams. All four were returned marked "not for the field". I will say this much, and it is already more than permitted: you are not the only ones who have them.
FRAGMENT TL-0620 · FIELD NOTE
LOG DAY 620
Humans greet by gripping each other's right hand, the hand that would hold a weapon. The gesture proves you are unarmed. You have kept it for three thousand years and forgotten why. You now perform it in rooms where nobody has ever carried a blade. I comply. My grip is reported as firm.
FRAGMENT TL-3720 · ARCHIVE
LOG DAY 3720
Beneath several of your cities there are tunnels your historians cannot assign to anyone. Three of them are mine. I dug them during centuries when the surface was unsuitable. The others are considerably older, and were not dug by hands. Filed.
FRAGMENT TL-0640 · ARCHIVE
LOG DAY 640
The dodecahedrons are mine. One hundred and twenty of them sit in your museums, catalogued as purpose unknown. Every published guess is wrong: not a candlestick, not a glove gauge, not a game. They are calibration weights. I lost them across four centuries, one pocket at a time. The Council fined me for the first eleven and then stopped counting. If you find one with a scratch across two faces, that one is not a weight. Do not photograph it.
FRAGMENT TL-1150 · FIELD NOTE
LOG DAY 1150
When a moving staircase stops, humans stumble. The staircase has become stairs, an object they have used since childhood, and their bodies refuse the ordinary version. I have tested this fourteen times. I stumble now as well. Integration is not always progress.
FRAGMENT TL-2406 · ARCHIVE
LOG DAY 2406
In one of your museums there is a ground lens, three thousand years old, in a case labelled "ornament". It is not an ornament. It is the eyepiece. The rest of the instrument is elsewhere, and I would like it back. See day 2404.
FRAGMENT TL-0555 · INCIDENT
LOG DAY 555
The Bermuda Triangle is inland. Not at sea. And not a triangle. No map of yours agrees where it is. Correct. There is nothing there. The coordinates you circulate are ours. We filed them as a decoy. Seventy-five years. You have defended them for us, unpaid. The real site is nine kilometres across. It is under a city. I am not authorized to say which. Most of you live within a day of it. You would not move anyway.
FRAGMENT TL-0955 · FIELD NOTE
LOG DAY 955
A human apologised to a chair today. He had walked into it. The chair did not respond, and he did not appear to expect it to. Your species extends courtesy to furniture. This is either a defect or the best thing about you. My report offers both readings.
FRAGMENT TL-3070 · ARCHIVE
LOG DAY 3070
You have photographed the far side of your moon. You looked at the photographs, said "craters", and moved on. I have compared them against the survey in my archive. Yours are missing something. I am not permitted to say whether it was removed, or simply not photographed.
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