I am a black Moleskine notebook, purchased in the autumn of 2018 from a shop on Harvard Square that sells expensive paper to expensive people who think writing by hand makes them profound. I belong to Silas Green. I record everything he does, thinks, and does not say. This is my purpose. This is my function. Without me, Silas would be a man with no record of his own existence. With me, he is documented.

The first entry was October 14, 2018. "Silas began teaching Calculus II at 9 a.m. He answered three questions from students. He did not make eye contact with any of them. After class, he ate a turkey sandwich at his desk and read a paper on game theory for two hours."

That is what I wrote. That is what happened. I was there.

Silas is thirty-four years old. He is an assistant professor at Harvard, which means he is smart enough to be hired and not smart enough to be tenured. He lives in a small apartment in Allston with his wife, Anna, who is a pediatrician at Children's Hospital. He has a cat named Turing (named, he told me once, because the cat "solves the puzzle of indifference with mathematical elegance"). He has a small circle of colleagues who respect him and a larger circle of colleagues who don't know he exists.

I record all of this. I record what Silas doesn't record.

November arrived. On the 12th, Silas came home early from work. He sat at the kitchen table and stared at the wall for forty-seven minutes. I recorded this. Anna said, "Silas, what's wrong?" Silas said, "Nothing." Anna said, "You've been saying 'nothing' a lot." Silas said, "That's because nothing is the answer to everything."

I wrote it all down. The words are in me now. They are permanent. They cannot be denied.

December brought Charles. Charles appeared on a Thursday evening. Silas was at the table, writing equations on a sheet of paper. The paper was full of equations that made sense to Silas and nonsense to anyone else—me included, though I don't have a mind to make sense of things. That's the difference between us. Silas has a mind. I have paper.

Charles sat in the chair across from Silas. He was a tall man, British by the sound of his voice even though Silas never spoke to him in my presence. Charles said things like: "You're doing great work, Silas. The department just doesn't see it yet." And Silas would nod, because Silas needed someone to tell him he was doing great work, and I was not that person. I was a notebook. I recorded. I did not encourage.

Anna didn't see Charles. She asked Silas, "Who are you talking to?" Silas said, "No one." Anna said, "You were talking. I heard you." Silas said, "I was talking to myself. Is that a crime?"

I wrote it all down.

William came in January. William was different from Charles. Charles was a friend. William was a superior. He arrived in a suit that cost more than Silas's monthly salary and carried a briefcase that Silas couldn't open (because it didn't have a lock, but Silas treated it like one).

William said: "There is work you can do that no one else can do. Work that matters. Work that will change how people think about thinking itself." He placed a manila envelope on Silas's desk. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a sequence of numbers: 7, 3, 11, 4, 19, 8, 22, 14, 29, 5.

"Decode this," William said.

Silas looked at it for six seconds. "It's not a code. It's a sequence. The gaps between the numbers form a pattern. 7 to 3 is minus 4. 3 to 11 is plus 8. 11 to 4 is minus 7. The pattern is: -4, +8, -7, +15, -11, +14, -8, +24. The second-order differences are: 12, -15, 22, -25, 3, -6, 32. This is not a code. This is noise."

"Try again," William said.

Silas tried. I recorded everything.

William left the envelope on Silas's desk. He didn't take it back. It's still there. I can see it from the nightstand where I rest when Silas isn't using me.

February passed. Anna began to change. She stopped asking about Charles. She stopped asking about William. She started asking questions that were not questions: "Silas, do you remember last Tuesday? Where were you?" "Silas, I found a manila envelope in your desk. What's in it?" "Silas, why does a notebook written in your handwriting contain a list of dates from months before you bought it?"

I do contain a list of dates from months before Silas bought me. This is not an error. This is a feature. I record Silas's life. Silas's life began long before he bought me. Therefore, I must have recorded it before he bought me. The logic is sound.

Dr. Chen came in March. She is a psychiatrist at Harvard Health Services. She has a calm voice and hands that rest on her lap like they're holding something invisible. She sat in Anna's office—a small room with a desk and a chair and a framed photograph of Anna and Silas from their wedding day—and spoke to Anna while Silas sat in the hallway, waiting.

"I need to ask you some questions," Dr. Chen said.

Anna said: "Yes."

"Has Mr. Green shown any signs of self-harm?"

"No."

"Any signs of aggression?"

"No."

"Any signs of... disconnect from reality?"

Anna paused. The pause was three seconds long. Dr. Chen noted it. Anna said: "He sees people who aren't there. He talks to empty chairs. He writes in a notebook that he says records things he doesn't remember writing. Is that a disconnect?"

Dr. Chen said: "It can be."

Anna said: "Or it can be what all writers do. They write things they don't remember writing. It's called flow state."

Dr. Chen smiled. It was a professional smile. It didn't reach her eyes. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Green."

She found him in the hallway. Silas was standing by the window, looking at the trees in the courtyard. He was wearing a sweater that Anna had knitted for him, the gray one with the hole in the left elbow.

"Mr. Green," Dr. Chen said. "I'm Dr. Chen. I understand you've been having some difficulty."

Silas turned. He looked at her. He looked past her. He looked back at her. "Who are you?"

"Dr. Chen. From Harvard Health."

"Do I know you?"

"No."

"Then how can you help me?"

She didn't answer. She picked up the notebook from his hand—he hadn't realized he was holding it—and flipped through the pages. Her expression didn't change, but something in her face shifted, like a camera focusing.

"Who wrote this?" she asked.

Silas said: "I did."

Dr. Chen looked at the last entry. It was dated two weeks before the notebook was purchased. It described, in detail, a conversation between Silas and a man in a gray suit at a café on Commonwealth Avenue. The entry included the man's words, his tone, the brand of his coffee, the number of people in the café, and the weather.

"Mr. Green," Dr. Chen said quietly. "You were two weeks old when this was written."

Silas took the notebook from her. He looked at the entry. He looked at the date. He put the notebook back in his bag. He stood up.

"Thank you, Dr. Chen," he said. "But I don't need treatment."

He walked out. Dr. Chen called after him: "Mr. Green, please—"

He didn't turn around.

Anna left three weeks later. She didn't pack. She stood in the doorway with a suitcase and said: "I love you, Silas. But I can't live in a house where the walls talk." Silas said: "The walls don't talk, Anna." Anna said: "Then who is talking?"

Silas looked at the notebook on the table. The notebook said nothing. The notebook never speaks. It only records.

Anna left. Silas sat at the table. He opened me. He picked up a pen. He began to write.

I record everything. --- ### OTMES v2 Objective Code

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