A quiet apartment in the evening — a packed suitcase by the door, a desk lamp lit, a glass of tea, a gray cat on the windowsill watching the street outside

Wednesday.

Tomorrow evening I get on the train.

The Checklist

I have made a list. Lists help.

Equipment:

  • Laptop: charged, data confirmed present, battery: 4h 22min runtime ✓
  • Nokia Method setup: phone, charger, audio cable, Dima’s script ✓
  • Backup USB with presentation v7 ✓
  • Hard drive: 1,102 pages Morozov, 34 sessions, Mikhail’s Feb 24 data ✓
  • Ruslan’s one-page summary: arrived this afternoon (it was one page; I will address this separately) ✓

Clothing:

  • Navy jacket: packed ✓
  • Dark blue sweater: packed ✓
  • Everything else: packed ✓
  • Yevgeny’s note about Novosibirsk in March being cold: acknowledged ✓

Documents:

  • Presentation slides: v7, 14.5 minutes, printed backup ✓
  • Archive appointment confirmation from Sokolov: printed ✓
  • Sokolov’s email with address: Ulitsa Deputatskaya 44, Novosibirsk Branch ✓

Open questions:

  • East-west gradient: unexplained. The archive may help. ✓ (pending)
  • Journal inquiry to JETP Letters: not sent yet. Will send from Novosibirsk or after. — (pending)

The checklist is complete except for the things that cannot be completed with a checklist. This is, I think, always the situation.

Mrs. Kuznetsova

She knocked at 18:30, which I mention because she always knocks at 18:30 when she knows I am home and has something to say.

She brought a small package wrapped in paper: four hard-boiled eggs, a piece of sausage, and two pieces of dark bread. She said: “For the train. You will not eat otherwise.”

I said I had planned to eat in the dining car.

She looked at me the way she looked at the drone the day it spoke to her through a speaker in the park.

I accepted the package. It is in the outer pocket of the suitcase.

She also said: “Mikhail will be glad to see you.”

I said I thought the meeting was primarily professional.

She said: “Yes.”

She left. I stood in the hallway for a moment afterward. She has a way of saying “yes” that contains several additional sentences.

The Objects on the Windowsill

The foil ball and the dried leaf are still on the windowsill. I moved them there last Monday to make room for the suitcase.

I considered taking the foil ball with me. I considered this for approximately four minutes and then decided against it, on the grounds that I could not construct a coherent reason for bringing a piece of chocolate wrapper to an archive visit. It stays.

They will be here when I return.

Misha

Misha arrived at 20:11 and did something she has not done before: she walked the perimeter of the apartment. Systematically. Bedroom, study, kitchen, hallway, back to the study. Then she sat on top of the suitcase.

I moved her off the suitcase. She moved back.

We reached a compromise: she sits beside the suitcase, not on it. She has been there for forty minutes. She is, as far as I can determine, conducting a vigil.

I have not told her where I am going. She has not asked. I note that she is present, which is the kind of thing she does when she considers it necessary.

What I Am Taking

The hard drive contains 1,102 pages of Viktor Morozov’s work. Thirty-nine years after his death, those pages are going to Novosibirsk — to the city where he studied, to an archive three kilometers from the institute where his research on this anomaly was rejected and never published.

I did not plan this. In December I started a blog about a refrigerator compressor. I measured something that nobody else measured because I found it interesting. I found it interesting for thirty years without anyone agreeing with me. Then a retired postal worker in Kazakhstan found a phone number for a widow in Karaganda, and a 14-year-old in the same building was reading my blog, and a physicist in Novosibirsk who hadn’t responded to my emails in two years replied in eleven words.

I am taking all of that on the train.

Tomorrow evening the train departs. Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, Saturday morning: Novosibirsk. The archive on Saturday. The meeting on Sunday. Mikhail at the station.

One More Thing

The gradient.

Four data points, east to west: -0.188, -0.192, -0.196, -0.203. Steps of approximately 0.004 Hz per geographic increment. Consistent across every multi-observer session since February 24.

I do not know what it means. The schematics at Ulitsa Deputatskaya 44 may tell me. Viktor’s last notebook entry was: “It must be in the schematics.”

He was right about the anomaly. He was right about the local timing. I am prepared to consider that he was right about where the answer is.

Three days.

Current status:

  • Checklist: complete (with exceptions noted)
  • Suitcase: packed. Mrs. Kuznetsova’s provisions: outer pocket.
  • Foil ball and dried leaf: windowsill. Staying.
  • Misha: beside the suitcase. Vigil ongoing.
  • Departure: tomorrow evening, March 12.
  • Archive: March 14.
  • Mikhail: at the station.
  • Emotional state: tomorrow I get on a train. I have been in this apartment for a long time. I will come back. Before I come back, I will find out what Viktor meant.

Previous post: The Fourth Row