A windowsill with three small objects arranged in a row — a foil ball, a dried leaf, a small pebble — morning light, a glass of tea nearby, quiet and domestic

Sunday. March 8.

There was no post yesterday. I will explain this briefly, because it requires explanation, and then we will move on.

What Happened Yesterday

On Saturday morning, I sat down to write a post. The draft was approximately 200 words long when Misha arrived through the balcony door, crossed the desk with her characteristic disregard for the spatial organization of documents, and sat down directly on the keyboard.

The laptop registered 11 simultaneous keystrokes. I do not know which keys. The result was that the text editor closed, the draft was not saved, and a file named jjjjkkkllll;; appeared on the desktop. It contained the following text:

jjjjkkkllll;;;;;;;lllllllllllkkkkkkkk

I saved this file. I am not certain why. It seemed wrong to delete it.

She then moved to the corner of the desk where the foil ball is kept. She inspected it. She left. Approximately forty minutes later she returned, deposited a dried leaf on the desk — brown, curled, origin unknown — and looked at me with the expression she uses when she considers something accomplished.

I accepted the leaf. It is now beside the foil ball.

In the afternoon I attempted to rewrite the post. I had forgotten what I was going to say. By the time I remembered, it was evening, the draft was three sentences long and going nowhere, and I decided that Saturday did not need a post after all. Some days are complete without documentation.

The file jjjjkkkllll;; remains on the desktop. I will decide what to do with it later.

March Eighth

Today is International Women’s Day. In Almaty, as in Novosibirsk and Moscow and Karaganda, this is a real holiday — shops closed this morning, the street outside is quiet in a different way than usual Sundays.

I have been thinking, on and off since yesterday, about the people who made this project possible. Not in the abstract — specifically, with names and contributions.

The list is shorter than it might appear.

Mrs. Kuznetsova

She lives in apartment 4B, one floor below. She has a spare key to my apartment, for reasons that predate the current research. She brought me blini in February. She said the Tuesday anomaly was “like a heartbeat” — which is the most accurate non-technical description of it I have encountered, and I have been measuring it for thirty years.

She did not need me to explain the research to her. She already understood. This is a different kind of contribution than data, but it is not a smaller one.

Her husband worked at the power station for 31 years. She has been adjacent to exactly this kind of infrastructure for her entire adult life. She understood the heartbeat because she had been living near it.

Valentina Sergeevna Morozova

She is 84. She kept three boxes of her husband’s unpublished research for 39 years, moved them twice, did not throw them away when it would have been reasonable to do so, and handed them to a stranger who arrived at her door in February because a retired postal worker in Kazakhstan had found her phone number.

She told me: “Be the one who finishes it.”

She also, without my knowledge, asked Dima — a 14-year-old she had met for approximately 45 minutes — to send her regular updates on the research. She received a summary of the February 24 results before I thought to send one myself.

She has been managing the situation the entire time. I was not aware of this.

Misha

Misha is a cat. She is, technically, Mrs. Kuznetsova’s cat, though she makes her own travel arrangements and maintains her own schedule. She is gray. She weighs approximately 3.8 kg, based on the barometer reading when she sits on it versus when she does not.

Her contributions to the project:

  • Witnessed measurements. Present for 32 of 33 Tuesday sessions. Departed before the peak in 28 of those cases. Arrived after the peak in 4. Correlation with anomaly timing: under investigation.
  • Attended 12 minutes of the alumni presentation rehearsal before determining it was not worth her time.
  • Brought one aluminum foil ball (Friday), one dried leaf (yesterday), and deposited both on the desk in a manner suggesting they were gifts rather than accidents.
  • Caused the loss of a Saturday blog post draft via keyboard interference.
  • Has never, in my observation, been wrong about when to leave a room.

I note that I am aware of the risk of anthropomorphizing a cat. I am reporting observations, not drawing conclusions. The observations are accurate.

A Note on This List

There are other people in this project. Ruslan, Dima, Mikhail, Artyom, Yevgeny, Sokolov. Each of them has contributed something essential. I am not ranking contributions or suggesting that this list is exhaustive.

I am noting, on this particular Sunday, that three of the people who most changed the shape of this project did not do so through measurement or formal collaboration. They did so by understanding something, keeping something, or insisting I take a piece of foil.

I am not sure what to call that, scientifically. It is not data. It is something that makes data possible.

Current status:

  • Objects on desk: foil ball (Friday), dried leaf (Saturday). Both: kept.
  • File jjjjkkkllll;;: desktop, status pending.
  • March 7 post: does not exist. This is acceptable.
  • Artyom (Moscow): 2 days until first measurement attempt. March 10.
  • Departure: 4 days. March 12, evening.
  • Archive: 6 days. March 14.
  • Mrs. Kuznetsova: apartment 4B. Has spare key. Has heartbeat theory.
  • Valentina: Karaganda. Has been managing the situation.
  • Misha: windowsill. Currently watching the street. Has contributions.
  • Emotional state: March 8. The street is quiet. The project is, by any reasonable measure, further along than it was in December. I did not do this alone. I knew this, but I am saying it anyway.

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