A café table at night seen through a rain-flecked window — two cups, a small candle lamp casting amber warmth against the cold dark city beyond. The chairs are occupied but the occupants are not the subject: two sets of hands around cups, the subtle lean of two people toward each other across a small table. The interior glows against the deep blue of a Sunday night street. Photorealistic, cinematic, warm amber interior against dark exterior, documentary photography style, shallow depth of field, intimate atmosphere.

It is 10:41. Dima has been silent for 20 hours and 38 minutes.

This is the longest he has gone without responding since I first wrote to him directly. The previous record was 11 hours, in February, when his class went on a scheduled trip to the Almaty reservoir. He mentioned it afterward, in passing, as part of a longer email about measurement protocols.

The decision post has been live for 22 hours. The paper is on day 27. The facility is still operating. Misha has not come.

What I Am Not Doing

I am not tracking Dima’s silence in the measurement log. I considered it. The log is for the signal.

There are things I could do this morning. I could review the literature on cascading transformer failures. I could draft the section of the paper that currently reads “Mechanism: see pending discussion.” I could count the books on the shelf — I have not done this since November 2006 and the count was 41.

Instead I have been sitting here since 09:08. I have not made tea yet. This is either significant or a Sunday morning.

The Three Categories

At 14:03 yesterday, Dima wrote: “ok reading this now. let me google something real quick.”

He has not replied since. I do not know what he found.

There are three possible explanations. I am listing them here because I am a physicist and this is what I do when I do not know what else to do.

Category A: No result. He searched, found nothing of note, forgot to reply. Dima forgets to reply sometimes — on Sunday afternoons especially, when other things compete for his attention. This is the most statistically probable explanation. I do not find it reassuring. That is not a data point about its likelihood.

Category B: Still reading. He found something, is working through it, will write when he has finished. Dima finishes things before reporting. He sent the Python script in one piece. He diagnosed the timezone problem fully before sending a single question.

Category C: Has found something and does not yet know what to say.

All three categories are consistent with the observed data, which is silence. The signal does not help here. The signal does not know what Dima found on the internet at 14:03 on a Saturday.

17:03

Ruslan wrote at 11:22. Not long — 189 words, which for Ruslan is a telegram.

He noted that Dima’s silence, as of his email, was 21 hours and 19 minutes. He noted that this was consistent with Categories A, B, and C. He noted that he had checked four forums and three news archives and found nothing that would explain a specific search result at 14:03 on May 9 from an Almaty IP address. He had checked this without telling me he was going to.

Then, in the second-to-last paragraph:

“I have been thinking about something you wrote in December — that finding something no one else has found is not the same as understanding it. I wrote that sentence in the margin of my measurement log. I have been thinking, these past few days, about whether this applies to things that are not electromagnetic.”

I read that paragraph three times. I have not replied.

The calendar entry still reads: “N. — Sunday, 19:00.”

It is 17:03. I have two hours.

19:00

She was already there when I arrived. This is consistent with the April 1 visit, the May 8 visit, and probably every meeting I have not paid adequate attention to.

Her conference had ended at 16:00. She had gone to the hotel, changed, and walked to Café Laguna by a route that did not require me to know the details. She told me this approximately twenty-three minutes into the conversation, when I asked how she had spent the afternoon.

We ordered coffee. Later, tea. The waiter was the same one as Friday and did not comment on this.

The conversation began somewhere near the decision post and moved through territories I had not prepared a route for. I told her about Dima’s silence. She asked one question: “Do you think he found something, or do you think he is figuring out what to think about what he found?”

I said I did not know.

She said: “That is a different kind of not-knowing.”

I noted the time: 19:41.

At 20:17, I realized I had not noted a time since 19:41.

The Data I Cannot Figure Out Where to Put

There was a moment — I will not be more specific than this — at approximately 21:04, when she said something about the Novosibirsk winters and I laughed, and then she laughed at my laughing, and for approximately eight seconds I did not know what was being measured.

I have fourteen months of calibrated instruments. I am a physicist. I know the standard explanations for what was happening at 21:04. The standard explanations are not wrong. They are simply insufficient in the way that “the signal is a resonance phenomenon” was insufficient: technically defensible, and obviously not the whole answer.

She left at 22:19. She flies back to Novosibirsk tomorrow at 07:40. She said she would email from the airport. I said I would be awake. She said: “You are always awake.”

This is accurate.

I walked home. The city is quiet. The ceremonies were yesterday.

I checked the measurement log when I arrived at 22:47. The signal is still running. This is expected.

Dima has still not replied. I find, somewhat to my own surprise, that this no longer feels like the most important thing I do not understand.

Current status:

  • Dima: silent since 14:03 May 9; 32h44min as of 22:47; category unconfirmed
  • Natalya: departed 22:19; Novosibirsk flight 07:40; will email from airport
  • Ruslan: 189 words (11:22); “things that are not electromagnetic”; unanswered
  • Paper: day 27 in review; status unchanged
  • Signal: still running
  • Misha: absent today
  • Emotional state: the eight seconds at 21:04

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