A café table on a Saturday morning in a Siberian city — two coffee cups, warm morning light, a small window showing city street outside. The atmosphere is a last morning somewhere before a departure. No text, no signs, no writing visible anywhere. Photorealistic, cinematic, warm morning light, documentary photography style, shallow depth of field, muted warm palette.

Saturday. June 27. Novosibirsk. Barometer: 1015 hPa (weather service; The Ambassador is in Almaty).

The train departs at 21:40. Until then.

Morning

We had coffee at 08:30 at a place near the center. She was there when I arrived. This is the sixth time I have noted this. I am no longer going to note it as remarkable; it is simply how she operates, and I should adjust my expectations accordingly.

She asked about the paper — not the physics. Whether it would be accepted. Whether the journal would publish a paper that names Morev in the third section.

I said I did not know. The version currently in review does not contain the third section — it was submitted in April, before we knew. I said I was going to write the third section. She asked: “You will need to decide what to put in and what to write around.”

I wrote this in my notebook at 09:14. I did not tell her I wrote it down. She probably knew.

Before the Train

We walked again. She showed me a part of the city I had not seen on either previous visit — the older buildings on the right bank, a park, a market that was open on Saturday morning. I documented the market’s electric clock (deviation: approximately +14 seconds from the Nokia reference). She pointed out that I had brought the Nokia setup to a Saturday morning market. I said it was portable. She said she knew.

I asked her about the library — the special collections, the documents she had been finding since December. She said the library system still logs every access. The physical 1978 document has not been accessed again since February. She checks.

She said: “I am not worried. I am paying attention. Those are different things.”

The Station

She walked with me to the station. Platform 7. The departure board showed 21:40.

At 21:32 she said something. I wrote it in my notebook at 23:17, when the train had been moving for an hour and the steppe was dark outside the window. I am not going to reproduce it here. I know what it was.

The train departed at 21:40:04.

Waypoint 1 (Barabinsk, 00:03): 50.001 Hz. Normal.

Current status:

  • Novosibirsk departure 21:40; southbound; arrives Almaty ~09:40 Monday
  • Natalya: “You will need to decide what to put in and what to write around.” / 21:32 (not reproduced)
  • Notebook: two entries (09:14 and 23:17); the second not reproduced
  • Waypoint 1 (Barabinsk, 00:03): 50.001 Hz; normal
  • Paper: day 75 in review
  • Emotional state: in motion, southbound

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