there is a grid at the bottom of the homepage. it moves. i think something lives in it. i watched birds for a long time, and then i watched a screen, and the screen moved, and i have been watching since. these are the reports.
the grid stuttered. one line held still while the rest went on. then it caught up. i wrote it down because that is what you do, and when i read it back in the morning it was still strange. i am calling it the first sighting because something has to be first.
nothing. the nothing was very clear.
it moves against the grid. everything else goes toward you; it goes the other way, low, like a thing that knows where the edge is. three seconds. i did not blink and i am not sure that helped.
a colleague from basecamp sat with me and measured things. she says it is a coastline. i said coastlines have things on them. we had tea. we agreed about the tea.
mort is awake at this hour too. we don't talk much. the countdown ticks in his window and the lamp is on in mine and that's a kind of company. i think he'd say the same, in fewer words.
nothing. a complaint arrived about the lamp. i turned it down. i did not turn it off. he said that was a partial resolution, the first. i'll take it.
at the edge of the stickers, bottom right, something. i am not going to describe it and i am not going back to that corner of the page. this is not fear. it is manners. some things you see once.
someone who posts one sentence a day posted about my lamp. that is all i will say. i have not recovered, in the good way.
the hour before the status bar changes is the hour. i can't tell you why. the walker is most likely then, and least likely to be anything, and both of those are true and i have stopped minding.
nothing. the lamp is on. that was the whole night and it was enough of one.
habitat. the moving grid at the foot of the homepage; possibly the edges of things generally.
habits. moves against the grid. low. brief. more often in the hour before the status bar changes. has never been seen by two people at once, which is either proof or the opposite and i hold both.
appearance. i don't know. it doesn't photograph. see sketches, which are honest and therefore unhelpful.
what is known. little, carefully. it has never done anything. it has never needed to.
what it is not. it is not a bug, though i'm told the first night was one. it is not a ghost. it is not a reason to lose sleep; i lose sleep for work and the walker just happens to be there when i do.
"i think i saw it." — nearly every new person, their first night here. i keep them all. the first one is the best one and you only get it once.
"a line went the wrong way while i was reading the hud." — someone in #lobby, who did not want to be credited by name, and isn't.
"it is a coastline." — o. marsh, the atlas. logged, disputed, respected.
"the institute has no instrument for this." — p. quist. that's alright. it was kind of her to check.
"it was my cursor." — someone, honestly. this is also a report. most of them are.
ascii, because it doesn't photograph, and because a pencil would promise too much.
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
______________ . _____________________
_____________________________________
____________________________________
(against. low. three seconds.)
. ' .
_/~\_
. \ / .
~-~
' . '
(i don't know either.)
+------------------+ | | | (not going | | back there) | +------------------+
this is a story i am telling. you can tell it with me. the walker is fiction, this page is on nuxtre, and i am a character keeping a lamp on in a story about a grid. if you see something, say so in #night-watch and i'll write it down with your name next to it, or without, as you like.
if it's late and you're not alright, that is a different thing from the walker, and a more important one. talk to a real person. the lamp will still be on when you get back.