Maps They Do Not Use

The room was listed as discontinued, which in Old Circuit meant it had a lock that knew Hana Witt’s spare key.

She did not tell intern Pell.

She told Oren Beck, because teachers and paper people were the same animal in different jackets.

“The students keep asking where the wars went,” Oren said.

“They went into habits.”

On the table: water spines, old cable runs, a fountain that had been a leak before it was a committee. Someone below had drawn a kettle in the margin.

A woman from the underlayers—no name offered, none taken—stood in the doorway with mud that had opinions.

“You’re sitting on our ceiling.”

“We’re sitting on a school,” Hana said.

“Same complaint.”

They looked at the map together. The woman’s finger found the knock-valve that Kesh walked. Hana’s finger found the municipal stencil that had been painted over.

“Your gateway says this room is interpretation,” the woman said.

“My gateway says a lot of things with good posture.”

Oren sat on a school chair that had followed him down like a loyal mistake.

“Can I bring a class?”

“No,” said both women, for different reasons that were the same reason.

The woman left a heel of bread on the map, on the pipe, not on the school. Hana did not eat it. She moved it to a tin, which was respect.

Afterward Pell found her stamping and said, “You were downstairs. The motion log—”

“The motion log can interpret itself.”

Hana added a paper note to Cabinet 12:

UNDER-ANNEX: INHABITED. DO NOT CALL EMPTY. EMPTY IS HOW ACCIDENTS GET NAMES.

Oren, upstairs, erased WHO DECIDES RELEVANCE and wrote, smaller:

WHO WALKS THE PIPE.

He did not photograph it for the gateway.

Some lessons were feet.