The note was where the crop should have been.
I had never seen it before.
At least, I thought I hadn’t.
The lime-coated stand remained empty, yet the note described with perfect accuracy the weight resting in my hands.
The crop has already been delivered.
It took me several seconds to understand the problem.
I had not picked it up yet.
I read the sentence again.
The handwriting had not changed.
The crop has already been delivered.
A second line appeared beneath it.
Current delay: four minutes.
I looked at my hands.
They were still empty.
Yet my shoulders already seemed to recognize a burden that did not exist.
The sensation felt familiar.
Not pain.
Not obedience.
Something worse.
The feeling of arriving late to an action that had not yet begun.
The lime room absorbed every sound.
The cracks in the wall looked deeper than before.
Or perhaps they had always looked that way.
I no longer trusted my memory completely.
The note did not help.
A smaller annotation appeared beneath the first.
You will recognize the instrument before you see it.
Then something strange happened.
My arm shifted slightly.
It was not a decision.
It was not a reflex.
I simply discovered that the joint had already moved.
As if it were replaying an instruction received earlier.
I searched for the crop.
It was not there.
I searched again.
Nothing.
Yet my body continued behaving as if it were holding it.
The contradiction remained suspended between both possibilities.
The empty hand.
The existing weight.
I tried to remember when this had started.
No answer arrived.
Instead I found another note.
I did not remember seeing it before.
The object is not the instrument.
For the first time I considered that perhaps the crop had never been the center of the mechanism.
Perhaps not the Master either.
Perhaps not even obedience.
The note continued.
The delivery is the instrument.
I looked at my hands again.
Still empty.
Yet the tension in my fingers increased.
As though they were gripping something.
As though my body were reading a different version of the file.
An unease emerged that was difficult to locate.
It did not come from waiting.
It did not come from fear.
It came from a new question.
If the delivery had already happened, what exactly was I still waiting for?
No answer appeared.
Instead I noticed something worse.
The usual sentence was gone.
For weeks it had always been there.
Always at the end.
Always identical.
Always waiting for me.
Now it had vanished.
I checked the page.
Then the previous one.
Then the next.
Nothing.
Its absence occupied more space than the sentence itself.
Only then did I discover a note written in the lower margin.
So small it almost resembled a crack.
You are beginning to notice its absence.
I remained motionless.
Because it was right.
I was no longer searching for the origin of the mechanism.
Nor the function of the instrument.
Nor the will of the Master.
I was searching for a sentence.
And I was beginning to worry that I could no longer remember the last time I had read it for the first time.
I have to move my neck the record cannot close I should…
