Window Four didn’t have a person behind it.
I noticed that as soon as we turned the corner at the end of the canteen hall.
The previous three windows had frosted glass, warm light, and someone to talk to.
This one had a brass grille set into a wall of gray steel, with a tray under it and a slot beside it and a small red lamp above that blinked once every two seconds.
A hand-lettered sign hung over the counter.
*WINDOW FOUR: CASHIER.
Exact payment only.
Please do not argue with the window.*
“The window is going to argue with us,” Sol whispered.
She was holding her notebook against her chest and walking very slowly, as if the floor might bite.
“It doesn’t argue,” Aris said.
“It states.”
“What’s the difference?”
“An argument can be won.”
I looked at the brass grille.
The red lamp blinked at me.
For some reason I felt that I was being looked at back.
We’d been in the Corridor for five days, and I thought I’d gotten used to it.
I’d signed with a counselor, waited out the Records line, and finished a bowl of sinigang that tasted exactly like my grandmother’s kitchen.
I’d cried in front of strangers, and nobody had died of it.
I was starting to believe that the worst the Clearance could do was make me hungry.
Then Aris stopped in front of Window Four and said, in the quiet voice he used for bad news, “This one’s different.”
“Different how?” I asked.
“The first three windows ask you to be honest. This one asks you to pay.”
“Pay with what?”
He glanced at me and looked away.
“A Footnote.”
* * *
He explained it while Sol took notes.
According to the form, every new Archivist had to make a first payment before the Board would register them.
The payment was always the same: one small memory, handed over freely, so that the Board could confirm the Applicant understood the cost of power.
The window accepted it, recorded it, and sent the Applicant on to the next stage.
It was supposed to be a formality.
“It’s the first Footnote,” Aris said.
“Everyone remembers theirs.”
“Do you remember yours?” I asked.
“No.”
“You said everyone remembers.”
“I said everyone remembers theirs. I forgot mine.” He said it flatly, like someone reading a weather report.
“It was a long time ago. Choose something small, Lira. Something you can live without. A dream you had once. A color you don’t like. The smell of a room.”
“Can I take it back afterward?”
“No.”
I swallowed.
Sol raised her hand like a student in class.
“What if she picks a bad memory? Something she wants to lose?”
“She can’t,” Aris said.
“The window refuses anything the Applicant resents. It only takes memories that are given willingly. If you hate a memory, it won’t count as payment.”
“That’s cruel,” said Sol.
“That’s the design.”
I took a breath.
In for four, hold for two, out for five.
I felt the old hum of the Corridor settle around me and slow my pulse.
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll pick one.”
* * *
I thought about it for a long time.
I wanted to choose something harmless, but harmless was harder than I expected.
Every memory I looked at carried a thread to something else.
The smell of my first classroom led to the face of my first teacher.
A rainy day on the porch led to a story, and the story led to Lola.
Even the taste of a cheap candy from the corner store reminded me of the girl who used to share it with me before she moved to Cebu.
Finally, I settled on a small one.
It was the day I lost my first tooth.
I’d been six years old, sitting on the porch steps, biting into a green mango with too much force.
The tooth came out stuck in the fruit.
I screamed.
Lola Pacita ran out of the kitchen with a ladle in her hand, saw what had happened, and laughed so hard that she had to sit down on the steps.
Then she wrapped the tooth in a scrap of cloth and told me to throw it onto the roof of the house so that a new one would come.
I did. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
It did.
It was a good memory, but it was only one afternoon out of thousands, and Lola would remember it even if I didn’t.
That seemed like the right amount to give.
“I have one,” I told Aris.
“Don’t tell me what it is.”
“Why?”
“If you say it out loud, you’ll feel it more. Hold it in your head and say ‘I give this freely.'”
I nodded.
I stepped up to the counter and put my hand on the brass rail.
The red lamp blinked.
* * *
“Next,” said Window Four.
The voice came from the grille, flat and bright and perfectly cheerful, like the recorded announcement in a train station.
It had no accent and no age.
Sol grabbed my sleeve.
“Please state your name,” said the window.
“Lira Espiritu.”
“Please state your purpose.”
“First payment. For the clearance.”
“Please place your payment in the tray.”
I looked down.
The tray beneath the grille was empty, a shallow dish of polished steel.
I hadn’t brought a coin or a card or anything else.
“I don’t have…” I began.
“Please state the payment,” said the window.
I closed my eyes.
I held the tooth, the mango, and the laugh in my mind, and I said, as clearly as I could, “I give this freely.”
For a second nothing happened.
Then a thin silver thread slid out from the side of my head, right above my left ear.
It didn’t hurt, but my scalp tingled, and the hair along my neck stood up.
The thread unspooled in the air in a glittering line, floated toward the grille, and curled into the tray.
It coiled itself into a small bright coin the size of a button.
I opened my eyes.
The coin sat in the dish.
It shimmered faintly, and inside it I could see a tiny porch and a tiny girl and a tiny flash of green.
“Payment received,” said the window.
I felt for the memory.
It was still there.
I remembered the mango and the tooth and Lola’s laugh.
I reached for each detail, one by one, and found them all.
Maybe it needs time, I thought.
Maybe the loss comes later.
The red lamp stopped blinking.
The window made a soft whirring noise, like a machine thinking.
Then it clicked.
* * *
“Currency recognized as unlisted,” said Window Four.
I stared at the grille.
“Excuse me?”
“Currency recognized as unlisted,” the voice repeated, in exactly the same cheerful tone.
“Payment declined. Returned to Applicant.”
The tray tilted.
The shining coin rolled across the steel dish and dropped into my open palm.
It was warm, almost hot, and the light inside it brightened until I could see the whole afternoon spinning in miniature.
The tooth, the mango, the ladle.
A pulse ran up my arm and into my chest.
I felt the memory slide back into my head like a key into a lock.
“It’s returned,” I said slowly.
“It gave it back.”
“Please try another payment,” said the window.
Sol’s eyes were as wide as saucers.
“Does it do that to everyone?”
“No,” said Aris.
His voice had changed.
I turned around.
He stood a few steps behind me with his hands at his sides and every trace of sleepiness gone from his face.
He was staring at the coin in my palm, then at me, then at the window, and I could see a thought forming behind his eyes, quick and dark and frightening.
“No,” he said again.
“It doesn’t.” New chapters come out on g.com first.
“Aris,” I said.
“What does ‘unlisted’ mean?”
He didn’t answer.
* * *
A narrow slip of paper rolled out of the slot beside the grille.
It was white and thin, the kind of paper they use for cash register receipts, and it curled as it fell into my hand.
Printed across the top in black ink was a single line.
RECEIPT: FIRST PAYMENT.
Under it, the type continued, neat and mechanical:
Applicant: Espiritu, Lira.
Payment offered: One memory (willingly given).
Payment accepted: No.
Reason: Currency recognized as unlisted.
Balance owed: 1 Footnote.
At the bottom of the slip, a small round stamp had been pressed into the paper.
Two letters, neat and dark.
D.M.
Beside the stamp, the receipt had been divided into columns.
The first column read PAID.
The second read OWED.
A third column ran down the right margin, narrower than the others, and it was labeled in a careful, spidery pencil hand that did not match the printed text.
RETURNS.
The column was empty.
I looked at the pencil letters for a long time.
A strange chill settled in my stomach.
The handwriting reminded me of something, though I couldn’t say what.
It looked a little like the note I’d found in my admission letter, the round leaning script that read Come anyway.
“Aris,” I said slowly.
“Look at this.”
He leaned over my shoulder.
His breath caught.
“That’s pencil,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Nobody uses pencil in the Corridor. The Registrar’s office forbids it. Everything is ink, so it can’t be altered.”
“Then who wrote it?”
“I don’t know.”
Sol read the line twice.
“Returns,” she murmured.
“Returns of what?”
None of us had an answer.
* * *
The red lamp over the grille began to blink faster.
The cheerful voice came again, a fraction louder.
“Irregularity detected. Irregularity detected. Please remain at the window.”
“Uh,” said Sol.
“Irregularity detected. Applicant must remain for assessment. An examiner has been notified.”
A bell rang somewhere down the corridor, sharp and clear.
The yellow bulbs flickered.
Behind the steel wall, I heard a mechanical clatter, like a hundred filing cabinets opening at once.
“Lira,” said Aris, very quietly.
“Yes?”
“Close your hand over that coin. Don’t let it show.”
I closed my fingers.
The coin burned against my palm, and a glow leaked between my knuckles.
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
“They’ve noticed you.” His hand landed on my shoulder, firm and warm and steady.
For the first time since I’d met him, I saw fear in his face.
It was a small fear, quickly hidden, but it was there.
“I need you to trust me for ninety seconds.”
“Aris…”
“Sol,” he said, without looking away from me.
“Take her ticket. Don’t let anyone read it.”
Sol snatched the receipt and shoved it into the back of her notebook with shaking hands.
“Irregularity detected,” the window said.
“Please remain at the window.”
I felt the Corridor tilt around us.
A pair of heavy footsteps echoed far down the hall, coming closer, steady and slow.
Kalasag, sitting on the floor beside my ankle, stood up and growled.