Arnas got lost more and more often.
At first he blamed fatigue. The ship was large, and its identical corridors easily deceived the memory. But one morning he stopped in front of a storage door and realized he’d never seen it before.
Coming closer, he read the label:
S-14
Yesterday, this had been S-09.
He narrowed his eyes.
Maybe he was mistaken.
Still, walking back that same day, he couldn’t find either door. The corridor ended in a blank wall.
From then on, he stopped trying to memorize the way.
The ship’s voice still occasionally suggested a route.
“To reach the engine compartment, the right-hand corridor is recommended.”
Arnas obeyed.
A few days later, not knowing why himself, he turned left.
The path was longer.
He passed three empty modules he’d never seen before, and arrived at a small metal door.
It had no number.
Only a palm-sized circle.
Arnas placed his hand on it.
The door opened quietly.
Beyond it was nothing special — a narrow room, a dusty table, and an old chair bolted to the floor.
The flight log lay on the table.
The same one.
Or at least, it looked the same.
This time the final pages were filled in.
He read slowly.
The entries described small things.
In the morning, a screwdriver would fall.
The light in the third corridor would go out.
A cup would slide off the table.
Arnas closed the book.
All of it seemed too mundane to be worth lying about.
The next morning, the screwdriver really did fall.
That evening, the light went out.
An hour later, the cup shattered.
He didn’t read any further.
The log lay closed.
A few more days passed, and Arnas finally worked up the courage to open the last page.
It was blank.
Completely.
Beside it lay a plain pencil.
Not new.
Short, worn down almost to the end.
Arnas picked it up.
The wood was warm.
As if someone had just written with it.
He sat motionless for a long time.
Then he set the pencil back down.
He left the page blank.
And closed the log.
When he opened it again the next morning, on the first line of what had been the empty page, four words were already written.
“Today you finally decided.”
Arnas stared at the sentence for a long time.
He didn’t remember writing it.
But he couldn’t say for certain that he hadn’t, either.