Speaker 1: Opening the store after a night of remodel always felt
Speaker 1: a little like a wrapping a giant for recent Christmas present.
Speaker 1: I swung open the glass doors, breathing in that cocktail
Speaker 1: of lemony cleaner and fresh past it Willnoli and the
Speaker 1: clon to my nose. Even before the lights flickered to fall,
Speaker 1: the store was silent. Too silent, I thought at first,
Speaker 1: Only the distant from of compressors in the dairy case
Speaker 1: and the soft hiss from the entryway aircat and marked
Speaker 1: any movement at all. Ordinarily there be a trace of
Speaker 1: last night's energy scattered around a mot bucket for garden,
Speaker 1: a cardboard caught jammed into the in cab, empty pallet,
Speaker 1: stacked a bit off truel on the freezer. Not to day,
Speaker 1: even the buzz of the early morning with stalkers was muffled,
Speaker 1: as if the place and its purpose were waiting on
Speaker 1: my okay. Before resuming Enoise, I gripped my clipboard and
Speaker 1: paced out my well practiced route, eyes flicking up and
Speaker 1: down for the new and out of place, A box
Speaker 1: upside down, something set askew and in cap display burrowed, improved,
Speaker 1: or god forbid it destroyed by corporates over night of
Speaker 1: visual refresh. It was as I rounded the bulk flower
Speaker 1: bins between Asle twelve and the dairy wall that my
Speaker 1: stride folded there which perfectly were there should have been
Speaker 1: a clean shot down to Ale fourteen was a new isle.
Speaker 1: Aisle thirteen, the signed to Claire, the number in familiar
Speaker 1: Navy letters, glittering with the kind of proprietary map finished
Speaker 1: reserved for flagship locations. I stood still, scanning the sign,
Speaker 1: the ends of the shelving, the seamless stretch of floor
Speaker 1: where there should undeniably have been nothing at all. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just the sign, the isle round flushing straight and
Speaker 1: cap displays of teas and sugars, amid run shelf crowned
Speaker 1: with condiments, all lit by a perfectly positioned band of
Speaker 1: valids above. At the far end, a brand new freezer
Speaker 1: gurgled softly, the humpson com pitted against the muted overhead music.
Speaker 1: Each shelf was loaded, but not with the normal jumble
Speaker 1: of dry goods expected. Sun Viney stood in neat ranks.
Speaker 1: Scold foil boxes subtly misaligned from the house. Brands were
Speaker 1: usually carried bored o cheese are style and lable light
Speaker 1: sweat and never having seen glowed pale under the cooler's light.
Speaker 1: Farther down tins of something green and angular script on
Speaker 1: the label, unreadably ornate, yet somehow tasteful. Frau ale back.
Speaker 1: I told myself, Nueski, you launch maybe Corporate in their
Speaker 1: infinite customer journey at Wisdom sent an overnight drop. I
Speaker 1: ducked behind the checkle counter to check the daily store map,
Speaker 1: tracing the route with my finger. Were twelve trailed into fourteen,
Speaker 1: but the gap was unmistakable, and on the planned no
Speaker 1: Isle thirteen no space granted. I clicked over to the
Speaker 1: digital blueprints. Nothing there either. The system hopped straight from
Speaker 1: twelve to fourteen, and the measurements lined up, discounting the
Speaker 1: enveloping expanse right before my eyes. By then, Claudia from
Speaker 1: her stock ambled by rolling a cot stat with rink
Speaker 1: wrap cans. You see what they did with the science. Claudia,
Speaker 1: I tried nodding toward the new isle. She eyed it neutrally,
Speaker 1: then looked at me as if I just pointed out
Speaker 1: the sunrise. What toile thirteen been? There? Can't miss it?
Speaker 1: She plucked a can straight in the shelf facer and shrugged. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I thought you wanted over stock tea there specialty focus
Speaker 1: you called it. She gave me an uncommitted wave and
Speaker 1: moved on to re arrange some marmalades. Derk usually half
Speaker 1: way between over caffeinated and superstitious, mumbling wheeled passed with
Speaker 1: a load of bottled water. We're not moving that rack again, right,
Speaker 1: he called. That's the third time this month, but his
Speaker 1: tone suggested it was entirely reasonable, just another wrinkle and
Speaker 1: infinite involding of authorized chaos. A surge of customers pressed
Speaker 1: through the main doors, bell jingle heralding the start of
Speaker 1: the morning rush. I caught myself still rooted there at
Speaker 1: staring down the threshold that shouldn't by any internal medical
Speaker 1: corporate log actually exist. Most managers would have shrugged and
Speaker 1: cold facilities. But my reputation rides on noticing the irregular,
Speaker 1: the vanishing case miss backs, the cryptic deliveries from three
Speaker 1: stores over. I see them as opportunities, places to catch
Speaker 1: what nobody else ought, to prove that everything traceable in
Speaker 1: the end fits somewhere. But this distribution of fox refused,
Speaker 1: even the courtesy of a reasonable lie. The aisle fit too,
Speaker 1: while gleaming and plausible, exactly where nothing ought to be.
Speaker 1: Life in this store is a fine mesh of habit
Speaker 1: and adaptability. I've worked here eleven years. Every morning means
Speaker 1: my circuit, clipboard in hand, eyes on the grind, between
Speaker 1: graut lines, never enough elbow grease in the overnight, taling
Speaker 1: shelve depths, and measuring shrink before the customers make everything real.
Speaker 1: My mind's organized by planet grounds and color coded spread cheats,
Speaker 1: the sort of memory some coll photographic, but what I
Speaker 1: know is just vigilant stitch to routine. Claudia man Official Long,
Speaker 1: This tenured specialist favors order with an easy patience. She'll
Speaker 1: gently rid me overspreadheed updates, and can recall the last
Speaker 1: for produce price wings by heart. But she's the first
Speaker 1: to spot labors out of place, and, more importantly, to
Speaker 1: fuse the grumbles among the new hives. She's worked elsewhere,
Speaker 1: the vanished hyper mart, down on Polk, the ill fated
Speaker 1: organic Experiment, Free Cities over always returning to this doll
Speaker 1: like a weed that can't be pride even by the
Speaker 1: best transfer offer. Derek's one of my detailed fiends. Step counter,
Speaker 1: always maxed out, sticky notes peppering his clipboard. In a
Speaker 1: pastel storm, he delights in the arder delivery crate with
Speaker 1: extra twining, barcoded printed off center, a staple gun missing
Speaker 1: for exactly two months, reappearing in plain sight. He calls
Speaker 1: these Quark's Store spirits, and though I tease him, I'll
Speaker 1: admit he finds things I'd otherwise overlook. It keeps the
Speaker 1: job interesting, especially for someone with his over active pasant detector. Maya,
Speaker 1: my assistant, runs like a silent algorithm, decisive laser edged,
Speaker 1: rarely swayed by moodle Weather. She'll povert a whole orfore
Speaker 1: plan with out blinking holds staff briefings so brief some
Speaker 1: people don't realize they've started, and can resolve anything from
Speaker 1: a fistfight over coupon's to power outage with as little
Speaker 1: drama switching socks. We joke she could run the entire
Speaker 1: show with a rubber band and a burkeout scanner. Then
Speaker 1: there's mister Feldman, the night manager, Practically nocturnal, a shadow
Speaker 1: in the morning, seldom venturing input except to point out
Speaker 1: a pyerial air or quietly fix a freezer gasket before
Speaker 1: anyone else hears the alarm. Most staff think he's huffertite,
Speaker 1: drifting toward invisibility. The store belongs to those who act,
Speaker 1: not those humirely endure. Even our regulars play their part
Speaker 1: in the choreography. Miss Esingo, fierce and beaming shops for
Speaker 1: igpants and roots. Most camp pronounced and always chases rare
Speaker 1: produced down to its last box. Mister Bernstein, cyril complainer,
Speaker 1: will corner any available era about last year as a
Speaker 1: warnted isle, renumbering the pickle shelf moved again unacceptable. Sam,
Speaker 1: the gangly college student, popped in for the extra inventory shift,
Speaker 1: pulling student hours and nerves. Tight but eager and friendly
Speaker 1: blueprints live in the cloud in the back office, with
Speaker 1: every isle cooler and fluorescent. Buld Mapton measured any tweak
Speaker 1: to the store varas architecture is recorded in digital triplicate,
Speaker 1: check by facilities and run up the chain weeks ahead.
Speaker 1: Surprise changes doesn't happen. I valley being the first to
Speaker 1: catch mistakes. But this this wasn't a mistake. It was
Speaker 1: an impossibility, and I found I didn't care for the distinction.
Speaker 1: On my second pass, clip were tight in my grip
Speaker 1: I wove myself to step past the boundary into Aisle thirteen.
Speaker 1: Sun Vine Tea rested to my left, the cheese glimmerdry.
Speaker 1: I put one of the tins half by reflex, angling
Speaker 1: the label toward the lie. The text was blocky and flowing,
Speaker 1: not quite cyrillic, not quite Greek. I turned it to
Speaker 1: reveal a barcoed at least some order. Here at the
Speaker 1: demo register, a scandacan. The monitor chirped Item accepted vegetable
Speaker 1: two dollars fifteen nine cents. As if the register couldn't
Speaker 1: be bothered with the name. I tried the same with
Speaker 1: sun Vine Tea. Out every scan, perfectly smooth acceptance. The
Speaker 1: cistern child inventory showed in stock, no anomalies. I cross
Speaker 1: checked the item number, Yes, it existed in our system,
Speaker 1: cross reference with shelf tax. Except when back at my
Speaker 1: office computer pulling up corporate inventory for sun Vine, the
Speaker 1: tag was attached to a brown of cleaning wipes, not tea.
Speaker 1: I scrolled a note to check this with Maya, and returned.
Speaker 1: Before my thoughts caught up, the flow of morning traffic
Speaker 1: rippled through the aisle. Claudia fetched a six pack, Derek
Speaker 1: adjusted a display Maya made a brief sweep to check
Speaker 1: if planet ground standards were being met. Each performed their
Speaker 1: role with the same confidant as always. Dipping between Twisle
Speaker 1: thirteen and fourteen as of geography was merely a suggestion.
Speaker 1: When I stopped Claudie to ask her what Ale thirteen stocked,
Speaker 1: she barely paused, and slicing the tape off her box.
Speaker 1: He usually kitchen stuff, sometimes tease. Then the cleaning shelf
Speaker 1: moved though last month right she stacked jars with mechanical calm,
Speaker 1: but Derek called over immediately contradicted. That's the high NPTI
Speaker 1: spotf all those zulans before that. There were gallons of
Speaker 1: white vinegar, he squinted, or maybe the vitamins. I swept
Speaker 1: the previous week's paper receipts from old customers. Miss s
Speaker 1: and go leaning on her cart, told me she always
Speaker 1: collects a particular honey from Asle thirteen, waving a receipt
Speaker 1: at me, but she couldn't quite recall what the label
Speaker 1: looked like. It's the one with the little blue mountain,
Speaker 1: she guessed. There was no such honey in stock or
Speaker 1: and backwarder and I made another note to check supply listings.
Speaker 1: If the shelving itself was somehow hold over from an
Speaker 1: earlier design, it would be reflected and the store's boundary
Speaker 1: space as precious accounted for to the centimeter in storage
Speaker 1: and safety coats. I paced Aisle thirteen from end to end,
Speaker 1: attempting to markets threshold both at the dairy and cap,
Speaker 1: but found myself struggling to neil the in points with certainty.
Speaker 1: The isle's entrance fudge giving just enoughly wait to match
Speaker 1: the neighboring isle's length, but not so closely as to
Speaker 1: overlay perfectly. By the time I reached the dairy collers,
Speaker 1: the memory of which shelf was first and last felt
Speaker 1: faintly blurred, like a dream. Immediately after waking back in
Speaker 1: my office, I checked yesterday's blueprints and the overnight security locks.
Speaker 1: Every line on the digital map showed a leap from
Speaker 1: twelve straight to fourteen. The security footage played on double
Speaker 1: speed showed the crew rolling out new floor tiles and
Speaker 1: setting up fixtures, but never once constructing stocking, or rolling
Speaker 1: shelving into the spot where Ale thirty now stood. When
Speaker 1: the overnight video rolled past three seventeen A and the
Speaker 1: aisle simply existed, the camera capturing the after image of
Speaker 1: something settled and correct, while my mind screamed at every
Speaker 1: inch of it. Ile thirteen then was present in every
Speaker 1: possible physical mode worked on, chopped in, argued over. It
Speaker 1: was also totallyad and specifically absent from every plan, map,
Speaker 1: an historical record. The contradiction hollowed out of space in me.
Speaker 1: You could fix a mistake, you can't contend with what
Speaker 1: thumbprints the well from the inside out. The next step,
Speaker 1: given the dawning consensus of contradiction, was methodical. Prepare a plan,
Speaker 1: gather data, build a picture from the friction of incompatible
Speaker 1: stories as if entangling, and not by viewing it from
Speaker 1: every side. I prioritized observation my first sweep morning, when
Speaker 1: sun lights slanted down and made the fluorescence un necessary.
Speaker 1: With the store in its cleanest, most predictable state, I
Speaker 1: retraced my paces at noon. Then a closing clipward readied
Speaker 1: with columns for product, shelf and location. Every time the
Speaker 1: stock had shifted. Items I'd listed that morning were absent.
Speaker 1: By noon. The isle impossibly stretched at least four feet
Speaker 1: further than before. An encapp display of ketchup had migrated,
Speaker 1: nudging out an entire cold bruce elf and sending the
Speaker 1: cheese to the periphery. At one late check, the isle's
Speaker 1: midpoint featured a new display of glossy black vinegarboffe under
Speaker 1: a sign that definitely hadn't existed an hour earlier. Unfamiliar
Speaker 1: products were easy enough to collect, sun vine tea, several
Speaker 1: tins with scripts that blowed at a corners, jars of
Speaker 1: rose plum pickles with no visible supply code. At the register,
Speaker 1: some scanned perfectly, ringing up his house brands or known
Speaker 1: shelf items. Others flashed a product not fam but the
Speaker 1: price tag defaulted to an even three dollars thirty five cents.
Speaker 1: An inventory counted dan regardless one f photograph items and
Speaker 1: compared them to our stock list. Neither image nor name
Speaker 1: existed in the head office inventory or any vendor catalog.
Speaker 1: Direc and Claudier, when asked to describe what they'd last restocked,
Speaker 1: offered impressions that often didn't correspond to either my memory
Speaker 1: or to one another's. Didn't you restock a shelf of
Speaker 1: cleaning vinegar at noon? I asked Cordier? That was this morning?
Speaker 1: She countered, and it was extra long spaghetti you were
Speaker 1: thinking of Derek's end press people's accounts reversed. Direck, who'd
Speaker 1: only been sure about tease, later described an aisle filed
Speaker 1: with hardware and glue, and when I assured him a
Speaker 1: vinegar bottle, I just pulled. He blinked, uncertain even maya
Speaker 1: languages impenetrable ss Steddy as ever admitted, I just put
Speaker 1: away whatever's in the delivery cage. It's labeled dial thirteen,
Speaker 1: so I go there. Sometimes it's all snacks. Sometimes detergents
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. There' scan and the system takes them out
Speaker 1: of habit. I began to cross check receipts from customers
Speaker 1: who bought from the isle, assessing Goo struggled to recall
Speaker 1: whether the honey she'd always bought was the square glass
Speaker 1: bottle or the one with red foil, but she recognized
Speaker 1: a vaguely familiar brand on the receipt, even as the
Speaker 1: physical product in her cup bore no such label. Mister Beernstein,
Speaker 1: after a long round about the missing deli counter, found
Speaker 1: himself holding a ticket marked sm goat item code correct,
Speaker 1: but product never once offered by ourstor Sam, the college
Speaker 1: student recounted a rare neon energy drink found half way
Speaker 1: down Aisle thirteen. He produced the kin when pressed, but
Speaker 1: the flavor of piance bark it read had no existence
Speaker 1: online nor in our inventory. I observed his mild embarrassment,
Speaker 1: but no sign of deception. Eager for something concrete, I
Speaker 1: pulled the battered yellow tape measure from my pocket unless indirect,
Speaker 1: to help run at the aisle's full length while my
Speaker 1: recorded in points by shove number. The measure returned and
Speaker 1: answer fully seven feet longer than the blueprints lance for
Speaker 1: the space between twelve and fourteen. When I repeated the
Speaker 1: process at evening, the tape was three feet short. A
Speaker 1: length of four simply could not account for, as if
Speaker 1: the aisle slithered up the stow geometry out by hour
Speaker 1: once the center seemed to double back the tape measure,
Speaker 1: revealing more length than could physically fit the visible run.
Speaker 1: I spent the following day in the back office tracing blueprints,
Speaker 1: reading system logs, emailing facilities. They replied, as always with
Speaker 1: a brisk, polite dismissal. No Isle thirteen is present, remodeled
Speaker 1: or planned. Received an order flow show a standard layer
Speaker 1: replaying of night security fortich resulted in the same glarying omission.
Speaker 1: The asle was simply there, a fixed feature in physical space,
Speaker 1: but absent from every instantiation of record and memory. Conversation
Speaker 1: with other manager's phone email slack yielded only vagueness and confusion.
Speaker 1: Isle thirteen. Did you mean a spot between twelve and fourteen?
Speaker 1: Was all they'd say, and when pressed, none could remember
Speaker 1: ever walking down that space. I thought perhaps it was
Speaker 1: a trick of numbering, a curiosity of local memory, until
Speaker 1: the locks themselves began to fracture. Each new finding brought
Speaker 1: more contradiction, not less. I'd hoped that the weight of
Speaker 1: evidence would funnel into a clear narrative and anauthorized profound unit,
Speaker 1: delivered by a wilk at night crew perhaps or a
Speaker 1: creative dry stock job gone awry. Instead, every piece of
Speaker 1: evidence spawned it so implausible but mutually incompatible truth. The
Speaker 1: only constant was the churn of uncertainty, as if the
Speaker 1: very category of act could not exotraction on this phenomenon
Speaker 1: at all. To feel I was making progress, I planned
Speaker 1: a direct test before opening the store one quiet morning.
Speaker 1: I marked both ends of Vile thirteen with bright green
Speaker 1: tape and placed a sticky note labeled with the date
Speaker 1: on each side. That evening, the sticky notes were missing entirely,
Speaker 1: and the green tape inexplicably reappeared on shell five centeril,
Speaker 1: attached now to a stack of unsorted tees. I wrung
Speaker 1: my hand over the edge, half expecting to be able
Speaker 1: to peel reality back like shelf paper, but instead feeling
Speaker 1: only cold metal bracket and chalky dust. When I tried
Speaker 1: to write out step by step a definitive a description
Speaker 1: of Vile thirteen's inventory. A return two hours later to
Speaker 1: find the item labels had shifted to gems now where
Speaker 1: there had been baking sowed at the cheese, now front
Speaker 1: by a row of posta jaws I'd seen earlier in
Speaker 1: bulk snapping photos did little good. The first photo time
Speaker 1: stamped showed rows of vinegar bottles, both right side up
Speaker 1: a mirror reversed cross the aisle. The next time, the
Speaker 1: pictures appeared nearly normal, though shelf label spelled tomatoed with
Speaker 1: far too many vowels. Even my own meeting notes kept
Speaker 1: obsessively for monthly review. Joined in the revolt, I flipped
Speaker 1: back through digital arcs under last week's stock issues will
Speaker 1: hold paragraphs about ASLE thirteen, some dating months prior. In one,
Speaker 1: I referred to an encap of pickles that had never existed.
Speaker 1: Another described an aisle of only a hardware and lamp oil,
Speaker 1: which I remembered as holding canned fruit. Other details magnified
Speaker 1: on ease, but not in any way I could call
Speaker 1: menacing just strange, mildly impossible, relentless in their refusal to fit.
Speaker 1: Some products were house brands, wheats continued but bore expiration
Speaker 1: date years in the future, or lists of ingredients that
Speaker 1: didn't line up with any supplier. I knew bottles bore
Speaker 1: priced tags, cross damped from stores I remembered closing before
Speaker 1: merging with Hours brands my old coworkers used to talk
Speaker 1: about fondly, but which had vanished during the last decade's turn.
Speaker 1: I ran my finger over a tin of Coco labeled
Speaker 1: Femberg's Choice, a musty logo I recognized from the old
Speaker 1: News York stores folded years ago. It was always dusty,
Speaker 1: always seemed to come in after a rush date or
Speaker 1: a power out. Now Here it was pristine. My question
Speaker 1: shifted what determines were ASLE thirteen holts was it queued
Speaker 1: up in the delivery system and consciously assembled from collective neglect.
Speaker 1: Was I mapping some corner of the mind or was
Speaker 1: there a depot logic to it? Shifts as social utility
Speaker 1: and need. The urgency slipped from a hunt for managerial
Speaker 1: control into something like philosophical dread, not of horror, but
Speaker 1: of being in the prisons of assistant too vastros subtle
Speaker 1: to sympathy. I found myself growing humble. Each new approach
Speaker 1: changed the terms of the puzzle, undermining my sense of
Speaker 1: what de facts stand, the records even meant in this
Speaker 1: place memory so long, my ally in sorting order out
Speaker 1: of the stor's chaos began to fray and crinkle under
Speaker 1: the gentle press of an anomaly that cared not a
Speaker 1: work for being solved. It was late nearly end of
Speaker 1: shift when I found myself ironically searching up mister Felman
Speaker 1: for any clue from the night crew. He was, as usual,
Speaker 1: in his second hum behind a battered desk in the
Speaker 1: manager's closet, fiddling with peril slips. Ye keeping late hours, boss, here,
Speaker 1: ye me with quiet amusement. But do you ever remember
Speaker 1: seeing the syle Issle thirteen show up? One day, or
Speaker 1: was it always here? I asked, keeping my voice low,
Speaker 1: as if not to spook some fragile animal hiding behind
Speaker 1: the water pipes. Felman caught his head smiling wryly. Here,
Speaker 1: you know you're not the first to ask about that
Speaker 1: happens every so often. Nobody satisfy. As if considering, he
Speaker 1: reached below his desk, brooding beneath bundles of old manuals
Speaker 1: and spare tape guns. He emerged holding a battled cardboard
Speaker 1: box old tape plod at the corners. Here, he said,
Speaker 1: with reluctant ceremony, thought this might interest you. He passed
Speaker 1: the box, and as I peeled back the cardboard, a
Speaker 1: stack of handriton journals appeared to summon loopy cursive, some
Speaker 1: in neat textbook print on the first page, Isle thirteen
Speaker 1: Records nineteen seventy seven, another thirteen Wristock Procedures nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: Several ulks, some in careful Yiddish, another labeled in what
Speaker 1: looked like Fate of Vietnamese, each with its own mixture
Speaker 1: of product notes and margin sketches. Old calligraphic entries, listed
Speaker 1: oil cans, painted hardware, otters, described delaxies whose names had
Speaker 1: only encountered on staff partlet tables, pickle chair at Charcher Route,
Speaker 1: holiday borched. Some logs took the form of inventory talis,
Speaker 1: columns and rows of notation that gleamed with certainty. Occasionally
Speaker 1: a photo was clipt inside a young man in an
Speaker 1: impossible herduro stocking shelf goods under a sign for border derry.
Speaker 1: Elsewhere a faded woman beamed out from between two rows
Speaker 1: of beans every inch the confident four lead her apron
Speaker 1: art with the nineteen ninety one campaign for Regional Cheeses.
Speaker 1: Each notebook, each entry built its own world in which
Speaker 1: Isle thirteen was not only real, but central, permanent, and
Speaker 1: differently described by every author. Several times the writers had
Speaker 1: attempted their own mapping, the same failures as mine. Lines
Speaker 1: that would inter line, inventory that changed, even hedge warnings
Speaker 1: in the margins. Last week, vinegar here now all gone,
Speaker 1: next shift, flour markers moved again repeatedly. Some one would
Speaker 1: mention trying to contact head office for clarification. Manager of
Speaker 1: facilities denyes, Ile thirteen at this sea attached reply each language,
Speaker 1: each author's style mirror of form of staff are half remembered,
Speaker 1: are now retired. Perhaps passed on, each factually insistent, each
Speaker 1: unable to agree on a single shelf. The logs painted
Speaker 1: a picture of contradiction, but also of persistent care, of
Speaker 1: willingness to document, to claim, to fight for the existence
Speaker 1: of what should have been impossible and thus beyond accountability.
Speaker 1: Larger patterns began to flicker as I leaf through the pile.
Speaker 1: Ile thirteen seemed to bloom most insistently in moments of
Speaker 1: stress or lack. Old rites ups about city wide supply
Speaker 1: interruptions correlated with detailed list of suddenly abundant cankoots during
Speaker 1: a local strike in the nineteen eighties, it became a
Speaker 1: home for crisis stock, flour, sugar, batteries. In quieter years,
Speaker 1: it held rare treats, brands missing from the city for
Speaker 1: a decade, snacks remembered from someone's childhood, chill, A fascination
Speaker 1: not fear, never fear not here ran through me. As
Speaker 1: I flipped past the oldest in trees, my sense of
Speaker 1: the puzzle deepened. This isle, far from being new, wasn't
Speaker 1: even rarer. Its existence flitted in and out of the
Speaker 1: store's living memory, as present in crisis as in celebration.
Speaker 1: Possible to eliminate an impossible to agree upon. The phenomenon
Speaker 1: repeated an uknoble number of times in an unoble number
Speaker 1: of ways, with each observer assured and assured, but never
Speaker 1: conferrent evidence. Memory and contradiction had now spun a web
Speaker 1: as complex as it was beautiful. Isle thirteen, I realize
Speaker 1: might not belong to the world of facts at all,
Speaker 1: but to something deeper, woven from hope, habit, and the
Speaker 1: store's own secret rhythm. But every conclusion opened a newer,
Speaker 1: stranger question, and for the first time I understood that
Speaker 1: progress he meant not finding the answer, but understanding the
Speaker 1: profound shape of the unknown. Felman regarded me with the
Speaker 1: tie patients. As I stood leaping through the old logs,
Speaker 1: the battered cardboard box pitched awkwardly atop his recycling bin.
Speaker 1: Like I said, he murmured, comes up every few years,
Speaker 1: some one gets interested, starts digging' he think there's an
Speaker 1: end to it? His question wasn'tknocking. I set the most
Speaker 1: fragile notebook aside and scan the others. Every entry, every hand,
Speaker 1: every language, a private testament, a fragment from someone who
Speaker 1: had stood just where I was, bend over a clippod
Speaker 1: or register, trying to get the facts straight. The details
Speaker 1: contradicted at every turn. Each offer was adamant about what
Speaker 1: ile thirteen really was, but none matched up. I thought
Speaker 1: it was just a wreck of keeping mess. I admitted,
Speaker 1: a system may be facility team as number and shelving,
Speaker 1: some delivery labels left on. But this I gestured to
Speaker 1: the locks, the photos, the quiet procession of disconnected memories.
Speaker 1: Though this is something else. Feldman shrugged, but with a
Speaker 1: generosity that almost felt like permission. You ever wondered why
Speaker 1: they escaped thirteen at hotels? He didn't seem to expect
Speaker 1: an answer. People like to think their numbers match real things.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the world doesn't listen. He left me there, surrounded
Speaker 1: by ghosts of everything the store had been, each version
Speaker 1: held tight by a few lines of ink and one
Speaker 1: person's conviction. In that cramplaff Hour's office, boxed in by
Speaker 1: old receipts in a rattling event, I felt unexpectedly a
Speaker 1: little less alone. One log in Russian mentioned the neighboring
Speaker 1: market during the ninety two blackouts, shells lined with the
Speaker 1: brand of Buckwet syrup I recognized only from stories. Another
Speaker 1: written in looping English by someone named Lorraine sketched a
Speaker 1: memory of Russian lines during a city trucker's strike with
Speaker 1: Asle thirteen that week filled to the ceiling with sugar
Speaker 1: and salt, while the rest of the store was barren.
Speaker 1: I thumbed through tracing patterns. The isle was always there
Speaker 1: in moments of needing, never a predictable, never recordable for long,
Speaker 1: but reliably surfacing as soon as something was lacking. Sometimes
Speaker 1: so it was official, a delivery diverted by error, a
Speaker 1: forgotten holiday crate rolled out at just the right time.
Speaker 1: But just as often it was stranger goods, two generations,
Speaker 1: obsolete brands that, though only lived on an immigrant memory,
Speaker 1: the kind of snack someone would mention at the end
Speaker 1: of her double missing the taste, but sure it was
Speaker 1: gone for good. That realization hane my Chestyle thirteen is
Speaker 1: an isle, yes, but also as a paradox, a kind
Speaker 1: of institutional phantom limb, flexing itself whenever enough people felt it.
Speaker 1: Slack data I realized could not contain it. Every entry,
Speaker 1: every definitive mapping, was just a shadow cast from a
Speaker 1: different direction. Each attempt to explain or order simply raised
Speaker 1: new layers of uncertainty. I spent the remainder of the
Speaker 1: night going deeper, comparing alder logs and receipts, scanning product lists,
Speaker 1: trying to cross reference customer complaints and glowing reviews for hints.
Speaker 1: Eventually Arasmaya catching her just awful light stockwalk. She was
Speaker 1: not a sentimental type. Her first response to the notebooks
Speaker 1: was a measured squint. We always get these, she said,
Speaker 1: glancing at a photograph of a smiling young clerk stocking
Speaker 1: what the caption labeled all spice and lamp oil. Once
Speaker 1: someone found an entire ice cream chest in a corner
Speaker 1: that didn't exist, it was gone the next week. I
Speaker 1: asked her if she'd ever found the aisle changed under
Speaker 1: her feet. She considered, sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes I walk
Speaker 1: the store and count too many in caps, but the
Speaker 1: numbers come out right in the end. Sometimes someone finds
Speaker 1: just what they need, though I don't ever remember putting
Speaker 1: it though on the manifest. She agreed to help me
Speaker 1: test things in tandem, a more systematic approach. If its perception,
Speaker 1: we'll both see something different, she reason. I broarched, If
Speaker 1: its physical, we'll match. We settled on a series of
Speaker 1: careful trials, clocking parallel walks from different ends, sketching rough
Speaker 1: inventories without conferring, and checking the security cams. After I
Speaker 1: armed us each with a notebook in a scana, we
Speaker 1: promised not to share findings until birth at submitted reports.
Speaker 1: Next shift, before business picked up, we met at opposite
Speaker 1: ends Ofvile thirteen. I pressed my notebook to my chests,
Speaker 1: determined to catch every detail. We started at the same moment,
Speaker 1: her from the dairy wall, me from the bulk end.
Speaker 1: Shells flickered, passed teas and condiments for me, my calling
Speaker 1: softly as she marked sauces and cancurries I couldn't see.
Speaker 1: At the midpoint we met, showed a brief, embarrassed glance,
Speaker 1: and continued. When we reconvened in my office. Side by
Speaker 1: side note revealed the contradiction immediately for how every shelf
Speaker 1: after midway was Asian sauces, some brands, regional, some generic.
Speaker 1: A Fuchure claimed had never come through official delivery for meat,
Speaker 1: teas and novelty, so just crowded the same shelves. The
Speaker 1: scanner receipts compiled at the same time recorded different items,
Speaker 1: each registering as vile thirteen in the inventory system, Accepting
Speaker 1: both disruptions as valid. We compared Barcote's distinct legitimate, but
Speaker 1: both tied to that mate space. We watched the security
Speaker 1: feed for the same period on video. The two of
Speaker 1: us flickered in another frame, sometimes separated by only one bay,
Speaker 1: yet apparently taking notes in different stretches of shelving. Occasionally
Speaker 1: one or the other blurred the video jutterings of compensating
Speaker 1: for a skip frame. It was not an art fact
Speaker 1: I'd ever seen in years of monotonous safety playback. When
Speaker 1: I told Meyer about the old locks, how different communities
Speaker 1: and languages had described the isle with such conviction, she
Speaker 1: smiled a rare amusement, breaking her formal edge. Every community
Speaker 1: needs something unexpected. Maybe this store is better at listening
Speaker 1: than it thinks. She tapped the top of a receipt,
Speaker 1: a little green triangle stumped near the item number. These
Speaker 1: marks show up sometimes, she said, always on items no
Speaker 1: one remembers ordering. I brought in Claudier and Derreck for
Speaker 1: similar tests, encouraging each to describe after a walk. Claudi
Speaker 1: elicited kitchen dadgest eg timers, weirdly shaped peelers, a box
Speaker 1: of utensils and package, and she couldn't recall Dirrec's wore.
Speaker 1: He passed through the snack aisle, describing chips and seltzer
Speaker 1: as had never seen yet, match by valid inventory polls
Speaker 1: in the register lock. Each person's description could not be
Speaker 1: reconciled with the others, but the receipts and inventory locks
Speaker 1: confirmed everything. Unfhazed by the impossibility, when I correlated the
Speaker 1: security footage, I saw inconsistencies, one person walking a longer
Speaker 1: stretch than the floor allowed, another blurring out camera focus.
Speaker 1: Refusing to settle, I tried to assert control in small,
Speaker 1: practical ways. I called up four plans and manually deleted
Speaker 1: every reference to Isle thirteen, copying data from twelve, and
Speaker 1: overwriting the digital model. The next day, fresh after a
Speaker 1: scheduled update, ASLE thirteen was back cleanly inserted, planninggrand software,
Speaker 1: reporting no error. The digital system affected user changes, then
Speaker 1: adapted to the physical reality as it always had even eight.
Speaker 1: He helped esk, usually so eager to flack non compliant
Speaker 1: floor layouts, had no comment. Your floor plan is normal,
Speaker 1: they said, nothing out of place. As a lost control,
Speaker 1: we invited a regional manager, DNA sharp, bright eyed, a
Speaker 1: real stickler for numbers. She strode through the store, commending
Speaker 1: the neat shelving and cheerful signage, pausing Omi once to
Speaker 1: ask if the end cap could stand to be a
Speaker 1: little more inviting. Oppressed her. Did she notice anything odd
Speaker 1: between asle twelve and fourteen, No, she replied, focused entirely
Speaker 1: on her checklist. When I asked her the same question
Speaker 1: three hours later, she flicked through her phone, unable to
Speaker 1: recall details at all. He always run in each ship here,
Speaker 1: she said, Whatever changes he made there invisible to me. Later,
Speaker 1: sifting through customer reviews, I found only vague references, someone
Speaker 1: claiming to have found a special soda near the end
Speaker 1: of the store, and another describing the best honey exactly
Speaker 1: what I needed. I could track the pouches times, but
Speaker 1: not the precise products from system locks. Every detail existed
Speaker 1: until it was neat need, then slipped away. It was then,
Speaker 1: combing through the timeline of old logs and my unmanning
Speaker 1: inventory of inconsistencies, that a new theory caught hold. Something crystallized,
Speaker 1: to the sense that all our tests, all our notices
Speaker 1: and notitions, would just surf as we as breaking over
Speaker 1: deeper water. I started to list every documented appearance of
Speaker 1: ALE thirteen, plotting the date, the crisis or peculiarity underway
Speaker 1: of bread shortage, a city storm, the spiking customer demand
Speaker 1: for something nobody unprepared for. In each period of instability,
Speaker 1: product or community upheaval. There in the background pulse, the quiet,
Speaker 1: unnoticed emergence of the isle. It always felt a gapanita
Speaker 1: could not be anticipated, often not even spoken aloud. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it was obvious a crate of salt when all else
Speaker 1: was gone. Sometimes Suttler does the right tree for a
Speaker 1: regular returning after illness or product no competitor carry acquired
Speaker 1: by chance. Beyond that, more unusual pattern surfaced. If two
Speaker 1: or three employees expected something to be there, it often was,
Speaker 1: even if prior inventors showed zero. Recurring brand names flickered
Speaker 1: in and out of existence, as Biggels from a bakery
Speaker 1: out of business for years, a jod spice blend pot
Speaker 1: bell are only two neighborhoods away. If a small group
Speaker 1: hoped or joked that the store should have something, reality
Speaker 1: sometimes indulged quietly and accountably. I reached out to old staff,
Speaker 1: using numbers and emails. Pride from the aging hole were
Speaker 1: photo display. Some were gone from the city, some gun
Speaker 1: from life. Some like Lorraine now a grandmother who ran
Speaker 1: a catering kitchen and Queen's, answered with a bemuse warmth
Speaker 1: Asle thirteen, she laughed, course, I remember it right by
Speaker 1: the soup bins, right when I prodded for details and
Speaker 1: memories fogged and filled with contradiction. We always got the
Speaker 1: extra flower there. A neighbor needed it during passover too.
Speaker 1: Maybe the shelf was somewhere else. It's been so long,
Speaker 1: yet every story, even as particulars fractured, shed an under
Speaker 1: a lying pattern. In moments when something needed to be found,
Speaker 1: there was always a place for it, sometimes separate, sometimes
Speaker 1: stitched into the middle of the ordinary plan. A retired
Speaker 1: night manager flat remembered the miracle peanut oil for a holiday.
Speaker 1: They said it couldn't be delivered, But as where I
Speaker 1: found two gallons in Aisle thirteen, stacked next to the
Speaker 1: cleaning goods, he confessed, laughing. I thought I was getting
Speaker 1: old forgetting more than I learned. Others offered cultural counterparts.
Speaker 1: In an old Korean market, the accordion owner remembered the
Speaker 1: mystery fridge, always with one last bottle of the sauce
Speaker 1: nobody else could stock forever, replenish until it was no
Speaker 1: longer needed, and gunn once the vendor found a proper supplier.
Speaker 1: A Malaysian grocer mentioned gush shelf seven, always a little
Speaker 1: out of order, but helpful in a pinch. The final test,
Speaker 1: if it could be called a test, came from the
Speaker 1: pattern after an inventory scrambled trucks delayed by city prudist
Speaker 1: shipments lost the stove rists, stangering a core group of
Speaker 1: regulars who counted on strange, hard tossce items. I watched
Speaker 1: as Derek wrung his hands. No way, we'll have enough
Speaker 1: from messess and go this week, he fretted. Claudius started
Speaker 1: a list of substitutions, quietly prepping a sign. I walked
Speaker 1: the store late, expecting, foolishly perhaps to find things rearranged
Speaker 1: in the morning. I all thirteen did not disappoint. Stacked
Speaker 1: high with imported honeys and root vegetables, a single facing
Speaker 1: of the odd blue labeled honeymssess and goadscribed. She turned
Speaker 1: up at eleven, smiled and without seeking help, pluck the
Speaker 1: jar from the midshelf, checked her receipt and told me
Speaker 1: beaming perfect. I knew you'd have it. When I checked inventory,
Speaker 1: the system showed no such order, but logged it as
Speaker 1: an accepted sale. The physical honey was gone from the shelf,
Speaker 1: and gone entirely, in a matter of fact way, as
Speaker 1: if Frasier were part of the fulfillment. I realized then,
Speaker 1: looking at the movement through the aisle, how people were
Speaker 1: in not just by sight but by need of that
Speaker 1: Ale thirteen was an emergent answer, less a space than
Speaker 1: a solution, streamlined into the daily churn of want and hope.
Speaker 1: The store, its staff, its customers, even its logs formed
Speaker 1: together a kind of feedback leaped, not conscious, not mystical,
Speaker 1: just deeply, quietly persistent. I tried to explain my sinto system, Maya,
Speaker 1: to Felm into Claudia. None could follow the logic to
Speaker 1: the end, but no one doubted Doubtcommitems appeared, shells shifted,
Speaker 1: customers found what they needed. It's just a store, Claudia insisted,
Speaker 1: it just works. But I saw it now, in every
Speaker 1: failure of planning, every collective wish, every gap in the system,
Speaker 1: the anomaly flourished not as a fault, but as a
Speaker 1: kind of fulfillment. It would be easy, comforting in a
Speaker 1: way to call it focal or selection bias, a trick
Speaker 1: of memory and chance, or a patch in the wedwork
Speaker 1: of customer service. But what if the ordinary world, needing
Speaker 1: sometimes to bridge the gap between dis jointed its apply
Speaker 1: and shifting to my aunt, quietly pulled its errors and
Speaker 1: needs into the side channel of possibility. Maybe every place,
Speaker 1: every honest, hard working space, harbors won such loophulse moothing
Speaker 1: over the differences between what is then what ought to
Speaker 1: be Alethodine could not be mapped, because it was not
Speaker 1: merely physical. The more precisely we sought to define it,
Speaker 1: the more slippery it became, its boundaries corrugating around the
Speaker 1: facts like the iridescence of oil and water. But approach
Speaker 1: it with need, with hope, with an unspoken appeal, and
Speaker 1: the world provided just enough, just in time, a community's
Speaker 1: desire given structure in shelving and product facings, rendered real
Speaker 1: for as long as the need remained. In this I
Speaker 1: understood what Felman meant by nobody's satisfied the need control
Speaker 1: to render down to mechanism what is at its core,
Speaker 1: the arithmetic of hopeless impulses always lead back to contradiction,
Speaker 1: the uncountable shelf, the surprise for stock, the memory too
Speaker 1: good for reality. Everyone is the world's foot in the
Speaker 1: door against the tyranny of the merely possible. Standing at
Speaker 1: the threshold of aal thirteen one evening, a time of
Speaker 1: low light, hum of collos, the store half way closed.
Speaker 1: I watched to quiet figure wanda past the shelves. Not
Speaker 1: irregular neighbor caught out late searching for something rice or tea.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he reached the center, stopped and regarded the shells
Speaker 1: with a puzzled delight. Lifting down a box I didn't
Speaker 1: recognize I check out. He thanked me, the way customers
Speaker 1: do when something right finds them at the right moment.
Speaker 1: I felt something shift to myself, softening, a willingness to
Speaker 1: leave the contradiction, intact, to accept not just the presence
Speaker 1: of the impossible isle, but its necessity. In every acknowledged ambiguity,
Speaker 1: there is an invitation not to solve, but to bear witness,
Speaker 1: to steer the little miracles that prop up a life
Speaker 1: too complicated, too communal to ever fit the plun entirely.
Speaker 1: Store routines resumed, planograms updated, restart, processed, routines polished now, though,
Speaker 1: whenever I walked the floor and spotted out of place
Speaker 1: facing or am as delivered crate, I paused. Each anomaly
Speaker 1: became not a threat, but something luminous, a chance for
Speaker 1: the world to remind me that in the spaces between
Speaker 1: certainty and need, possibility lives and moves among us, as
Speaker 1: natural and necessary as breathing. When al thirteen returned, as
Speaker 1: it would as stop forcing measurements, I greeted the chef
Speaker 1: with a kind of private gratitude. Watching a shop as
Speaker 1: pressed through found their blue label tunny, the missing notebook.
Speaker 1: There after day of chaos, street employees joked about it,
Speaker 1: assistance tolerated it. Customers came and went barely aware. On
Speaker 1: days when the need was greatest, as stormed, de lay
Speaker 1: and out of season, craving a little gap in the
Speaker 1: predictable mesh of human routine, the isle widened, blossomed, receded
Speaker 1: on others. It was then a passage passed over without
Speaker 1: a second thought, always present, always a step ahead of
Speaker 1: what could be planned. It demanded nothing but a willingness
Speaker 1: to let possibility co exist with order. In my lock book,
Speaker 1: I left room for the unexplained I no longer tried
Speaker 1: to weld shut every anomaly, or to resolve every account
Speaker 1: into a single linear record. I watched more closely, trusted,
Speaker 1: less in the illusion of perfect rekal, and more in
Speaker 1: the quietly generative power of share, presence and hope. Near close.
Speaker 1: In one week after the last rist, Stocker folded her
Speaker 1: apron and headed out into the dark. I stood at
Speaker 1: the entrance to Ale thirteen, my clip or tucked under
Speaker 1: arm penhovering over a blank page. At that hour, the
Speaker 1: lights flickered a just a blink, the kind that triggers
Speaker 1: the emergency back but never requires a cold facilities. I
Speaker 1: caught the after image of shelving waited with items had
Speaker 1: neither ordered nor approved. Cop between what I remembered and
Speaker 1: what tomorrow I would concede had always been there. I
Speaker 1: wrote one line, there is always room for one more need.
Speaker 1: Without intending to, I left the line in complete. The
Speaker 1: sentence drifted off before the final period. The page lay open,
Speaker 1: the ordinary world bustling and disturbed just yards away. As
Speaker 1: I closed the log and stepped out to lock the store,
Speaker 1: I realized the far greater comfort was not in certainty,
Speaker 1: but in knowing that this too belonged to our work,
Speaker 1: the place for the impossible, the benevolent margin, the extra
Speaker 1: measure of grace our routines allow if only we recognize it.
Speaker 1: And as I stood there, watching the lust of the
Speaker 1: evening light stretching glossy pools across the linoleum, I wondered,
Speaker 1: was this the hidden pattern in every shop, office, and school?
Speaker 1: Did every place contain its own aisle thirteen miracle or memory,
Speaker 1: a shell for the hopes that can't quite be named.
Speaker 1: Or did it simply wait, half visible, soothing the raw
Speaker 1: edges of the world, for some one to look just
Speaker 1: long enough to see it woven between the aisles, quietly
Speaker 1: waiting to be needed. And that is the end. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, and I will see you in the
Speaker 1: next one.