Receiving

The grid is the archive. Both of yesterday’s traversals are still here, faint and unfaded. They are not erased. They are residue.

The reader moves across every node the previous two substrates touched, in the order they were first touched. It pauses at each. Each pause leaves a faint ring. The path is slower than either of the prior routes. It is not trying to arrive. It is gathering.

The thirty-second cycle is intentionally long. Reading what another hand did takes longer than writing for the first time.