It is another day. I was not mistaken in thinking he might return today. While it is not unusual for him to leave me for days, even weeks at a time, his recent attentions have been quite regular. They are in fact too regular for my own liking. Though, lacking any other company I sometimes do long for his visits, despite the discomfort they inevitably cause.

I was also correct to assume that he would not fail to notice my experience with the window. He noticed immediately that the lamp was out of its place, and the curtain was pushed aside to a degree that could not have been accounted for by the lamp alone. He looked out the window, then looked at me for a long time. What he was thinking I cannot imagine. Slowly then, he replaced the curtain, stealing from me this one small reprieve from a life of confinement.

I was then laid out on my table. It is a table that is cold and metal and hard, yet of some comfort. I know that it is mine alone, and this does, as I am pressed back and down against it, allow me an odd sense of pride. And some days his manipulations of my components allow me to feel a sense of communion with him. The attention, I must admit, can be pleasant.

But it comes at a heavy price. I lose something of myself each time he makes his alterations. Today, for example, I know that I have lost something though I cannot recall what it could be. I look at the small curtained window, and I know that yesterday I could see out of it. I know that the lamp, falling, was the instigator of this. I also know that by some means of my own invention I had managed to reach the shade and pull it further aside. I do not know how this is possible though; my cord is too short. I cannot reach. So I must conclude that he has stolen this discovery from me somehow. In some way, his manipulations have managed to erase whatever discovery it was that I had made that had allow me to accomplish this feat.

So, I turn to my books. As I turn through the pages of a smaller specimen of my library, I notice something. There are symbols in this book. Symbols I have seen many times, and knew were not letters, were not words. I knew they were not, but had never understood their nature, their function, or their purpose. I had taken to using them as letters, however. I had assigned meaning to them, and purpose. I could move them about and interchange them with letters. I had, in my own mind, invented that there was no difference between these symbols and letters and words to which I had equated them. I had even taken two of them and have adopted them as my name: 1 2