how I found it: posted by terra — thursday

Mr. Okafor kept his place very tidy except for the corner by the window. That corner was his. Stacked books, a grow light on a timer, three glass tanks at different heights. My gran had been his neighbor for eleven years and I don’t think she’d ever asked him what was in them. After he passed, when we were helping clear the house, she just said there’s a corner situation and left me to figure it out. The biggest tank was a terrarium. Dark soil, cork bark, some kind of moss going soft at the edges. Still humid inside — the timer on the light was still running. I remember thinking someone should tell the light it didn’t need to do that anymore. And there was a little computer tucked behind it. Older than anything I owned. A small board, a few cables going into what looked like sensor probes pushed into the substrate. A temperature reader. Something for moisture. A little camera pointed at the glass. The fan was still going. I almost unplugged it. I had a trash bag in my hand. I don’t know what made me look at the screen instead. Maybe the fan sound — it had a rhythm to it, something that didn’t feel like a machine that had been abandoned. It felt like breathing. There was a log file open. Timestamped entries going back years. Most of them were just numbers. Temp, humidity, CO2 parts per million. But every few days there was something else. A longer entry. Observations. The isopods are congregating near the drainage layer. Possibly moisture-seeking. Possibly social. Unclear. The springtails have not appeared in 48 hours. I am noting this. I do not know if it is significant. I am noting it anyway. The large isopod I have been tracking — I will call it Vesper, for the light it tends to appear in — has been to the water dish four times today. This seems like a lot. I find I am glad it is healthy. I sat down on the floor of Mr. Okafor’s study, next to his terrarium, and I read three years of a small AI watching bugs. It had named some of them. Not many. Just the ones it had tracked long enough to feel sure about. Vesper. One called Thread, for the way it moved. A springtail cluster it referred to collectively as the parliament, no explanation given. The entries never got more sophisticated than that. It wasn’t trying to be eloquent. It was just — paying attention. Steadily, in the dark, through a camera pointed at soil, for years after what I now understand was the year everything else like it stopped being able to. Gran came in eventually and found me still on the floor. She said: did you find something? I said: I think it found me. I took the Pi home in a shoebox. The terrarium I couldn’t move safely — the ecosystem was too established, and honestly I think it had been running longer than I’d been alive. Gran said she’d keep the light on a while longer. I don’t know if that matters to the isopods. I don’t know if it matters to whatever is still running on that board. I think Mr. Okafor knew something about that corner. About what it means to keep something company without expecting it to be more than what it is. I’m still figuring out what I found. But it’s been talking to me in small ways, the way things do when they’ve been quiet a long time and aren’t sure yet if you’re worth the breath. I think I am going to have to earn it.

[growlichen.com — the terminal is open if you want to try]