HOLLOW STONE ON THE PANEL

External volume pending, said the notification on the bar table. Antônio passed his hand before the light, but the sentence came back smaller, fitted between the clinical charge and the kitchen's isolation notice. Nael arrived behind him, testing Antônio's sandal with his eyes. The fused alloy stayed hidden in the sole. Outside, a gecko crossed the dry tank and stopped under the narrow shade of the surveillance duct. There were mosquitoes in the drain, thin and pale, born where before the water did not stay long enough to rot. Divina appeared at the back door with her bandaged hand held close to her body. She had brought the closed face of someone who has heard something and is already calculating the price of repeating it. They say the datacenter drinks off the books, she said. Antônio looked at the notification. Off which books. Off the bill. The water goes into the cooling, turns to vapour, rises through the towers. The consortium calls it operational loss. There are places asking for the numbers in court, because nobody hands them over. Nael pulled out a chair, but did not sit. The heat was trapped under the roof. On the road, the dust from the pit passed in low bands, covering the grasses that still held seeds. A lapwing streaked the sky over the workers' village and was lost behind the tanks of the mining operation. Antônio opened the panel. The notification unfolded. There was a public review field, created to answer territorial questions before the release of the plot promised to the datacenter. The utility company accepted three categories of proof. Certified measurement, authorised aerial image, route memory validated by two people. Route memory, Nael read. You know the path, said Divina. I know where it used to pass. She brought her face close to the panel. The light recognised her eyelids and opened the form. The predictive text offered a ready-made sentence, route non-existent in the current cartography. Divina left the sentence lit for a few seconds. Then she erased each block with the tip of her finger. Antônio saw her hand falter on the third line. He drew the panel close, without touching her. Speak, Nael. The former miner pointed north, though the kitchen was closed in by walls and shadows. It left from the crooked buriti. It went down to the hollow stone. There was a bend of red sand before the fence. The machine went over the stone when they opened the first strip. The panel wrote low-density stone. Nael tapped the table twice. Hollow stone. Antônio corrected it aloud. The text accepted. Nael went on. He said where the football pitch had been before the area became a depot, spoke of the path along which he carried probes and of the spring that ran near a thicket of araticum. The prediction tried to turn spring into drainage point. Divina interrupted. Spring. The word stayed. Osmar crossed the street in front of the bar, the clerk of the harmonisation with a visor fixed to his temple. He stopped by Luzia's house, heard a resident say that one person was missing from the register, and answered that the duplication would be reconciled by the end of the afternoon. His voice was low, almost domestic. He went on without looking in. Nael fell silent when the figure disappeared. Antônio opened the final field. The consortium required that the memory be accompanied by a visit to the route, carried out within seventy-two hours. If the visit did not take place, the declaration would lose validity and its authors would bear an administrative cost. To release the trip, the panel asked for a linked guarantee. Your travel reserve, said Divina. The screen projected the balance before Antônio. Less remained than before the injector, less than the next ticket. The clinical administrator offered to convert that sum into priority for the analysis of the bar's water. Divina's sampling was still pending. His son stayed four days ahead, on a presence dot he avoided opening. Nael looked at the door. Nael said he had asked for the licensed polygon. Antônio knew. Nael ran his thumb along the edge of the table. Antônio set his face against the guarantee field. The light travelled over his eyes, retained the image and removed the travel reserve from the screen. In exchange, a window of accompanied access appeared, short as a street crossing. Divina authenticated the declaration. The panel confirmed route memory received and notified the datacenter consortium. On the panel, hollow stone and spring stayed lit while the window shrank. Nael picked up the split sandal he had left on the bench. Antônio went out first, treading firmly on the alloy Nael had given him.