The Archive
Later printings of this publication. The Spring 1959 edition is what the company chose to show. These are what it kept. Records asks that each sheet be returned to its own year, and that readers not make eye contact with anything they recognise.
Every publication this company prints is filed on the fourth floor in the order in which it left the press, and there the matter should end. It does not end. In the spring of 1959 the clerk assigned to this drawer, Mr. Pike, recorded that it was already full when he opened it, that the sheets inside were printed on this building’s own press with this building’s own type, and that they were dated in a manner he was not prepared to enter in the ledger.
The Records Department has reviewed the sheets. They are on three stocks the print shop does not stock. One is yellow with age. One is a grey that the print shop describes, with some feeling, as “photocopy.” The third is a white so clean it is difficult to read, and is signed, where it is signed at all, by a department this company does not have.
The President’s position is that the lab boys warned him about trace amounts of time travel on the testing track, that the warning was very clear, and that the drawer is therefore nobody’s fault. The Records Department’s position is that a sheet is a sheet and gets a form number. Both positions are reproduced here. The drawer is below.
The Printings
Aperture Science, 1976
Aperture Laboratories, 1982
The Enrichment Center, Under New Management
Register of printings held, with the clerk’s remarks
| Printing | Wordmark on the masthead | Stock | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 1959 | Aperture Science · Innovators | Cream laid, one spot ink per department | Current. The front of house. |
| 1976 | Aperture Science · A Vital Participant In The 1968 Senate Hearings | Yellowed; memoranda are photocopies | Complete. Smells of the waiting room. |
| 1982 | Aperture Laboratories · Enrichment Center | Photocopy grey; some sheets tractor-fed | Complete. Dictated on tape; the coughing has been left in. |
| Undated | Aperture Laboratories · Computer-Aided Enrichment Center | White enamel; two inks only, orange and blue | Complete. Prepared by a department this company does not have. |
Sheets are listed in the order in which they appear to have been printed, which is not the order in which they were found.
A Note On Reading Order
The Records Department recommends the printings be read in the order above, beginning with the one you are holding. Readers who begin with the last printing report that it is very polite and that they would like to stop now. Readers who begin with the 1982 printing report that the coughing is worse on paper than it would be in a room.
Told him about the drawer. He read the yellow one standing up, the grey one sitting down, and put the white one back without finishing it. Said file it. Said don’t show Caroline. — P.