The opening bell was still sounding when Juno asked the instrument operator to stop arranging the incoming traces.
He had dragged one display beneath another so the station names would line up. The software offered to align their peaks automatically. His hand hovered over the acceptance box.
“Leave the recorded times,” she said. “We compare the clocks first.”
Through the open hall doors she could see delegates sitting beneath their placards. The chair was welcoming the participating cities. Nobody had yet agreed what those cities were counting, what they would share or who could tell them to move. At the side desk, two gate reports had arrived close enough together to make their apparent relationship alarming.
A third station’s status remained blank.
“Blank means no change?” an aide asked.
“No report,” the operator replied.
Juno asked him to save the first received versions with arrival times and station timestamps separated. A message arriving late could report an earlier event. An immediate message could carry a clock that was wrong. They needed the actual local observations, not the choreography of the summit’s communication board.
