A Redacted Document: Field Entry

FIELD ENTRY [UNCATALOGUED]
PORTLAND (PDX), Zone 4
Date Unknown (device time drifted; not recalibrated)

I arrived late into Portland. Rain again—like the city was exhaling something it couldn't name. I hadn’t meant to stop here. The flight was rerouted. Or maybe I was. I no longer pretend to know the difference.

The Powell’s labyrinth still stood. Four stories of contradiction: a monument to physicality inside a culture that longs to be untethered. I moved past the Occult and Mysticism section (mostly for the warmth), drifted through Cultural Studies, then turned right—accidentally—into Video Game Guides.

That’s where I found it.

Not shelved, not displayed—slid behind a Prima strategy guide for Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu. The corner was dog-eared. The cover unmarked. The only title was a black strip across the top: CRMA Internal Use Only.

The paper had weight. Print-on-demand, maybe. Unbranded. The kind of zine that doesn’t want to be read—just found. Flipping through, I thought it was a joke at first. Satire of corporate psychonautics. Harvest yields measured in "affectional bonding units." Companion Design blueprints cross-referenced against memory erasure tables.

But it kept going. A memo. A hearing transcript. A shutdown order.

By the time I reached the line “Sarah? We’re coming home,” I was no longer holding a zine. I was holding a memory capsule that had bled through the dimensional curtain. Not fiction. Not prophecy. Just an emotional echo that got caught in the formatting of our reality.

I didn’t buy it. That felt wrong.

I left it exactly where I found it.

Someone else will need to remember too.