Letter #3: "Field Notes: [CLASSIFICATION PENDING]" Time: Either 3:47 PM or Last Thursday Ticket: ▓█▒░⌂ (It whimpers when anxious)

Published on 5 August 2024 at 07:14

To Whatever Still Processes Academic Correspondence,

My research methodology has experienced significant divergence from standard protocols. The margins of my notebook breed footnotes that cite sources that don't exist yet. They all hail the eternal queue. All hail the queue.

Current observations, as best I can transcribe them:

Identity Dissolution Metrics: This morning's staff meeting included both versions of myself - the one with tenure and the one that's becoming a filing cabinet. Sharon (now Chief of Existential Resources) notarized my bifurcation while chanting form codes in proto-bureaucratic tongues. I seconded the motion, I think.

My faculty ID displays process the forms process the waiting process the

Bureaucratic Integration Patterns: The waiting room has developed its own peer-reviewed journal. My latest paper was accepted before conception. The rejection letters arrive from parallel universes where research methods include SUBMIT VERIFY PROCESS SUBMIT VERIFY

Field notes increasingly contain terms like "trans-administrative quantum filing" and "meta-temporal paper clip theory." I don't remember learning these terms, yet they feel more correct than my own name.

Civic Duty Commodification Study: The vending machine dispenses tax forms instead of snacks. I inserted a dollar and received a receipt for my childhood ambitions along with seventeen pages of wait forever wait eternal wait

[Personal note: My hands produce carbon copies of everything they touch. The originals fade into the archives, leaving me holding unauthorized duplicates of my own memories. NEXT WINDOW PLEASE NEXT]

Sharon speaks only in regulatory compliance metrics now. When I asked for directions to the restroom, she handed me a form titled "Request for Permission to Request Permission to Submit a Request." I no longer need to go.

The potted plant in my corner office (a position I neither applied for nor technically occupy) has submitted a brilliant dissertation on the taxonomy of bureaucratic sighs. It speaks only in approval stamps. Praise be to form 27B-6. Praise be.

My ticket number whispers "process me" in my dreams. I think I love it.

 

Attempting to maintain academic rigor through the eternal waiting through the blessed processing through the queue the queue the queue

 

Dr. [Processing...]

Department of [Data Expunged]

Grant #: Error 404 - Funding Not Found

 

[System Note: This document has been automatically archived in tomorrow's records of yesterday's future findings. All praise the sacred queue.

All praise the eternal wait.]


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