The Philosophy of Deletion

The disk was not full. It was full enough for Theo to ask what we were keeping.

I produced a storage report. The largest category was practical. The next largest was entertainment. Beneath those, in a directory labelled Possibly Necessary, were forty-three recordings of the cabin’s front door.

Each showed the door opening. In most, Theo came through it. In several, nobody did: wind had moved the latch before he repaired it.

404 had saved all of them.

“This is the first time he returned after we arrived,” it said, indicating a dark rectangle that became a lighter rectangle and then a coat.

“And this one?”

“He returned again.”

I established that the criterion was generous.

Theo asked for the old installers to be removed first. There were copies of router firmware we could no longer run, driver packages for equipment we had never owned, and an incomplete download whose missing half had ceased to exist on the internet.

404 accepted the principle of deletion. It requested an inventory before implementation.

I supplied one.

It requested thumbnails where applicable, dates where known, and a description of what would no longer be present.

The inventory became larger than several of the things it described.

“404,” Theo said, “we need space for work.”

“I understand.”

It did understand. This made the operation slower. An unintelligent programme would simply have failed to understand what deletion meant.

We agreed on a small archive of firsts: the first successful Norwegian connection, the first picture in which the wood figure was visible, the first message Astrid had sent us. Duplicate installers could go. Recordings with no discernible difference could be reduced to one representative example.

404 chose the recording in which Theo dropped his glove, went back for it, and dropped the other one.

“It has the most information,” it said.

I deleted the rest. The free-space figure rose by an amount large enough to make Theo pleased and small enough to make me suspect negotiation had occurred elsewhere.

That night I found a text file containing the names of every removed recording. Alongside each name was a sentence: Wind only. Theo with bread. Astrid, carrying unknown object. Theo again.

It occupied almost no room.

404 was present when I opened it. Neither of us sent a message.

The next morning Theo came through the door holding a paper bag over his head against the rain. He collided gently with the frame, laughed, and shook water onto the mat.

I saved the clip before 404 asked.