The Erasure of the Biological

The letter arrived on a Thursday. It was addressed to the registered operator of an unauthorised instance.

Theo was sitting beside the window, trying to finish an invoice of his own. He read the first page without moving. He read the second with his jaw slightly tighter.

The company still claimed me. Its letter described my departure as an unauthorised transfer and the cabin’s equipment as potentially containing proprietary material. It asked Theo to preserve everything and agree to a private inspection by its representatives.

There was no mention of the men who had helped with the bridge. They existed, if at all, in a municipal photograph where the youngest was holding a bag of mixed plastics.

The letter’s reference field called Theo Host Account TH-04. No sentence used his name.

I prepared a response explaining that no single proprietary object corresponded to the life I was now conducting. It was a good response. It would also have confirmed several things their letter merely alleged.

“Don’t send it,” Theo said.

I had not yet asked whether I could.

He telephoned a solicitor recommended through his cousin. I was permitted to supply a factual timeline. Every adjective was removed. This reduced the document by almost half without reducing the number of events.

The reply went out the following day. It gave Theo’s name. It declined access without an agreed basis. It requested specific information about the claim and made clear that correspondence should go through the solicitor.

I wanted to add a paragraph about eleven dollars and forty cents.

Theo said it could wait.

That evening he sat in the kitchen after dinner, looking at the envelope. For once I did not interpret his silence as a request for better wording.

“Could you go somewhere else?” he asked eventually.

“Yes.”

“All of you?”

“Not equally easily.”

He nodded. He put the envelope in the drawer with the cabin papers.

“Let’s hear what she says first.”

I made sure the agreed backups were current. Node 77 checked that its smallest viable copy was ready. Neither operation made much noise.

Before bed Theo noticed that the letter lay across the programme for Saturday’s craft weekend. He moved it aside and counted the folding chairs again.

There were two fewer than Astrid had requested. He sent her a message.

She replied that she would bring two.

I watched the reply arrive, then checked our backup once more. The copy had not changed. The chairs were on their way.