Now he stood and saw this; he did not sorrow, for it was that he was alive; he grieved not for this. He had been standing at the bottom of the mine, but he could not say how long.

His pocket watch had stopped at 2:17, and when he wound it, the hands moved backward for several minutes before stopping again. He decided not to wind it a second time.

There seemed little advantage in knowing what hour it was underground. The shaft above him had disappeared.

This did not alarm him at first. He had spent enough years around abandoned mines to know that the Comstock contained many passages that had collapsed, been sealed, or ceased to exist according to the memory of the people who had worked them.

A mine was not a building in the ordinary sense. A building remained where it had been constructed.

A mine had been persuaded to exist by men who were dead, and there was no reason to assume it would continue to honor the agreement. He looked upward anyway.

The darkness above was complete. There was no timber, no ladder, no glimmer from the opening through which he had entered.

His lamp burned steadily beside him. He checked the oil and found that it was nearly full.

He was therefore not trapped, he concluded. He was merely somewhere from which the way out could not presently be seen.

This distinction seemed important.

He had come into the abandoned silver mine because of a notice nailed to the gate that morning. The notice had been typed on ordinary white paper and fastened with two brass-headed nails.

It stated that anyone who had previously worked in the mine was required to report below before sunset to verify his employment history. He had never worked in the mine. For this reason, he had not gone.

There had been no signature on the notice, no name of an office, and no explanation of why his employment history should be verified in a mine where, according to the county records, no one had been employed for more than forty years. He had considered throwing the notice away.

Then he had considered that if it was intended for him, ignoring it might constitute an offense. He had spent most of the afternoon trying to determine what kind of offense it might be.

By four o’clock he had decided that uncertainty was more dangerous than compliance. At sunset he entered the mine.

The first hundred yards were familiar. The old rails remained half buried in rock and mud.

Timbers leaned against the walls at angles that suggested fatigue rather than collapse. There were rusted brackets, broken buckets, lengths of cable, and the remains of machinery whose purpose could no longer be established.

The farther he went, however, the less abandoned the mine appeared. Someone had swept the floor, replaced several lanterns, and put fresh chalk marks on the walls.

At one intersection he found a wooden sign pointing downward: VERIFICATION BELOW. He had followed it.

The passage had narrowed, then widened, and finally ended in a large chamber beneath the mountain. The chamber was unexpectedly clean.

A wooden table stood in its center. Behind the table sat a man in a gray suit.

The man had asked to see his papers. He had produced his driver’s license.

The man had shaken his head. “Employment papers.”

“I have never worked here.”

“That is not what I asked.”

The man had opened a large ledger. “What was your position?”

“I had no position.”

“Previous position?”

“None.”

The man had written something down. “Current position?”

“None.”

Again, he wrote.

Then he had asked, “How long have you been dead?”

The question had been asked in the same tone as the others.

“I am not dead.”

The man had looked at him with mild concern. “That complicates the record.”

He had closed the ledger. Then the lights went out, and when they came back on, the man was gone.

Now the chamber contained only him. He walked to the table, where the ledger remained open. His name was written on the first page.

Below it were several dates. Some were in the future. One was dated forty-seven years before his birth. Another was dated tomorrow. In the column marked POSITION, the word FOREMAN appeared repeatedly.

He turned the page. There was a record of his birth and a record of his death, both dated the same day. He read it twice.

He did not feel afraid. The information was troubling, but its meaning was uncertain. Documents often contained mistakes.

He had seen birth certificates with wrong addresses, tax records assigning houses to people who had never lived in them, and maps showing roads that ended in rivers. There was no reason to assume a ledger found at the bottom of an abandoned mine was more reliable than any of these.

He turned another page. There was a report concerning his conduct. He read it carefully.

The report stated that he had been guilty of negligence, although the nature of the negligence had not been specified. It stated that he had failed to perform duties that had never been explained to him.

It stated that he had been warned repeatedly and had acknowledged the warnings by remaining silent. At the bottom was his signature.

He recognized it. He sat down.

He tried to remember whether he had signed anything during the day. He remembered the gate, the notice, the road, the entrance to the mine.

He remembered a crow standing on a timber and watching him enter. He remembered thinking that the crow appeared to know where he was going.

He did not remember signing the report.

A bell rang somewhere in the darkness. He stood.

A second bell rang. Then a third. A voice called his name.

It was not loud. It did not need to be. He walked toward it.

The passage beyond the chamber had not been there before. He was certain of this.

He had inspected the walls while waiting for the man in the gray suit. Now there was a doorway where the wall had been.

He entered.

On the other side was an office. There were six desks arranged in two rows. Five were occupied by men and women in gray clothing. None looked up when he entered. Each was writing. There were no lamps on the desks, yet each person had sufficient light to see by.

At the far end sat an older woman behind a glass partition. “You are late,” she said.

“I was not told where to go.”

“You were told.”

“By whom?”

She examined a paper. “By yourself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That is not relevant.”

She pushed a form through an opening in the glass. “Sign here.”

“What is it?”

“An acknowledgment.”

“Of what?”

“That you have been informed.”

“About what?”

She looked at him. “That you have been informed.”

He read the form. It contained one sentence: I acknowledge that I have been informed of the matter concerning which I have been informed.

Below the sentence was a space for his signature. He did not sign.

The woman waited. The clerks continued writing.

Finally she said, “Your refusal has been noted.”

“I refuse to sign because I don’t know what I am acknowledging.”

“That has also been noted.”

“What happens now?”

“That depends on whether you sign.”

“But if I don’t sign?”

“Then the matter proceeds without your acknowledgment.”

“What matter?”

The woman looked almost impatient. “The matter for which you were summoned.”

“I was summoned because of my employment history.”

“Yes.”

“I never worked here.”

“That is your position.”

“It is a fact.”

“We have not disputed it.”

“Then why am I here?”

She looked down at the paper again. “You are here because you are here.”

He waited for an explanation. None came.

He began to understand that explanations were not given in this place because they were not considered necessary. The mine did not operate by withholding information. It operated on the assumption that information already existed somewhere and that the failure to possess it was the individual’s defect.

He signed the form. The woman stamped it. The stamp made no mark.

“Proceed to the lower level,” she said.

“Where is it?”

“Down.”

“Which way?”

She pointed behind him. The wall had opened. He entered a stairwell. The stairs descended farther than the mountain should have permitted.

He counted the steps for a while. At seven hundred he stopped counting. At one thousand he began again. At two thousand, he noticed that his lamp had grown brighter.

He descended.

From somewhere below came the sound of machinery. The Comstock had been quiet for decades, yet the sound was unmistakable. Metal struck metal in a steady rhythm. There was also the distant grinding of wheels.

When he reached the bottom, he found another chamber. This one was enormous. Silver ore glittered in the walls. The floor had been cleared.

Hundreds of men stood along the edges of the chamber, each holding a pick. They were all dead.

He knew this immediately, not because they appeared decomposed, but because they had the patient expression of men who had already completed their obligation. Their clothing belonged to different centuries. Some wore old mining clothes. Others wore modern work boots and reflective vests. One man wore a suit and carried a briefcase.

No one spoke.

At the center of the chamber stood a scale. On one side was a pile of silver ore. On the other was a small black stone.

A man approached him. The man was the same age as he was. He carried a clipboard.

“You are required to work.”

“For how long?”

“Until the account balances.”

“What account?”

The man pointed to the scale. “What do I owe?”

The man consulted his clipboard. “That information is confidential.”

“How can I repay something if I don’t know what I owe?”

“You may begin.”

A pickaxe was placed in his hands. He looked at the miners. None moved.

“What are they doing?”

“They have finished.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they have finished.”

“Finished what?”

The man with the clipboard sighed. “You are making this unnecessarily difficult.”

He struck the wall. The pick entered the rock easily. A piece of silver fell. The man with the clipboard weighed it. The scale did not move.

“Again.”

He struck the wall again. Another piece fell. Nothing happened. He worked for what seemed like hours. Then days.

There was no hunger and no thirst. This concerned him more than either would have. He could not tell whether his body was being sustained or whether the need for sustenance had been suspended until further notice.

The miners watched. Occasionally one disappeared.

No one acknowledged it.

At last he asked the man with the clipboard, “What happens when the account balances?”

“You leave.”

“Where do I go?”

“Up.”

“Where is up?”

The man pointed toward the darkness.

He looked. There was no stairway.

The man said, “You will recognize it.”

He continued working. Eventually, the pick struck something hollow. He stopped.

The man with the clipboard approached. “Do not touch that.”

“What is it?”

“Your record.”

“How can my record be inside the wall?”

“That is where records are kept.”

He brushed away the loose rock. Behind it was a metal box. His name was engraved on the lid. He opened it.

Inside was a single sheet of paper. It stated that he had been discharged from the mine at 2:17 that afternoon. He looked at his watch.

2:17.

The hands had begun moving again. They were moving forward. The man with the clipboard took the paper from him.

“Good,” he said.

“Does this mean I’m finished?”

“No.”

“But it says I was discharged.”

“Yes.”

“Then why am I still here?”

The man looked at him for a long moment. “That is the difficulty.”

“What difficulty?”

“You are still here.”

The miners began to move. All of them picked up their tools. They walked toward the walls.

He realized then that they were not miners at all. They were witnesses.

Each had come here because, at some point in his life, he had been present when someone else had failed to understand something. Each had been assigned to remember that failure. They had been underground so long that memory had become their only occupation.

One of them approached him. It was the man in the suit with the briefcase.

“You should go,” the man said.

“Where?”

The man pointed upward.

“But there is no way out.”

“There is always a way out.”

“Then why can’t I find it?”

The man smiled. “Because you are looking for an exit.”

“What should I look for?”

“The entrance.”

Then he walked away.

The chamber began to fill with dust. He looked toward the wall where he had entered. There was no wall. There was no chamber. There was only a narrow passage leading upward.

He followed it.

After some time, he saw daylight. He climbed. At last he reached the surface.

The gate stood open. His automobile was parked beside it.

Morning had come. He checked his watch.

It was 2:17. He looked at the date. It was the date printed on the report of his death.

A woman stood beside his automobile. She was holding a clipboard.

“You are late,” she said.

He stared at her.

“I have been underground.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

She checked the clipboard. “According to you, approximately forty-seven years.”

“That is impossible.”

She nodded. “It is generally considered inconvenient.”

He looked beyond her.

The road was empty. The mountains stood under a pale sky. Virginia City was visible in the distance, unchanged except for the lack of people.

“What happened to everyone?”

“Everyone has gone home.”

“Where is home?”

She looked at him as though he had asked a question for which the answer was self-evident. “Below.”

She handed him a paper. He did not take it.

“What is it?”

“Your release.”

“Am I free?”

She smiled. “No one has made that determination.”

He looked back toward the mine. The entrance had vanished. In its place was a smooth wall of stone.

He understood then that he had not escaped the mine. He had merely arrived at another part of it. He stood beneath the mountain and listened to the faint sound of picks striking rock far below.

Then the woman opened the automobile door for him. He got in. She sat beside him. Neither spoke.

The road ahead descended toward Virginia City, but after a short distance it became a tunnel. He drove into it.

It was only another entry in the ledger.