4.3.25 - The Book Keepers Dilemma pt 6

Parable 6: The Absence That Could Be Measured

It started with the twins’ shoes.

Two pairs by the door. Only one was missing.

Father had been getting the baby dressed, holding one sock in his teeth as he wrangled the kicking legs. The morning had already fallen behind schedule. The twins were supposed to be at kindergarten orientation in twenty-five minutes. The bagged lunches weren’t made. The car keys were buried under yesterday’s mail. And now, one of the twins’ shoes was missing.

Mother was wiping down the kitchen counters like she meant to sand them smooth. “Did you check the toy bin?” she called. “Or the freezer?”

Father frowned. “Why would it be in the freezer?”

“Because last week they put my phone in the blender. Don’t ask me for logic.”

The search intensified. Toy chests, under beds, behind the couch. No shoe.

The clock ticked louder with every room checked.

And then—suddenly—it was there.

Not found. Just… there. Sitting in the hallway like it had always been. Placed neatly.

Father froze. “Did you find it?”

“No. Did you?”

He didn’t answer. Just slipped the shoe onto the child’s foot and carried on.

Orientation was a mess of paperwork, name tags, and laminated welcome signs taped to every surface. Teachers smiled too widely. Parents shuffled like anxious cattle. The twins clung to Mother’s legs at first, then wandered off to explore.

Father stood by the juice table, watching a boy lick the spout of the fruit punch dispenser.

“You okay?” Mother asked.

He nodded. “Just tired.”

But it wasn’t just that.

His sense of time was wrong again. The clocks on the school walls didn’t match his phone. The announcements looped more than once. He could’ve sworn they had already walked past the same handmade volcano project three times.

When the twins returned, one of them handed him a crayon drawing: a family of five standing beneath a tree. A big sun above. Four smiling faces. One crossed out.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

The child shrugged. “It used to be you.”

He smiled. Pretended it was funny. But something curled behind his ribs.

At home, the air felt thinner. Not hot, just... less.

He turned on the faucet. The water pressure pulsed twice before flowing. When he tried to run the garbage disposal, it spat up bits of shredded paper. Strips of handwriting peeked through.

He plucked one out and read: “The father remains only until the record clears.”

He read it again.

“The father remains only until the record clears.”

He didn’t tell Mother.

Instead, he went to his desk. Opened the file directory. Several of his folders had renamed themselves.

"Capstone" was now "ItWasNeverReal".

"Resume_2025" had become "NowHeWatches".

He clicked on the second.

Inside was a single image file. He opened it.

A screenshot of a baby monitor feed—his baby, in real time. Except the timestamp was one hour ahead.

He watched as the child dropped a toy. Looked up. Then turned directly toward the camera, locked eyes with the lens, and whispered something.

The real baby, across the room, dropped the toy.

Looked up.

Turned to the monitor.

And whispered.

Father slammed the laptop shut.

Later, while unloading groceries, he noticed the sidewalk chalk on the driveway had changed.

What had been a hopscotch grid now read:

“When he forgets, he resets. When he remembers, he must choose.”

He knelt down, finger trembling. The chalk hadn’t been smudged or redrawn. It had simply... shifted. The texture was the same. No child had gone near it.

He waited until nightfall. Then took a photograph.

But by morning, the photo showed only hopscotch squares again.

Nothing else.

In the week that followed, Father began to count things compulsively. Tiles in the hallway. Letters in cereal ingredients. Cracks in the sidewalk. Something in him insisted that if he could just find the right number, everything would realign.

He started hearing a faint ticking in the walls. Not mechanical. Organic.

Mother asked what was wrong. He said he was tired.

The baby began babbling numbers in its sleep.

And in the mirror—just once—he saw himself blinking, out of sync.

One night, he opened a drawer looking for scissors and found a notebook he didn’t recognize.

The cover was blank. Inside, every page was filled with the same sentence, over and over:

“There was a version of this where you left.”

He flipped to the last page.

Only one line, in red ink:

“But that wasn’t the one they kept.”

He closed the notebook. Hid it behind the water heater.

He didn’t sleep that night.

But he did dream.

He was at the orientation again. Same juice table. Same teachers. But this time, he wasn’t holding anyone’s hand. The room was quieter. The walls thinner. He turned around and saw himself standing behind the registration desk, holding a file.

“Is this your first time enrolling?” his other self asked.

“No,” Father said. “I’ve done this before.”

“You always say that,” the other him replied. “But the records don’t show it.”

And then he woke up.

The sun was already rising.

And the shoe by the door was missing again.