The name of the first human observer was never recorded anywhere. No one thought they had done anything worth preserving a name for. The energy-deficit report from Radiation Measurement Station 97 in the Outer Zone was one of the oldest reports left by a human being. Before that report, Photon Conservation Standard No. 417 had recorded a photon deficit, but it was not until much later that the two records were found to refer to the same phenomenon. Personnel records from Radiation Measurement Station 97 list four people as having been on duty on the day of the observation. One was responsible for the measurement room, one was a cooling-system technician, and the other two monitored the equipment during different shifts. The records do not say who first saw the loss of a single photon. Later historians examined duty rosters, meal records, and even the pressure of hands left on the measuring equipment. The candidates were narrowed to three. It was discovered that the fourth worker had repeatedly gone to the toilet with a severe stomach upset at the time of the observation, and they became famous as the person who missed the first human observation of the deficit. They were remembered longer for that than for the many commendations and patents they had received during their life. The names of the other three disappeared as archival data was compressed. Later generations grouped them into a single figure and called them “the first observer of the deficit.”
The main work of the people at the station was to send a fixed number of photons and confirm that the same number arrived. The work was fully automated and required no special training. What made it difficult was not the work but the boredom. To them, a photon-measurement error was not a strange event. Measurement errors occurred from time to time. When one appeared, they cooled the detector, checked the lines, initialized the test module, and measured again. They had been trained to suspect the equipment before suspecting the universe. It was good training. The universe was always fine, and equipment broke often. The first measurement was short by one photon. The repeated test was also short by one. The person in charge called the other workers and began another round of testing. Excluding the worker with the stomach upset, the three began measuring again carefully. The first test conducted by all three was short by one, but the next ten tests showed no difference at all. Everything was perfectly normal.
The two colleagues who had been called in concluded that everything was normal. They did little more than complain that the equipment had only recently been replaced and that they ought to take it up with headquarters at once. The person in charge knew, of course, that neither of them really meant it. After their colleagues returned to their own sections, they sat thinking for a moment. They could have deleted the test record. Every value was within the permitted margin of error. No one had struck the measuring equipment with a clipboard, so the ten measurements could reasonably be regarded as having been taken under identical conditions. If they did not record the error, they could finish the day’s work on time. If they did record it, they would have to fill in the cause, risk level, and retest results. They recorded it. In the title of the report, they wrote “temporary discrepancy in radiation count” instead of “photon disappearance.” In the field for cause, they entered “undetermined,” and for risk level, the lowest value. They did not exaggerate the discovery. Nor did they erase it.
Seven years later, a person believed to have been the same supervisor reopened the old report. By then, the deficit had increased to seventy-three occurrences in one hundred billion transmissions. They found six similar records from other measurement stations and submitted them to the Central Route Safety Authority. The submission was brief. “Each record is independently insignificant, but all point in the same direction.” That sentence was as close as anything to their own voice. Because neither their voice nor their face survived, later plays gave them a different personality each time an actor read the line. In some works they appeared as a timid technician; in others, as a hero who revealed the truth. Neither portrayal had any basis. What they believed cannot be known. They may have thought the entire galaxy was in danger, or they may have thought they had found a defect in an aging detector. There was neither fear nor excitement in the style of the report. There were only the sentences of a person trying to finish an inspection and go home.
The observer’s later life cannot be confirmed either. The same identification number appears on an equipment-replacement request nineteen years later, but it is not known whether it belonged to the same person. The stated reason for the request was that the detector had become too old. The request was rejected for lack of budget. If new equipment had been installed, the deficit might have been proved earlier. Of course, the possibility cannot be excluded that an automatic correction function in the new equipment would instead have removed the small deficit as an error. History could not determine which outcome would have saved the galaxy. The first observer was not a hero. They were not certain enough to become one, and they were honest enough not to avoid becoming one. The conclusion of the report they left behind was as follows: “No current impact.” The judgment was correct. In their present, there really was no impact.