Editor's Note 3

The following passage has been transcribed from a voice recording which Prof. Nishi made on an Edison cylinder, the first of many such recordings made during the protracted period of her blindness, this affliction having begun suddenly on the evening of August 6th:

I can not see. I can not see to use the typewriter, nor even to write these words by hand. I have terminated the experiment. Last night, all was almost lost, and it was only through my own impatience, arrogance, and miscalculation. I must find some other path by which to reach them. But it can't be done with my own hands, not the deletions. There was something I failed to understand about the nature of time, about these parallel existences. Worse still, I underestimated it, the Gallifreyan device, the greater part of the whole. Last night, I opened a window through which it almost entered. It filled me. It filled me utterly. I shudder to think at the horrors Miss Paine and Miss Underwood witnessed. Now that it is gone [extended pause] God, I have never known such profound emptiness. I have never known such complete loneliness, now that I am divided from it. I see what I am. I see what must be done. I must make an end of this, of it, of her. Would that I could make that end without the aid of others, and yet, this is a war, a secret war, and all of them are fighting for their lives.

My own comments on the events of August 6th-7th will be set down in a separate note, to follow shortly.

———Bellatrix S. Bracken