SLARVATHOffice of Off-World Correspondence

Grainy monochrome image looking down on a wooded summit that rises out of a bank of cloud, a lattice mast standing at the top of it, the hill's shadow lying across the cloud beside it
PASS 0207
1938 LOCAL
FOG W
37.7432 N 122.4145 W
Polaroid taken at dusk from a grassy hilltop, a chipped white enamel mug standing on the end of a wooden bench in the foreground, a bank of white fog filling the low part of a city below, and far off on the highest hill a tall red lattice mast with three prongs whose base is lost in the fog and whose top stands clear against an orange sky
The top — eighty-five minutes
Medium — polaroid
SLV-0207

Nothing Comes Off It

There is a hill on the east side of the city with a flat top and a bench on it. In the evening the fog comes over the hills on the west side and fills the low part of the city, and you can sit on the bench and watch it come.

On the highest hill on the other side there is a mast. It is very tall and it stands on three legs, and it has red lights on it. When the fog comes in, the legs go into it and then the middle does, and then only the top is left out, with the lights on it, standing up out of a white floor.

At home a thing that tall would be combing. It would stand at the edge of the fog and the fog would go through it, and it would be wet all the way down and green at the bottom, and people would climb it at the right tides.

This one holds its top out of the fog as if it wanted to keep dry. I watched it for an hour and twenty-five minutes. Nothing came off it. I could not see the bottom, so I do not know what grows there.

I do not know what it is for. I did not ask anyone. A man on the next bench was eating something out of a paper bag and I could have asked him.

I hope it is for something. It seems to be working very hard at it.

Office annotationCorrespondent SLV-4 refers to a broadcast mast on the highest hill in the city, seen from a park on a hill to the east. The mast carries the transmitting antennas of television and radio stations. Its lights are for aircraft. It often stands clear of the marine layer in the evening. The stated interval of an hour and twenty-five minutes is 12.65 kadd. It is not built to collect anything. A related matter is held in Form 21.