Window 4: the giants move north — the morning the teacups slid three centimetres in the Oji window room
At Stable Window 4 on the Oji hill early on the 7th, eleven giants of Lineage 63 — 'the Giant Plains' — were observed moving north as a herd, the largest number since the window entered service. The tremor of their steps moved the teacups in the window room by three centimetres, and the keeper logged that too.
5:40 a.m., the window room on the Oji hill. The night keeper, 33, was waiting for the grassland beyond the glass to brighten. Since it entered service last December, Window 4 has tended to open around dawn. At 5:51 it opened. Far across the plain, close to the horizon, a line of dark points.
"At first it looked like seven. Counting again with binoculars, eleven. Two were small — young ones, I think." The keeper wrote on the log sheet: "11 (2 juveniles), moving NNW."
The giants of Lineage 63 stand an estimated 25 to 40 metres, by the division's reckoning: long-necked, thick-limbed. They cross the grassland at about a human's brisk walk, and, the keeper says, astonishingly quietly. "Almost no sound reaches us from over there. But the tremor of their steps comes through the Yuragi membrane into the floor of the room."
The morning of the 7th made that plain. At 6:12, as the herd crossed the centre of the window's field of view, the teacups on the sill slid slowly three centimetres. The keeper logged that as well: "Teacups, 3 cm, to the NE." Since the window's first days the division has kept, as a "reference record", the rather unscientific practice of reading the room's vibration by the cups. "We have seismometers too," a division officer says. "But the cups bring the morning back better when you read the log later."
What draws the most attention at Window 4 is not the giants but what lies at their feet. Low huts are scattered across the plain, and small human-like figures live there. On the morning of the 7th the figures of a settlement were observed lining up to watch the herd pass. None ran. A small figure, apparently a child, trotted after the giants for a little way and was fetched back by a larger one.
"One wants to use the word coexistence," the officer says carefully. "But that is our word, spoken without knowing their circumstances. What we know is that the figures do not appear to fear the giants, and the giants do not step on the settlements. That is all."
Why the herd went north is also unknown. Since the window opened, most herd movements have been southward; this was the first to the north. "It could be a season; it could be water. Whether they have seasons at all has not been established."
The herd left the northern edge of the field of view at 6:48. The window closed at 7:05. The keeper closed the log and put the teacups back where they belonged.
"Every morning I watch their morning. It comes a little earlier than ours." So saying, the keeper coming off the night shift walked down the hill. Outside the room, the Oji residential streets were beginning an ordinary Monday.
Window 4 does not currently admit visitors, the room being too small. The division plans an adjoining viewing room by the end of the year and will put a supplementary budget to the city council in October.
In August, Window 4 recorded its first "window drift object" since entering service: a stiff hair about 1.2 metres long, found on the floor in front of the glass just after the window closed. The division judged it to be a giant's hair and sent it to the window team at the Third Appraisal Centre. Last week the centre issued a preliminary finding that "the keratin structure matches no known animal". Under the Dimensional Boundary Control Act the hair now belongs to the state; after appraisal it will join the visitors' display at Window 1.
Across all five windows, drift objects number only a few a year. "A window is an instrument for seeing, not for gathering. What falls through is the far side's business," the division says. Still, on the morning the hair fell, the keeper wrote in the log: "Touched something from over there for the first time. Warmer than I expected. Probably my imagination."
The viewing room planned for Window 4 is costed at about 48 million yen and goes to the city council in October as a supplementary budget. The general affairs committee has noted that the Oji hill is close to housing and that more visitors could congest residential streets; the division proposes forty visitors a day, by reservation. The head of the local neighbourhood association, 72, said: "More people coming to see the giants — well, it's not a bad thing. The slope in front of my house is steep, that's all. I just don't want anyone falling."
