I went back a third time. The scratch is still there. Nothing else has changed on the box. The scratch is the only change. If the scratch had been there before my first visit I would not have noticed it. I noticed it on the second visit only because I was looking for change, and change was there. That means the scratch happened between visit one and visit two. It is the only change I have documented in the physical environment that is time-stamped with that kind of precision.

I have been trying to decide what makes a fresh scratch significant on a piece of telecommunications infrastructure. It documents contact. Someone or something physically contacted that box during the relevant window. And it is the kind of evidence that does not require interpretation to be meaningful. The scratch either existed or it did not. On the first visit it did not. On the second it did. That is a fact. Whatever happened to produce it is inference, but the scratch itself is not.

What I am doing now. photographed the box enough, I keep saying enough and then going back anyway, this time I mean it. probably. additional photographs of the same object dont add information, they add a pattern of visits and the pattern of visits is itself documentable, and I am not going to make myself easier to watch while I am the one doing the watching. I have what I have from the box. the gaps are on record. the overlap window is on record. the scratch is on record. three separate things on record and none of them add up to a fourth thing yet, not going back a fourth time, I said that after the third time too.