PREFATORY NOTE
This is the public version of EXP-0003. The full account is held at a classification not disclosed in this document. What appears here is what the Lapidary has determined can appear here. The redactions are not omissions in the record. The record is complete. This version of it is not.
The Lapidary will state at the outset what it is willing to state: one team descended past Z:847. The team returned. Something exists at depth. The Lapidary has confirmed this. The expedition did not resolve what it is. It confirmed that it is there, and that it is aware of being observed.
THE DESCENT
The descent below the margin proceeded on a fixed line. The conditions of the Shallows and the margin held and then ceased to hold. Past Z:800 the instruments no longer returned values outside their calibrated ranges. They returned nothing. The Lapidary distinguishes between a reading it cannot interpret and the absence of a reading. Below Z:800 there were no readings. The line measured depth. Nothing else measured anything.
The team passed Z:847. Z:847 had been the deepest mapped point. It is recorded here that the number was not a barrier. There was nothing at Z:847. The number is the deepest the Lapidary had been. It is not the deepest the interior goes.
[REDACTED — three paragraphs]
ON WHAT IS AT DEPTH
The Lapidary will record the following and no more.
There is something at depth. It was not approached. It did not approach. It was not moving toward the team and it was not moving away. It was present at a depth the line did not fully reach, and it was aware that it was being observed. The expedition lead has stated that the awareness was the first thing understood and the last thing that could be doubted. The Lapidary has not been able to file what this means. The Lapidary has filed that it was understood.
The team did not remain. The ascent was made on the line. The team returned.
[REDACTED — remainder of account]
RELEASE OF SURVEYED VOLUME
One coordinate at the threshold of the depth is entered into the registry. The Lapidary releases it because the Lapidary releases what it has surveyed, and the threshold was surveyed. The Lapidary notes that a depth coordinate is unlike a shallow coordinate in every respect except the form of its conveyance. The deed is the same. What the deed conveys rights to is not the same. The Lapidary records the conveyance. It does not describe the volume further than it has described it here.
EXP-0003 / Lapidary of the Interior / Office of the Primary Record
"The awareness was the first thing understood and the last thing that could be doubted."
— expedition lead, on the depth
The Lapidary has filed this. It has not been able to file what it means.