The Branch Mapping Institute maintained the registry of correspondences: which branches had achieved contact, which were in process, which were classified as isolated. Rhen had been processing files there for six years. She knew the categories well. She had placed hundreds of cases into each of them.
Isolated meant the branch had diverged beyond the correspondence threshold: too much difference in timeline, in accumulated circumstance, for a reliable connection to be established. Letters sent to isolated branches did not arrive, or arrived as noise, or were routed back undelivered. The threshold was not a hard number. It was a judgment the system made, and Rhen had learned to trust it in other people's cases, even when the people did not.
Her own file had been classified isolated since she joined the Institute. She had not reviewed it. Employees had access to their own files, but by convention most did not look, the same way doctors tended not to look at their own imaging. The knowledge was not always useful. Rhen had applied this logic to herself for six years without examining it.
Her sister had mentioned, once, that she had left six letters from her alternate unopened. Rhen had not asked why. Her sister had not offered. The conversation had moved to other things.
Today she had processed forty-three cases. She was the last one in the office. The light outside had changed while she was working and now it was evening. She closed the files in order. She pulled up the registry interface and held the cursor over her own reference number for a moment before closing the window.
She put on her coat. She was not sure what she had hoped the file would say. She was not sure, either, what she hoped it would not.