The appendix

From a broadcast engineering document describing the transmitter on the 11F city model, labelled Node 42:

Listener response contributes to profile completeness. Profiles at 100% are eligible for compilation.

What “response” means

Elsewhere, Employee Monitoring logs domestic receiver use against attendance and movement. Turning the radio down is recorded. Turning it off is recorded as deliberate isolation.

Humming along is recorded too.

What “compilation” means

I don’t know. The 11F population plaque divides 612 planned households into three groups:

採用 431 · 保留 58 · 編纂 123

HIRED · RETAINED · COMPILED

Personnel’s file for K. Watanabe reads PROFILE COMPLETENESS: 100% AS OF 14-AUG-1986 02:14. The file for 4417-B gives its origin as COMPILED (OBSERVATION / BROADCAST RESPONSE).

If listening completes a profile, then everyone who listened to that station all the way through was helping to build someone. I listened to the archive tapes all the way through. I’ve stopped.