Desert Signal Pause

Heat b-buckles the horizon, sand ridges ripple like replayed film on a warped spool. That figure—curved alloy limbs, eyes rotated wide—stands fixed in the glaze. A woven straw crown rests on its chrome temples, pattern etched with brittle sun-cracks. Every shadow prints like ink on powdered velvet. Field Note, fragment 07: Speech bubble intact, letters clean: **WHERE VOJTA?** Tone: urgent, yet oddly comic. Gesture analysis: palms inverted, deficit of direction. I trace faint scars on the metal arms, maybe travel-wear from long strides across granular plains. Each grip-line whispers of movement reversed, as if it backed into this moment from some cluttered past of paper edges and desk hum. No tracks leading outward—only corrugated dunes folding to the sky. Archive concludes: he asked, and the winds kept the question. Vojta remains uncounted, beyond this rolling brass-colored emptiness.