Chapter 8 - The Missing Version

By Tuesday morning Simon had made a list of what he remembered.

He disliked the list immediately.

Memory was not evidence. He had spent a career saying so.

He kept reading anyway.

Five rollout decks.

The final meeting in January.

The sober Segment X table that had replaced the headline slide.

Marek’s subgroup sensitivity analysis.

A recommendation to delay or carve out the subgroup.

His own decision to proceed and monitor.

The last item was the easiest.

He remembered that clearly because it had been his.

Proceed. Monitor. Review.

A reasonable decision.

He opened his calendar.

22 January.

PROTOKOLL — FINAL GO/NO-GO

Attendees: Simon Keller. Martin Reiner. Marek Nowak. Lea Baumann. Daniel Roth.

The meeting still existed.

The attachment did not.

Simon clicked the empty field anyway.

Nothing.

He searched his email.

Marek.

January.

Threshold.

There were too many results.

He narrowed the dates.

One message.

From Marek.

Subject: Tomorrow

Simon opened it.

The subgroup issue is still not represented accurately. I will bring the analysis tomorrow.

Below it, Simon’s reply.

Fine. Ten minutes.

He read the two lines several times.

The email proved almost nothing.

It proved Marek had wanted to discuss something.

It did not prove what.

It did not prove the analysis had existed in the form Simon remembered.

It did not prove the decision record had changed.

But it was more than memory.

Simon started to forward the email to his private account.

He stopped with his finger over Send.

Then deleted the draft.

His phone lit before he put it down.

Katrin: Basel tonight. Don’t wait up.

Simon typed OK, looked at it, deleted it and wrote: Safe trip.

Her reply came a minute later.

Thanks.

He put the phone face down.

That was how lines moved, he thought.

Not all at once.

One reasonable action at a time.

· · ·

Lea agreed to coffee because Simon didn’t ask her at work.

They walked two streets from the office and chose a place where no one from the company usually went.

“You know this makes it look worse,” she said.

“What?”

“Meeting me somewhere else.”

“I wanted coffee.”

“You have coffee upstairs.”

“It’s bad.”

“That’s the first convincing thing you’ve said.”

They sat.

Simon showed her the calendar entry on his phone.

“You were in the meeting.”

“So were you.”

“Do you remember Marek presenting the subgroup analysis?”

Lea looked at the screen, then at him.

“I remember him presenting something.”

“Segment X?”

“I remember that name.”

“The current project folder has no reference to it.”

“That doesn’t mean it never existed.”

“I know.”

“Working folders aren’t archives.”

“I know that too.”

“So what are you asking me?”

Simon put the phone down.

“I signed something I don’t recognise.”

Lea’s expression changed.

“What?”

“The risk acceptance. It has my approval. It says what I broadly remember deciding. But it doesn’t contain the subgroup section.”

“Maybe it was removed in the final version.”

“Before or after I approved it?”

Lea said nothing.

“That’s the question.”

She looked toward the window.

“Careful.”

“With what?”

“With the sentence you’re building.”

“I’m not building one.”

“You are. You just haven’t finished it.”

Simon let that sit.

“Can documents change without leaving a trace?”

Lea looked back at him.

“The presentation of the record can change.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s the answer I’m giving you.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there are working documents, reporting outputs and the underlying system record. They aren’t the same thing.”

“Could someone replace a working document?”

“Of course.”

“Could they remove an older version?”

“With the right access.”

“Could they make it look like it had always been that way?”

“To you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“To everyone?”

Lea shook her head.

“Don’t confuse what you can see with everything that exists.”

Simon thought of the empty Version History.

“What happened with Marek?”

Lea looked away again.

“He didn’t leave cleanly.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should ask him.”

“He’s not answering.”

“That may be your answer.”

Simon studied her.

“You know more.”

“Everyone knows more than they’re allowed to say.”

“That sounds convenient.”

“It’s called employment.”

He almost smiled.

Almost.

“Reiner told me not to make Marek’s departure part of this without a reason.”

Lea’s expression closed.

“That sounds like Martin.”

“Do you think he’s right?”

“I think you’re asking questions about two different things and hoping they become one thing.”

“Marek’s departure and the record.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think they’re connected?”

“I think Marek didn’t leave cleanly.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.”

She stood.

“It’s coffee.”

· · ·

Back at the office, Simon searched somewhere else.

Not the project folder.

The steering committee minutes.

January.

He found them in an old governance workspace no one had cleaned up because no one remembered it existed.

22 January.

Fourteen agenda items.

PROTOKOLL was number eleven.

The minute was three lines.

Rollout approved.

Monitoring to continue through Q2.

MK to provide subgroup sensitivity analysis before final rollout approval.

Simon read the last line again.

There was a link.

He clicked it.

Document not found.

The filename remained visible.

PX_SUBGROUP_SENSITIVITY_v3.xlsx

He copied the name.

Searched it.

Nothing.

He copied the document ID from the dead link.

Searched that.

Nothing.

Simon took a screenshot of the minute.

Then another of the dead link.

He sat back.

This was still not proof of what had happened.

Files disappeared.

Links broke.

Folders were cleaned.

People left.

All ordinary things.

But ordinary things accumulated.

He opened the current risk acceptance beside the old meeting minute.

One said the subgroup analysis would be provided before approval.

The other contained no subgroup.

His name sat beneath it.

The system had not forgotten.

The working record had.