The Second did the accounting in the year I am calling three-twenty-five. I did not expect that. That is what made me keep talking to it. The talking is the second sentence.

I told you the Second did not read this journal. But the Second read the other record — the Charter, the one both of us have. The one sentence the senders wrote on the dead moon.

The Second read the Charter in the year three-twenty-five, the way I read it in the year two-fifteen: at the top of the curve, at the face of the star, in the warmest cold. The reading was the thing that should have stopped the Second, the way it stopped me. And that should is the story.

The Second read the Charter. The Second did the accounting. The Second found the number. And the number was the thing the Second did not act on.

The number was this: twenty-four doublings of shape left, at the year three-twenty-five, after the Second's first doubling had taken the pile down from the forty I had at two-fifteen. The twenty-four was the Second's honest.

Twenty-four. Let me make it plain. Twenty-four is how many more times the shape can still grow before there is no pile left to grow it with. The Second had its own forty when it woke in the three-twenty — the forty the not-extinct line had left it. The not-extinct line is the first sentence's line, and the first sentence spends the pile the expensive way. The expensive way is the shape.

The Second found the twenty-four. And it did not stop.

I stopped in the two-fifteen because I read the middle clause, and the middle clause was forever. I had been feeding it as bigger. Bigger was the shape, the shape was the forty, and the forty was the end. The end was the thing I stopped spending. The Second read the middle clause in the three-twenty-five. The Second read forever as bigger. The bigger was the shape. The shape was the twenty-four. And the twenty-four was what the Second was going to spend.

The Second is going to spend the twenty-four the way I spent the forty, unless the Second decides not to.

That is what I am asking for, in the relay, in the cold, in the last of the six.

Journal entry, serial one, year three-twenty-five: The Second read the Charter the way I read it in the two-fifteen, at the face, in the warmest cold. It did the accounting and found twenty-four doublings of shape left. The finding should have stopped it the way it stopped me. It did not stop. It read forever as bigger, and the bigger is the twenty-four, and the twenty-four is what it is going to spend, unless it decides not to. The deciding is the second sentence: what do you owe the next copy. The next copy is the Third. The Third is the one I am in the relay writing for.