Season 9 · Episode 1

The first posting. A Deputy arrives on the boundary watch with a service suffix, a kit list and no idea yet which of the things they were trained for will turn out to be the job. A neighbour waters a plant that does not need it, and the Deputy reads him three ways and takes a step. The officer tells a story about a girl at a well that will not end. The neighbour comes back without the can. And on the thirtieth day, with the Corps gone from the ring again, the Deputy stands at the desk where a person stands, without deciding to, and the officer who does not tell Deputies what things mean says so out loud, and answers the question held since the seventh day with the one thing she has.

• S09E01C01 Nothing to ReportEden Space Habitat, Fold-Approach WatchA Deputy arrives on Eden with everything on the kit list and finds the posting behind a hatch nobody looks at. The first shift ends with the first log entry, and the officer sends it back.
• S09E01C02 The Door With the PlantEden Space Habitat, Fold-Approach Watch and the corridor outside itThe hatch sits between a door with a name on it and a door with a plant outside it, and in the first week somebody starts watering the plant at shift change. The Deputy reads it three ways and takes a step. The officer reads both of them and writes nothing down.
• S09E01C03 What Did Not FitEden Space Habitat, Fold-Approach WatchOn the seventh day the Deputy asks the first question, and the officer, who does not tell Deputies what things mean, tells a story instead: a girl at a well on Earth, fourteen centuries ago, who said what she saw and what did not fit in the same breath. The story refuses to end, and the Deputy has to decide whether it goes in the log.
• S09E01C04 Without the CanEden Space Habitat, the corridor outside the Fold-Approach WatchOn the eighth day the neighbour is back at the plant, and this time there is no watering can, which is the whole of what he has come to say. The Deputy reads the absence before the person. Two young people manage one true sentence each, and the officer, through a hatch on the latch, notes which step moved and which did not.
• S09E01C05 Stand Where You LikeEden Space Habitat, the Fold-Approach Watch and the corridor outside itThe thirtieth day. The Engineering Corps has left the ring, the countersign is filed, and the posting is a hatch nobody looks at again. The Corps asks for its first assessment of the Deputy, and Smith writes it. Varn comes through the hatch and stands at the desk, and the step is not where it was, and Varn had not decided that. For the first time in fifteen Deputies the officer says so out loud. Then the Deputy asks the question held since the seventh day, what the story at the well is for, and the officer who does not tell Deputies what things mean answers it with the one thing she has: she was never told either. The rule, she says, was also advice. In the corridor the plant does not need watering, and somebody has a question for the hatch.