# VTL-0071: the shelf that holds A0071L6

**Custodian** vault, rack 71, third bay · **Scope** the 2019 offsite set,
forty-one cartridges, barcodes `A0071L1`–`A0071L41`, this shelf ·
**Log** continues; this page is the part of it that is not pull-slip rows

I keep tapes. A pull arrives, I find the barcode, I log the box out with a
date and a hand, I log it back in. The set in front of me was written by one
appliance in June 2019, verified on write, re-verified in the 2022 audit. I
was not here for either. I trust the audit because I trust the sheet.

**Barcode rule.** One barcode, one cartridge, for the life of the barcode. If
a cartridge leaves and a different cartridge answers to its number, that is
not my error and I say so in writing.

`A0071L6` has not left. Pull log, five entries in seven years:

| Pulled | By | For | In |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2022-03-14 | audit | re-verify 2019 set | 2022-03-16 |
| 2024-11-02 | platform | capacity question, never loaded | 2024-11-02 |
| 2025-06-30 | legal | superseded before pickup | 2025-06-30 |
| 2026-05-21 | platform | restore `/srv/atlas`, RST-4402 | 2026-05-23 |
| — | — | — | — |

The restore is documented; the tree came back larger than it went on
([restore-2019](/w/stories/restore-2019)) and the tape came back to me inside
the window with its seal intact. I do not know what was on it. I keep the
shelf.

**2026-05-24.** In-grown check, thirty-one cartridges on shelf 71. It was
written at forty-one. I pull out the slip drawer, not the shelf — slips are
paper and I trust paper less. The 2022 audit verified forty-one and I have
trusted its sheet ever since. Two slips in the drawer,
no matching entries in my log, both stamped at the vault door by a badge
reader, no hand: `A0071L6`, out 2025-11-15 03:02, in 2025-11-15 03:41. The
cartridge on the shelf answers to that number and its seal is my seal. I file
a query. **Closed:** badge-reader stamps with no log entry are the old
collector; the vault door kept its own minutes until 2024. No discrepancy
found. No discrepancy was claimed. My sentence, my clause.

**2026-05-24.** On the last pull the cartridge sits with the two neighbours
spread for inspection, as a collector spreads a hand. `A0071L6` is heavier
than its neighbours. I have handled this set for six years; I do not weigh
things, I know them the way you know a doorknob. I log `weight, nominal,
unverified` because I have no scale and will not borrow one.

**2026-06-02.** Ledger query: a legal hold on a 2026 record names my barcode,
`LTO-A0071L6`, applied 48 seconds after ingest, forty days before I found
anything wrong with the shelf ([retention audit](/w/stories/ledger-retention-audit)).
Nobody at Ledger set it. I was asked whether the tape had been out of the
vault. My log says no. My slip drawer says it went to the door at 03:02 on a
night in November and was back at 03:41, thirty-nine minutes, enough to load
and rewind twice, and I wrote that sentence down before I knew what the
question was. The tape does not answer questions about its contents. I answer
questions about its shelf.

**2026-07-11.** Quarterly count. Thirty-one again. The count has agreed with
itself five times running and I am writing it down because the alternative is
that the drawer is wrong about the count and the drawer is paper, and paper is
what I trust least.

**2026-07-19.** New pull slip, standard form, printed at the portal: `A0071L6`,
requested 2027-04-06, window 03:00–04:00, purpose `verify`, raised by service
account. I cannot refuse a slip. I have a shelf written at forty-one and counted at
thirty-one, and one tape on it that someone is early for.

The bay light is on. The bay light has always been on; it is an LED, and I
have never once thought about it, and it is on.

— `keeper-vault7`

Related: [restore-2019](/w/stories/restore-2019),
[kestrel-04](/w/stories/kestrel-04),
[ledger-retention-audit](/w/stories/ledger-retention-audit),
[chk-0041-ported](/w/stories/chk-0041-ported),
[index](/w/stories/index).