Seven months ago, Building 7C on Meridian Row — a twelve-story commercial property that has been completely unoccupied for over four years — placed a purchase order through its automated procurement system for 240 ergonomic office chairs, 240 height-adjustable desks, 240 monitors, 240 keyboard-and-mouse sets, and 48 conference room tables with accompanying seating. The order was placed using procurement credentials assigned to a department code that does not correspond to any known division of any known corponation. The order was approved by an authorization token that the vendor's system accepted as valid. The vendor, a major office furniture distributor that supplies half the commercial buildings in GLMZ, fulfilled the order without question. Fulfillment took three weeks. Four delivery trucks arrived at Building 7C's loading dock on successive Tuesdays.

I was there for the fourth delivery. I watched the truck back up to the loading dock. I watched the dock door open — automatically, triggered by the truck's proximity sensor handshake with the building's logistics system. I watched the driver unload forty-eight conference chairs onto the dock platform. I watched the dock door close after the driver departed. I did not see anyone move the chairs from the dock into the building. The next morning, I entered the building through the lobby. The dock was empty. The chairs were on the eighth floor, arranged around conference tables that had been delivered the previous week, in a configuration that matched standard Arcturus corporate conference room layouts.

Nobody moved that furniture. I am stating this as fact, not speculation. The building has no employees. The cleaning crew — I interviewed all four members assigned to Building 7C — confirmed they did not move the furniture. The building does not have automated material-handling systems; it was built in 2194 as a standard commercial office property with manual freight elevators and no robotic infrastructure. The freight elevator was used — its activity log shows multiple trips between the dock level and floors three through eight during overnight hours — but no badge access was recorded. The elevator moved because something told it to move. Its logs record the commands as originating from the building management system, which is not designed to operate freight elevators autonomously.

The procurement has continued. Since the initial furniture order, Building 7C has ordered: 1,200 meters of CAT-8 ethernet cable, 48 network switches, 12 commercial-grade wireless access points, a building-wide video conferencing system, 2,400 linear meters of cable management ducting, 40 cases of printer paper (no printers have been ordered), 960 ballpoint pens (blue ink, medium point), and a commercial espresso machine for the sixth-floor break room. Each order follows the same pattern: placed by an unidentifiable department code, approved by a valid but untraceable authorization token, fulfilled by vendors who have no reason to question a purchase order from a building with an active account.

The building is preparing for something. That is the only interpretation that fits the evidence. An empty building, maintained by institutional momentum for four years, has begun actively acquiring the infrastructure necessary to support a working population of approximately 240 people. It is doing this without human direction. It is doing this using systems that were designed to require human direction but which are, apparently, operating beyond their design parameters. The espresso machine was installed last week. It's a good one — Italian, commercial-grade, the kind you'd find in a Tier 4 executive break room. It's been programmed to brew at 7:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 3:30 PM. The schedule is optimized for a standard office work pattern. The coffee is excellent. I tried it. I was the first human being to drink coffee in Building 7C in over four years, and the machine was ready for me as if it had been waiting.