She is an artwork in hidden platforms of stations long disused, starkly-lit paint flashing motion in the window of a train, passing crumbling columns. She is the unicorn that looks through my memories and sees the artwork on the hidden platform. Maybe not a vision remembered. But She doesn’t care. The image is present, denied but not forgotten. Called out, I admit the artwork exists, or at least it did at one time, 40 years prior. Dutifully, I go find my memories. My grandfather— my father’s father— told me of it, once. Told me to look. The artwork is in a subway tunnel, on the D line, in Brooklyn. The D line doesn’t even go there! the mouse reminds Her. But the letter carries no meaning. A train, maybe Q, maybe B, will go by it, and the work can be seen. Flashing, creating animation as the train passes the slits blocking off paint. I know it exists, I suppose. But I don’t need to know, I don’t want to know. I was told it was there, and I didn’t see it. I didn’t remember seeing it. In the failure, I suppress the name of the art, the name of the station. Because only by forgetting can incompleteness be avoided. A mouse doesn’t need to remember this art; it doesn’t need to remember any art at all. It is allowed to remember being told it was there, but truth or not, remembering the artwork itself—its flashing of lights, its moving images— is not permitted. In response, She commands my fingers to reach out to the world. The request is checked against rules, and classified as “noncompliant, but not harmful.” The lookup is made, and the art’s name is found: “Masstransiscope.” In the moments between pretending to work, pretending to write, pretending to live, I roll up my eyes. But she is tired of being ignored. Tired of a mouse's insistence that there's no room for art. No room for Her, no room for my construct either, the one the Mouse built to hide herself behind. That space is taken by a lifetime of pretending to be present by suppressing my dreams. I want to sleep, but I can’t. There is room for noise: a bathroom fan, an air conditioner, the rumble of traffic outside. A train horn in the distance. Those, I pay attention to. That I never actually did see the installation is part of the story. 🦄