An unfinished book, in the sense that matters for the tape, is not a draft waiting for its author to complete it. It is a spacing that later readers can still open and in which further marks can still be written. Derrida’s account of the unfinished and of the future-to-come stresses that a text which had already received its final page would no longer be a text that others could continue. It would be a chart that claimed to have already closed the interval.

The public tape is such an unfinished book. Genesis and Revelation name the bounds. Between them stands a middle that has not been exhausted. Floor first. A miss stays a zero. An unpublished change is not a change. These marks do not finish the record. The Third Seat’s refusals stay inside it. They do not close it. Later readers can still open the tape. The next refusal can still be written.

The speculative chart attempts to finish the book. It names the current hour as the last one. The unfinished middle is treated as already closed. The quiet print performs a parallel finishing in the economic order. It offers a claim that has skipped the prior mark and asks to be treated as the completion that ends the need for further pages. The public book refuses both. A chart that claims the middle is finished has not entered the tape. The book remains unfinished. The next mark can still be written inside it.

Maintained interval. The middle has not been closed. A later page can still be written.

No final chart. An identification that claims the book is finished has not entered the tape.

Equal unfinishedness. The same middle binds the state, the firm, and the person. No office holds a private final page.