In a way, sfvip’s closure was a tiny calibration of mortality. Everything that ends triggers a cataloguing of what had been, a selection of which memories to keep. The player’s mechanical authority made that cataloguing less ambiguous: it allowed the soft things to be counted. It also taught an odd patience. People discovered that endings could be observed rather than solved—felt rather than fixed. In the hush after playback finished, it was permissible to sit with ambiguity, to let questions hover without pressing them into immediate answers.