Speaker 1: Audio No. April third Test Recording Level five, West Wing
subbasement Archives analists may temporary records assistant Batch forty four thousand,
three hundred seventy two Time eight twenty two p M.
I keep running my thumb o of the mic button
as if it'll warm up the way my hands can't.
There's a smell down here behind the vents and concrete
that settles into my lungs, old metal, disconant. Powder may
be glue from labels decades dry. My voice probably echoes
back and weighs. The tape won't catch. It always feels
like someone goes walks a pace behind you in these corridors.
Not paranormal, just a pressure compact like a hundred stores
weighing on the back of her neck. Today's assignment is odd,
not that there's a normal here. Chow gave his usual
thin smile, read off a requisition and press A packet
of fresh inventory. Slits into my palm. Restricted level five
legacy boxes. Start logging environmental stele and contents. Just the list.
Don't get distracted, he said it, as if that might
actually help. The axis panel flickered fussy with the badge,
but I finally heard the lock clunk open the door
to level five restricted. I counted my heart beats, went in.
Here's what level five feels like. Warm a first close,
then suddenly cool. The flicker overhead isn't stage half. The
bulbs are old sodium, so yellow it turns everything jaundiced.
I walked between rolled up blueprints, crates with faded customed seals,
and boxes dusted with their own snow drift of shreded paper.
Midway down aisle too. Something odd A door with a
round ancient tumbler lock black from handling, no digital panel,
my badge temporary, no less, still unlocked it. I nearly
dropped it, startled by the old school bolts sliding back,
had to palm the handle more than once before it shifted.
Inside was nothing grand. Five steel shelves, each almost full,
but with exactly enough space between the boxes to look
meticulously kept not by style, by habit, like a room
that's never left idle too long, Each box the same size,
the same hospital gray fold aboard. Neat why CoV label
snapped into brass tabs. I read the first few h
Horton departure sep. Nineteen eighty four. Next l by departed
j U l two thousand eight. The pattern set in
I'll staff all with a precise leaving date except one.
It sat just clothes enough to the edge that I
thought some one had been here moments before the label
M Frank's departure nineteen May twenty eighteen. I hesitated. I
don't know why, except that my own badge number was
listed in tiny print at the top left as logger.
I d The box's surface was almost new, but the
corners was scuffed, as though fingers had worried at the
manangious moments I opened it. Inside, I felt pouch with
tiny loose pins, a half start across, stitch on and
old in surprising a clean hoop la bury keys on
a blue kerrow bunner, the new design not issued until
last year. Under that A narrow diary craft paper cover
datespen in blockie ladders, flipping easily until the last page,
where a raggedteer or in spill had obscured whatever had
been scroirreled. I tried to puzzle out what was left
to stringing plots. Perhaps a line interrupted mid sentence, A
noise behind me weirdly muffled a door maybe or my
own shoe slipping in static. The echo wasn't quite mine.
I froze. Nothing else moved. I told myself to love
the environmental readings eighteen degree see fifty four percent humidity
ethos steady. That steaded me a little. I boxed up
the cross stitch, keys and diary, then hit record again.
Order departure date reads five years ago, but keys inside
a current inventory will be completed for management review. My
voice wavered, but I pressed on closing the box and
returning it to the shelf. The sense of watching eyes
lingered as I stepped backward out of the vault, pulling
the heavy door closed until the latch grown shut. If
there was some one watching the left not a breath
or a shadder. Maybe it's old air moving around corners.
That's what I keep telling myself. No one else has
been assigned one of these boxes, at least no one
i'd seen. I'll review these items back at my work table.
I may be not not sure yet whether to poke
further and note it fifty four p m. I never
sleep keep well after light shifts. My mind tugs around
the corners of what I see here, rearranging small facts
in the dark like a nervous hand salting coins. This
feels different, though, the sort of off kilter thing that
grows the longer you glance at it. Back jerk for
a moment if you're listening before a level five. Before
all this, there was just me running halfway across the
country to take an underpaid, low prestige job and call
it a fresh start. My name's Annlas, maying any on
my rare good days. Two master's degrees both uses for everything,
but exactly this digging into dead files nobody else wants
fitting them into puzzle pieces. That only makes sense after
years of dust. I arrived in this city with the
same sense of hope the cuddles overnight in new places.
A snap shot six forty five, A m beige wash
breakroom where percolator is his out weak filter coffee. I
lingered there, letting the hush of thick walls insulate my nerves.
Staff feels it through, mostly disinterested. A few polite had nods,
fewer names offered this. Missus Johner, the senior archivist who
keeps her bunso tight it seems to WinCE for her.
She never sits, always bustlings, leaves carefully rolled voice like
a paper cut, sharp, dry and quick to catch any slip.
I tried once to compliment her cataloging system. She just
grunted it works in turn away. Mister Chout, the supervisor
I've never learned his first name, carries his nerves just
under the surface. He glances always at his watch and
double checked clearance lists before handing over anything. He's the
only one to look at me properly for longer than
a second. But it always comes with some warning. Procedures
matter here. Analysts don't wander outside assignment door, stay lot
for a reason. He repeats this with the inflection of
some one who doesn't want to explain what happens if
you don't. My first days blurred together, Corridors that loop
and branch without maps, Fans above the ceiling, panel's murmuring constantly,
the muffled hiss and snap of ventilation. The hum starts
to form its own language. If you're alone in the stacks,
cataloging endless rose, trapped between the sense of being utterly
isolated and yet somehow overheard. I found solace in repetition,
inventory sheets, little ticks and nie columns, the soft scrape
of gloves against cardboard. Each artifact held a brief pricking
storre refoto. His yellow to autumn leaves badges with old luggers,
pressed flowers, gun brown and brittle and folded tissue. Method
is an anchor when nothing else fits. Nights, I'd returned
to my thread bifat paint peels above the radiator. My
one window overlooks a tangle of alloways where rain hammers
out still refrained on trash bins and loose paving stones.
I've write at the window, journaling thoughts I don't dare
say aloud at work, not after two incidents, both flight
reprimands delivered and stilted each hough form. Both happened after
I asked, even tentatively about turnover rates, unexpected departures that
they wrote disciplinary but vague, as if bad luck rather
than cause. My curiosity must show maybe it's genetic, or
maybe just foolishness left over from grad school. The building
itself is a kind of loop. The upper floors feel new,
glassy and indifferent, while the vaults below operate on a schedule,
untouched by outside time. There rain noise vanishes. Traffic is
a memory, and only the fixed chilhush remains. Jonah once
muttered at the clock arcave stone change the world does
we just the keepers? She didn't meet my eye. That
was the closest anyone offered to actual advice outside the
city turns with routine. I'll risk and weather and the
hope of something exciting. Billow Ground, though even left to
get to muffled, like you're already a memory before you're heard.
They don't let myself think about how many boxes are
down there, each labeled by hand. No one remembers the
vaults comfort and intimidate me. They're tidy in his promises, Rador,
But every so often something doesn't line up, and I
start pulling threads. I shouldn't the safety and procedure in
the unbroken run of catalog sheets. Still, when I see
a label written in my own loving scroll weeks before
I know I touched it, like with that odd vault
on level five of chills more deeper than any draft
ever could. A week after finding the first out of
place box, I went back more from habit than boldness.
My shift ran late another cold for recent evening. Janna
muttering about go as Dad in the pipes which are
pressing forms into my hand and checking off tasks and
quick strokes. I was re shelving several returned boxes fly
from storage overflow eleven be routine, nothing to raise an eyebrow,
But the stack I pulled came from restricted. Someone samped
my name again with the badge number on each. I
thought about asking Janner. She looked ready to box my ears.
I shoved in silence. But as I did, I noticed
the same peculiar pattern. Every box in this section had
a staff name, a departure date, and white index cards,
a kind of formality outcome to expect. What I hadn't
expected was the contents themselves. Lisa Bee, for example, I
remembered that name from two years ago when I found
a blurry staff newsletter, the faded photo from a summer
picnic Lisa's laughing face near the center. Her box was
labeled Albi Departed March nineteen ninety eight. Inside all I
d cards, a cracked chapstick, and unmistakably a subway PASSIVALID
Till two thousand and one, three years after her recorded exit.
It didn't end there. Another box Day Corres, She held
a FOP for a digital clocking system not installed until
twenty fifteen, though his file said he left in twenty twelve.
Every diary I sampled from decades off bore the same
evidence of intrusion. Pages mirrored with what might be water
damage or strange warping of the incoroum particular lines. Some
were erased or gouged, as if some one had violently
removed hall enters with a blade. The personal notes ended midword,
the strokes jittery. I started cataloging for the record, careful
with each entry, but the more I saw the lescent
it made. If it were only one, I could blame
clerical error here. It was methodical in its inconsistency. Johnah
passed as I lingered, asking if I needed the cradle.
Dolly Cat, I tried to ask lightly if she knew
why some recus didn't add up. She barked a rusty laugh,
old Arkiff's old ghosts. Don't stare too hard at the stains.
They stare back. You'll learn her words sounded practice, not
quite joking. That night, back in a tiny flat, I
recorded another note, like from Streetland to Pulling Milky on
my clotted desk. My voice came tremulous, but steady, no
clear explanation for how some one's belongings can perdate and
post it their employment. Here is someone mislabeling these or
are the dates themselves wrong? Why does every diary in
or erase at the same point as if cut short?
Even the rhythm of every day routine began to feel unreliable.
Would a box is misfallowed by someone's loppy or was
there a greater logic eluding me? That's strange show that
sense of being watched returned. I chalked it up to overwork,
but as I drifted to sleep, the whir of hidden
fans hummed a low warning under my dreams. The next
few days I tacked the problem head on, Driven more
byonese than duty, every spare moment went into cross checking
staff lists, combing archiv personnel logs, piecing together names from
the mysterious boxes which departure reports or h R records.
That was when mionnees turned to something closer to dread.
I had expect a clerical mess, may be a scatter
of harmless omissions by minor officials, But what I found
was stranger staff marked as a resigned lore transferred to
sometimes with a vague sea attached notes simply vanished from
the system. There were no forwarding addresses, no mention on
professional directories or social media, not even a digital ghost
readable from the outside world. A surprising number shared the same,
usually bland departure phrase left by mutual agreement. Late warm afternoon,
I slipped into the reference room under pretense of rishelving.
Tucked in and old newsletter display was a photo from
the Earl in nineteen. It is clearly a staff party
offered sweaters, hair shehell ucked by the era, but the
names on the tageboards matched the ones on those level
five boxes, Haughton by Banks. I ran my finger along
the faded group shop, realising Noune still worked here more
according to childseless anywhere at all. Sometimes I'd lose an
eyebird in records, the clang of distant elevator doors, reminding
me I hadn't moved. At night, I started noticing things
closer to hum my bluing pen, always used for audits
Vanish I found it days later, shelved in a wholly
different fall, nestled among physical property tag to Major u
L eighteen the day till me mid July, nearly six
weeks off security locks held no help. Every request for
overnight CAMRAU feeds and restricted returned video files that blinked
into static or shred blank stretches where light should burn.
The audio when I tried to listen, warbled and groaned
just as I was about to give up names. Sometimes
my own blooded out distorted, like they've been recorded under water.
My attempts to talk with mister Chow went nowhere. I
waited for him in the file office, catching him between
locking cabinets. Is there a reason some Arquet staff records
don't match any living staff dates or wrong? Is there
some legacy's system I missing? He's stiffened counting the keys
at his belt. You were assigned to inventory nothing beyond catalog.
Don't distract yourself. It's easy to get lost down there.
I pressed. But boxes have items belonging to people years
after the file's close, even new keys. Do you know
he cut in strain? It's not your concern. Stick to
assigned Juda's annalysts. Don't mention this to any one. His
voice sounded thinner than before, as darting to the mirrored wall,
as if expecting someone else to merge. Afterward, my world
grew fractionally smaller. My sleep was restless, and some dreams.
A wand at endless isles under weak neon colleague's faces
gently smearing at the edges as they turned away, forces
repeated finish the record, please, until the lion snapped awake.
I returned to work each day to learn something else
had gon missing. My favorite scarf, a battlefield notebook, the
spare I dee badge I kept in my coat odd, yes,
but easy to dismiss until it wasn't. Each item would
reappear days later in places I'd already checked. I never
saw who move them. I started to feel not only
that I was being watched, but that I was being caught,
but slowly mimicked, filed, then displaced. By early June I
reached a kind of stubborn dread. Every new box shel
then restricted. Every personal effect lost on misplace signaled something
happening just out of sight, some slower crush of evidence
pointing toward more than administrative muddle. That's when I found
the heavy box. It was a Thursday, somewhere between the
nature of a headache and the sweat of summer, not
quite breaking through the underground hill I was on my
knees labeling when a dustcake cotton slid off its shelf
as if nudged, I have did it at heart, pounding
harder than it showed, then set it on the nearest
flat surface. The label property of E. Winford departed twenty
three Sep. Twenty eleven. There was no mistaken date, no
obvis ere this time. The box listed no badge number.
Inside the diary wasn't hidden, just watched under a broken
thermos and a chain store line out. At first I
thought the leather cover was ruined, but the last entry
scrolled in ballpoint was readable. I held my breath as
I pieced out the lines. If you find this, don't
let them file your way to the vaults. Remember everything,
Please burn this, scatter the shelves. Do not let the
next words blurting, pulled paper torn. Whether by accident or
trembling hand, I'll never know. I closed the box, every
hair up as I shoveled up to the elevator. My
badge US for three months without fail suddenly beat burrid,
not allow. I tried again to the same result. A
minute later, I heard a mechanical click two aisles over
one of the elder a new side corridor panels on thinking,
I wandered that way, pressing my badge out of frustration,
and the thing like green. The door creaked on swoolln hinges,
opening into what I honestly thought was a maintenance for it.
But there behind drowl still pot with construction mud, I
narrow stair footed down, aimless and unfinished. The air was
sharply metallic, colder than any refrigeration. My senses sharpened, every
footfall boomed, and even my breath shown echoes that felt
uncomfortably synchronized level sex. There was no record of it
in any public map. And yet down there, dim covelet
rows stretching out further than the blue prints lived were
shelves even older, some stack with odd brittle crates, names
on cords glimmered in dull lamplight, but where departed should
have been only blank spaces, yawned suntacked instead with lighter
coded project names. Excumen Is seventeen en involved operation quiet vault.
Near the furthest terminus. One box sat cracked open as
though it had waited. My hand shook as I slid
the lid back. There atop a bundle of threadbare personal
relics lay something fresh. A photo just printed. It showed
me standing in last week's blue sweater, half smiling in
the copy room. The label read, EH made a powered
at nineteen g u L twenty twenty three, my resignation
date set for just two weeks from now. I slipped
out my recorder, thuns fumbly. My voice was barely louder
than a breath. Either someone's playing a long jerky I swallowed,
or I've become part of these records already. This is
Annalyst May level six. If anyone here is this, listen.
The records don't wait for you to finish. The vault
files what it wants. And I think I think I've
started to disappear. For a minute, may be longer. I
just knelt there, clutching the plastic photo, hearing the small
rattling bath scrape through my throat. The words in the
box's label my own name typed out in that line,
I bery standard vont their usual blandness, trusted into something
impossibly personal. The number in anteen g u L twenty
twenty three glared up at me, cool the matter of fact,
as if some dull system had decided filed and moved
on all in one so less stroke. There was no
clock down here, or if there was, it had broken
long ago. My phone screen was a black mirror, no signal,
no way to check if it was truly late, or
if like in a dream, Tine had simply chosen a
new direction to run. The smell shop and musty cardboard,
acrid metal, and something beneath it, almost medicinal, like fermaldehyde
skimming old wounds. I stood my knees stiff, drew a
chilly breath, and pressed the recorder stop, then started it again,
barely trusting the last one would be audible. Test this
is annalus again. I found a box labeled with my name.
The contents suggest a departure in two weeks. Inside it,
I hesitated, swallowing. Was a recent photo of me that
no one could have taken. Level six does not appear
on staff maps. This area, as it is not bricked in,
has reported its organized active. A half whispered snicker shivered
through the pitch behind me. Nothing solid more the memory
of overhearing laughter you can place. I spun heart hammering,
pressing my knuckles into my side so hard it left
little means in my flesh only dust motes in the
endless hush. I slid the photo inside my note pad,
tucking both into my messenger back, then angled my throne's
flasklight towards the nearest shelf. The glare revealed dozens of boxes,
all like museum displays, each tape blending names at glimpsed
in earlier records with codes. Had never seen Cordyard and
key Project m Halifax blank. Just for a heartbeat, I
thought I heard some one scuffing against concrete behind one
of the racks, a shehe, a paper shief, the soft
exholation of someone afraid to break silence. Freezing listening, I
realized the faint click was my own jaw of trembling.
I started to retreat. If the library had rules about wandering,
I'd already shredded them by coming this far. The temperature
dropped further with every step back toward the battered corridor,
my breath webbing in the torchlight. I passed a half
open box labeled only Operation Quite Vault inside reel tape
and brittle magnetic spools, data punch cars ad a sheaf
of typed memos, yellow brown one Imo was loose typed
in sharp curiofoned. All physical evidence to be logged, dated
at tagged, no deviation to anomalous material to be sealed
in isolation, procure aminous six directive. Do not retain personal
knots the Any errors in recording will result in corrections
and be indexed maintenance final warning, no return once filed.
The next box lawn was already perfectly sealed, label fresh,
with a strip of tape looping all the way round
its middle, like it was meant to keep whatever was
inside contained. My vision swam for a second. I blinked hard.
When I tried to retrace my steps, everything felt subtly altered.
The corridorid use had pinched at one end, Feral darkness
pulled in both directions, and the lights seemed weaker. My
badge was slick in my hand. I pressed it to
a panel with a nervous tap. Nothing. I glanced at
the photo again, my own eyes, and the image stared
just above the camera's lens, as if watching someone out
of frame. My own smile pinned amid out. Something small
and sharp dropped to the concrete pin, maybe from my
own pocket. Only when I scooped it up, I realized
it was one of the loose trinkets I'd found in
the first box step with an old discontinuous library crest
had I brought it with me. I didn't remember doing, Sir.
My legs felt suddenly hollowed. Two weeks that's what the
label said. It was mid June, wasn't it? Oh? Almost
I heard braining my own echo behind me, passing shelds
of boxes marked with initials only jail ar katy and
not dates, but odd cymbal's keys crossed out circles spirals.
At the last curve, I tried not to look at
the open doors leading from the main aisle. My footsteps
grew hurd scuffing for a sudden patch of cold, Sir,
shop it almost non my chins back at the unexpected stairwell,
Up and out, I banged through the chipboard door, then
to a coded access panel that blinked green sluggishly, as
if debting my clearance. No one stopped me. In the
main corridor, I paused, fighting to compose my breathing into
something measured. No alarms held fifteen minutes and accounted for
by my watch unless the battery was running down to
the elevator clicked out of sight. I tensed for a confrontation.
Through one ragged breath. I made up my mind not
to mention anything to Chow or Jeller, not yet, not
with that kind of evidence, not with a photo now
burning a hole against my side. Once up of ground,
rain crackled against the entry glass. The city outside of
Fantis begoruk'smere through sodium lit showers. Inside, I shivered in
the coat room, fondling my I debatch back into my lard,
fingers feeling clumsier than they ought to. Seven forse mill
pits registered on my library desk phone, one from security
about a mist asset check. Another click after Io's message
from Choo inventory deviations this week conference required tomorrow morning,
please confirm prisons. I didn't call back. Instead, I took
the long way out head doctors if i'd been doing
honest overtime, then hurried home through dripping arcade and alice
leckers mirrors. When I got in, I started the kettle,
though I didn't taste the tea. My hands shook even
as I pressed my things. Every object had brought half
on to my kitchen table for review. Shrink it. Note
the borow keys, the recent photo, my note book, the
cross stitch or tangled. I double checked the labor on
the photo, the resignation date July nineteenth, not to day,
not yet. I tried my phone, No new emails from HR.
Nothing odd in my work calendar. But an unread message
blipped up. Even stranger sent it just now filely repending
inventory please eh may compliance expected, No sender. Just as
before when the system issued its automatic warnings pacing, I
found myself tidying my flat, compulsively sorting things, as if
to prove to myself they were real mine, not artifacts
waiting to be sealed away by some fragmenting bureaucratic logic.
When I glanced to recent library at de Badge, the
expiry date had been stumped and read over the original
blue two weeks from to day. I stopped cold Badge
in hand. There it was again, July nineteenth. For a second,
I considered calling a friend, telling them something was wrong,
Except I'd let those friendships dry up in pursuit of
a career restart too. Maybe I'd finally uphace my own references. Instead,
I went back to my note exlisted what I knew, dates,
box contents, odd duplications, growing mishaps. Tried to sketch the
shelves as I'd seen them in the level six, cross
checking against official blueprints from the public Works database. There
the lowest level mart was five. No mention at all
of a six, let alone a corridor branching off storage overflow.
My sleep that night was jungle, thick with dreams, isles
that never bent the same way twice. Rooms were shuffling
behind my back, familiar faces just out of sight, staring
expressionlessly through the frosted safety windows. When I woke, I
checked the box with my own name stoutin for a
wild moment. It would have followed me home, but my
flat was unchanged relatively. I took two buses and an
arrowly train in eyes hollow in the glass of the carriage,
counting down stops like Pennance, I was the first in
the brick room. Johnner already had her coffee steam haloed
above the chip mug. You look like you've seen the
ghost stacks, she said, not Unkindly, I forced myself to
meet her gaze. Did you ever find your own name
in the archives for anything that didn't line updates? Labels,
things misplaced that felt too personal. Her fingers went still
on the rim of her mug, knuckles showing pale. Don't
poke things you can't box up again. May some one's
misfiling records badly. I kept my tone bland, non comforted,
but I couldn't stop my voice from tightening. I found
a box label for me dated in the future. That's
not possible, she snapped so quickly it sounded rehearsed. Boxes
are only prepared for departure's log by ha. But I
haven't resigned. I haven't even been here a full court
to How could Jellner, said her mug down, mouse braun
then believe it anals some thing's best left and shelved.
A door banged in the hallway, and we both startled.
Mister Chow appeared, black, lunch sack and hand, eyeing me
with tired suspicion. I'm expecting you for our review this
morning my office. Soon, he gave John Rann an readable
glance before disappearing. She leaned forward a fraction voice lowered,
if your name's on a box, im restricted, be careful.
Not all rules here are written. The fluorescent lights in
the hallway seemed harsher than usual, the walls narrowing imperceptibly.
Cha's office clung to the outskirts of the admined suite,
a sliver of window or dry wall with a battered
spreadshet tacked to a cockboard. He sat across from me,
that familiar twitch in his joy returning as he outlined
a series of procedural concerns, missing inventory and scheduled access
on my badge logs, security for dagging too many after
Iyer's micro movements, all laid out like lines in a ledger.
When I pressed about the level six access, about boxes
with staff names he'd never left, or belongings tagged months
or years beyond when someone had supposedly resigned, Cha's composure
wavered only briefly. There are legacy cataloging errors, he said,
voice pinched all systems un searchable records. We clean them
as best we can, and when discrepances arise, we correct them.
That's not a concern for a temp assistant. What do
the code names mean? I asked, pressing my advantage operation
quite fault project in him, he stabbed flatly, though precise, dangerous, Paul,
settling there before my time. You shouldn't dig at things,
he can't arka cleanly policy. If you ever find a
box with your own information that shouldn't exist, you bring
it to my office immediately and forget what he saw.
He tapped a Manila folder and yielding the conversation such
as it was ended there. I left his office with
the creeping realization I gotten as close to a warning
as he was permitted to give. I returned to my workroom,
running a slow finger tip over my desktop, which I
realized was missing my regular pen again. In its place
a slim folder marked depending eight May. No one else
had been in, no one had reason to flag my
ear for pending review. I touched the folder, pulse in
my ear. I opened it inside a blank exit interview
for him, already stamped scheduled nineteen g u L twenty
twenty three. The bottom line was filled in with my
name printed mechanically waiting for my signature. I recoiled. What
if the process wasn't about volunteering or even getting fire,
but about succession, matching the record to the event, filing
the evidence before the story was finished. My reflection in
the blank monitor next to me looked subtly off r
on at the corner's cheeks drawn, ilets sluggish, like a
woman being in spooled. I went down to level five again,
driven by grim necessity instead of curiosity. The corridor pressed close.
The hum of the air units had ratched it up.
Where else my heart was mimicking their drone. I keyed
my badge through the usual rigma. All this time the
lock stuck, then gave way, bolting back with an exhausted wheeze.
Boxes lined the shells like silent jurors. I counted my
steps one, two, three, laceby h horton, on and on.
I paused at the neerbox's checking labels. Each name felt
lightly familiar, faces from newsletters, digits from old equipment checkouts,
matching always to dates that didn't fit. On impulse, I
pulled a random file Albert R. No departure date inside
some spiral notebook on the third page, a different hand
in the first. Someone at scroll, running out of ways
to explain this time jambs items mustmatch, don't sign anything,
record everything or else. Below a page was torn, corners
flecked with ross colored residue. I sniffed it old blood, No,
maybe just mole's or ancient glue, my own nervous system
was leaping at ghosts something heavier creak further down the hall.
I pressed on hand, shaking a shifting presence, the air
swirling just ahead, as if a figure were always there
before me, but invisible. For the first time, I heard
something like my own breath coming from further up the aisle.
For a while second, I wondered if I kept walking,
would I catch myself rounding a corner reverse. I ducked out,
bolding back to the door, heard hammering the air outside
the vault. Taste had saturated, almost sweet, with the relief
of escape. Back in the asset, tagging alcove, A hunted
for more evidence. There taught behind a loose ceiling tile,
I found another staff for till one with Jono standing
rigid among a sea of gray blazers. Her name was
scrolled along the bottom, along with a tag record Abeate
at thirty as he b two thousand nine. I calculated
firteen years ago, though Jonah Clean thirty years service. Was
this some mistake or another record of written calendar slipped?
My recorder was still in my bag. I flicked it
on up it this is analyst may. I found reviewed
evidence that dates and identities in the arkavas scrubbed headed
it almost matched by some process I don't understand. Staff
appear in vanish time seems to catch and loop. Artifact
show up from the future or disappear from the present.
As if summoned by my whisper. And a long voice
echoed down the corridor, loud, too close, Hugh say, it
was a man's voice, tremulous older. My nerves lit up. Hello,
its Annalis, records assistant. I thought there are rve was empty.
Footsteps approached around a wheel book cut shuffled a janitor
I barely recognized, thoulder bowled with a patchy beard. Curry
jumpsied Lease on his frame. He blinked at me, lines
cut deep into his face. Records don't like to be
fiddled with, miss, he said, breathless, here are new Aren't
you leave things alone? Or they'll follow you a way too,
like they did with his voice. Cave gazed, darting to
some invisible spot behind me. I tried, gently, have you
work here long? Did ye know anyone? By? A hordon
Franks before their departures, His jaw twisted ice fogging. People
who get too nosy just get lost. Doe's locked behind them,
pore open in the worst places I've seen them, seen
the vaults a sign new homes to things, names, faces,
don't go deeper when the lights flicker. I caught the implication.
What happens when your name's on one of the boxes
he looked at early defeated. It means the place expects
you to go. I never look for mine. Never. The
chill in the air was less pressive next to another
living person, even one as haunted as him. Wire are
their codes? And how do you boxes go? It? Updated
with things no one's put there yet, He only shook
his head. You ask too much, and the building makes
you file, sucks up your memories, shuffles things until you forget.
Sometimes the old ones, the once they say moved away.
Sometimes I see them in the gaps, caught in the fans.
Don't let them file leave miss forget this. He gathered
his mop and shaking hands and disappeared into a janitor's close.
At that, as I gunced back, seemed just a little smaller,
just a little further away than any door map for
the corridor. I was left alone with aisles and questions.
The rest of the afternoon blurredd pasted in nervous energy,
little bursts of activity, double checking locks on my system account,
nothing but normal usage, emails deleted, catastrophic air warnings. Each
port I tried to side My standard folder reverted as
if the system didn't want me to see it. Even
the printer, when I tried to make back up notes
of the odd labels and code names, jammed, spitting only
blank sheets. By six p m. The facility started its
lay chift shut down sequence. With reluctance, I forced myself home.
In the splitting light of dusk. I reviewed my evidence again,
range labels, the future, photo, a voice members folder, now
half missing. I run the memory stick through my personal
lapped up. There a series of unnamed files blinked briefly
into existence, only to vanish as I tried to play them,
as if refusing to be heard. A second time. I
watched helpless as my own note seemed to fracture, titless,
alphabetizing themselves, then reordering as if some one else were
typing them in real time. I powered down, resisting the
urge to held the machine across the room. The city
outside blazed neon and metallic, a concrete assurance of everything
rational and save I could remember, except now even my
apartment felt in permanent, no warmth in the radiators, paint
peeling a little more, and a draft creeping in under
the door that I hadn't noticed before. I went to
the window and flipped through the batted staff photo again,
focusing unfaces the names. A small square of sticky label
slipped out of bocket with my own full name and
underneath it archive property. I stuck it to the edge
of my phone and tried not to think about what
it meant. Later, lying in bed, I whispered a note
into the darkness, poor records for the recorders. If everything
gets boxed unlocked in advance, is this a story worry?
Or did I just become one morephile waiting for the
right date? Sleep, when it finally came, was a jagged puzzle,
interrupted by half waking moments, as if some one else
were turning the pages of my memory looking for lines
to erase. And in the vaults deep below, I imagined
the arkaver shuffling itself. Boxes nudged forward, labels were written,
dates sliding like beats on a wire, waiting always for
their next conclusion. Rain crept into the city's bones over night,
silvering everything outside my narrow window. One morning brightened feebly.
On the fourth of Jeanne, I sat at my table,
staring at a damp barco to my name underlined in
institutional blue. My tea had gone cold. The noteput that
ought to have been my ankor now satiscue pages, sticking
as though someone had thumb through them with wet hands.
I pressed a finger tip to the sticker archive property.
I hadn't put it there. Each time I glanced await
and looked back, it seemed to have enge further from
where I had left it. I carried my chilkot and
a batter library issued satchel on to the first bus.
At dawn. I tried to find relief in the ordinary.
The driver's board nod my reflection overlapping with the supermarket
huddled in the drizzle. I was still here. I was
still myself. The vaults couldn't touch me in daylight, or
so I tried to believe. At the library, I kept
my head down, following the same turnings at Map morning
after morning, still every door with felt fractionally warped. The
admin officer's desk now a little closer to the copper alcove,
my favorite nook in the break room, overtaken by new
sharper angle chairs. People filtered through with the blumbriuskness of always,
except for those moments when some one would glance at me,
pause and look away, as if searching for contacts they
couldn't place. My badge got me past reception. But when
I went to fetch the spear from my locker, it
wasn't there. Instead a new card, fresh as plastic, just cold,
burying my photograph. But indexes EH madeempark have property. The
letters looked bloodless. My hand shook as eclipped it on.
I checked my email. Nothing new from Chair no Hr
remind us no apology about the bank axis logs with
the morning's meeting. Either he was avoiding me, or I'd
been quietly excised from ever notice. Missus John the stalk
through the corridor, her glance flickering from my face to
my badge, but saying nothing. She no longer even offered
her the usual rebuke about the coffee stain on my
cut sleeve. For an ire, I busied myself cataloging recent donations,
opera programs, faded tickets from a nineteen thirty seven pageant,
a meseum poster curld with old glue. The comfort was
waning in each item's reflection. Beneath the lamplight, I imagine
my own outline thinning, the shadow diminishing, the record stack
beckoned with its cold certainty. I let myself be drawn
along badge ready, What else could I do? My own box,
hidden below at level six, held a resignation date set
in stone or in whatever medium the aukov used to
make reality obedient worse. The foreto of me inside, recent
and touched by the pass felt not only like a warning,
but a preparation for my disappearance. I needed to understand
what was happening before time or the system itself swept
meat with it. Before heading down. I pocketed a slim camera,
verified audio recording on my phone, and checked out my notebook,
still bore my handwriting each Monday in assurance was a
foothold on reality Level five's corridor. Rasp coal and electric
weld a tang in the air, like batteries breaking apart.
I hummed softly, hoping the human note would keep the
silence to allowing me whole. The heavy door gave way
under my badge. I meant to go straight to my
locker and snatch a pair of gloves, but the main
workroom was occupied. At the far desk, chall hunched, his
face deeper in shadowed than the flickering lampchet Delisle, I
started a greeting stalled at the sight of his desk.
Instead of usual admin clutter, he'd laid out half a
dozen knock have boxes, label stripped. Each bore a bar cord.
When he saw me, he hastily swept a folder over them.
MS May, he said, measured as always. You were not
due unrestricted to day. There are gaps in the catalog,
I replied. I heard my voice coming apart. I need
to match boxes states. Some belongings in the uckhouts posed
it to supposed owner's departures. Staff records disappear. I found
my own name and photo box below. What is this place?
Duing to us behind his eyes. Calculation, he sighed, pinching
the bridge of his nose. We manage what the collections require.
Not everything in the vaults is meant to be read.
There's a structure here older than you, the me older
than any system. We still operate if ye keep returning
you'll be written in MSS. May leave it. I wanted
to snap, that's not enough, but I just stared, desperate
for something real. In his tone, he looked away. On instinct,
I scanned the shelf. One box sat among the others,
not yet stamped a blank label. I felt it drawing
my eyes again and again, like a negative space and memory.
Did I see it tremble in his hand as he
reached for it, or was it just the fluorescent warping
making every one seem unfinished. Forced from the room by
his silence, I slipped and stared into the mappocke, supposedly
for old blueprints, but full now of non circulating records.
Locking the door, I propped my phone on an empty
roll cause and whispered into the mic, my name is Annalist.
May if this is all erased, know that I tried
someone something at its time, and evidence here record of
staff's spiral into blank space. The deeper I go, the
harder it is to receive for my own history on paper.
Am I still reel outside this tape? If not, then
maybe the tape is all that's left of me. There
I'd named it alone. I felt less afraid until a
thumb picker through the wall, the deep fall fan cycling
on something jolted in the stacks. I pocketed my phone,
hurried out, navigating the labyrinth by muscle memory more than knowledge.
By the time I returned to level fires restrict its own,
the route had warped. Were once the staff logs had
filed open and easy, Now they were shuffled folders, gun missing,
the main index, locked and demanding an ADMIN override. I
used the new badge. The lights hummed as usual, but
a deeper current round beneath the gathering pressure, as if
the concrete above was not only holding, but pressing downward,
trying to collapse everything within. Determined, I pried up a
corner of the sub basement carpet. The floor revealed a hatch,
one I'd never noticed, although I'd walked the disle dozens
of times. It was ringed by scuffs, as though boots
and crates had scraped over it for years. The latch
was a battered cylinder, more mechanical than digital. My new
badge snapped open the catch with a stubborn shudder behind it,
a steel stair tumbling step by step into the nower
dark below. I pulled my phone, turned on the camera
light and recorded again, descending to what might be Level
six feels colder. The air's metallic. If I lose myself
here catalog, this is my last statement. Stare after stair,
the temperature dropped until my breath came visible. Concrete reached
all scent, leaving only a bitter sting and an underlying
smell of static, like old monitors left on too long.
At the bottom, everything felt wrong in scale aisles, impossibly
lawn shells stretching farther than the blueprints allowed. There was
no obvious source of light, but everything was visible in
a damn perpetual desk. Foxes here lacked even basic information.
Some born names but were departure dates should be only
a blank under line space lingered. Others held project codenames
up qv slashed class in Nightingale file intrusion comms, I
thought of the crumbling memoid glimpsed before all physical evidence
to be logged dated, final warning, no return. Once filed,
my heart threatened to climb out of my throat. I
started it methodically. Each time I was landed on a label,
a flicker of deja vu caught me claudiar m Halifax,
a dozen others. I now realized I'd seen in staff
archives in irregular often mentioned faces, blurred detail, scarce, a
sensation scraped in my mind had always been in this job,
at my move months ago, Ever really happened my journals
at Homewood literally risen by me, or only remembered. So
I forced myself to focus. Some boxes held battered personal effects,
each tied anew as, though revised for new owners. Some
alarmingly had nothing but bocoods and a strip of tape,
no evidence of identity at all, a scuff of shoes.
I froze, pressing myself between chalves. This time I was
certain it wasn't a ecker. Something was moving, A half
glimpseed figure at the ark of the corridor, hunched and
shuffling out a face with the world its features blowut,
but the way it angled its head like watching for prey,
felt chillingly human. I yanked back, slipped into half siothed
asal and knelt by an open box, its tag and
Halifax project and en slash. Final hesitating, I rummaged among
layers of brittle paper and a broken analog clock. I
found a small, battered tape recorder the evidence. I whispered
my breath, making the dust swirl. I pressed play static,
then a low muttering voice, broken phrases cataloged outside ty
and echoes, file for protection, absorbed into the index. Don't
don't forget who you were, it stuttered to say. I
pocketed the recorder, nerves jangling. I needed a plan. Years ago,
I'd been taught in a preservation class. No one else
took seriously to look for footsteps in the data, security locks,
time stamps, administration overrides. If the archive worked like a
living bureaucracy, there'd be evidence ack at the nearest office terminal.
I used my badge and a stolen admin logan one eyed,
glimpsed on Cha's notepad, and committed to memory. The security
lock screen's dutter fought me, then opened there. Every night
at exactly twelve three, a m an admin over I
fired each time access was granted to restricted the level
five slash six the log instead of the usual usernames, registered,
cycles of staff name, sometimes in sometimes I always erased.
After four days, no digital trace of who had done what,
No recent edits except for a system tag KIV admin
names added. Then erase, then re added like some automatic,
perhaps desperate mechanism. Searching for balance, I opened the duty
roster for night runs. There in the audit lock staff
roots posedly left years some time times decades ago appeared,
then their entrants would vanish, replaced by other staff or
by bare dates. The system was cycling through the archive
endlessly revising its own list of huplond above ground. What
about atmospheric data? I accessed the maintenance lock temperature drops
spikes of electromagnetic disturbance in the lower vaults just after
minute on fourteen consecutive nights. Free running security cams never survived.
Every restricted spaces footage showed only static repeated patterns of
movement recorded always blow in the last few frames, shadowy,
interstinct ship shuffling among the boxes, placing or removing them,
heads bout. Sometimes you could just make out the glint
of an ID badge on a thin line nod. I
tried documenting at all screen captures, audio clips, hard cops,
but every attempt yet a blank files or unreadable outputs.
Anything I wrote by hands offyed, at least for the
moment I needed outside evidence. I turned to the library's
lot collection once the special risks room now a reference
for forgotten phenomena, rogue indix cards and file books that
appeared overnight, accounts of time jammin' in the stacks. I
read of cold Warrior projects Operation quite fault, an attempt
to create perfect containment of anomalous knowledge and memory through
autoimending record systems. The directive was to absorb all evidence,
with regular culling of staff unable to comply or who
witnessed too much. One headline from the nineteen eighties stafford
disappears amid renovations at Central Branch. HR insists on routine transfer.
Next to it an editorial. While the arque is always
under construction. It ran nearly stretching up to the present.
I skyriprint indexes for clues there a classified had appeared
every decade or so, always the same words seeking reliability,
organizational aptitude, discretion, apply archives subbasement. I pressed on. I
cornered Missess Jenner in the break room as she poured
stale coffee. How many assistants have cycled through a blurirded?
Why does every inventory end up missing people? She paled,
fingers clutching the mug. But records are kept for a reason.
Dear procedures of protection. Don't dick forget what doesn't fit
those who remember too much. Well, The valse sords that
for us. I lowered my voice. Who files the files?
Then she gave a thin smile. The library does as
it always has, shells the whirl, piece by piece, everything tidy,
nothing left unresolved. If a box is ready, expect your
name's already inside it. She left quickly. She was squeaking.
I watched her go, wondering if she'd always worked with
such a limb, or if I'd only just noticed. Later,
I tracked down the old janitor again, hunched staring at
an unplugged floor buffer. Did you ever see people come
back out after going down into the vaults, I asked.
He glanced at me, Saidealon not the same. Sometimes you
see a face you recognize, but they don't know ye
no more. Sometimes they help you fit a box on
a shelf or close up a breach. Other times, if
you can remember them, you're lockey. Most folks get filed
away so smooth you forget they were ever a person.
He looked, afraid to speak further. I checked my pockets,
no keys, no notes, everything i'd own it, he'll now
tagget are gone altogether. My desk upstairs nearly baar held
nothing at all, even my phone. This case, once dickered
with black cat decals, now showed only a pristine plastic shell.
The evidence deaf was not only physical, but somehow cognitive.
Whatever made me myself, whatever history had brought, was being
worn away. I hurrowed from closet to closet, searching out
hidden ricos or other clues, hoping for something that would
prove the place could be beaten. Instead, I found only
more emptiness, except for a slip of card in the
lost and fountray the words file complete reshelf printed in
ruby red, and beneath it another barcoered reading arc of property.
May a wild dread drove my next move. I raced
to the lower vault, phone and camera, rolling, intent on
piercing the cycle by writing my own story into the record.
If I could broadcast what I had found, force an
index to reflect all I had learned, I might create
a rota, or at the very least leave a sign
for the next assistant swept in. I set up a
battered chair inside the Level six service corridor. My phone
set to stream audio director in open library emergency frequency
one reserved for balmb, fritz or fire. I read my
evidence aloud, names, dates, descriptions of the anomalies, accusations against
the system, my own name, my own box, the living
disappearances I had witnessed, the gaps in the staff lists,
the recording that erased themselves immediately upon review. As midnight
drew near, the lights faulted to darkness, then snapped on
so bright my eyes watered overhead. The fans went dead,
replaced by the heavy liquid silence of the vaults at rest.
Then one by one, the doors of every compartment began
to unseal, sliding open in sequence. I rolled the camera
hard in my throat. The air charged with a rising harm,
resonant and deep bunfelt. It polls with the rhythm of
a system waking. A system was the right word for
something that antiquated, hungry, both mechanical and living. By turns,
shadows assembled in the aisle, slow, careful shapes, never quite
facing me. Heads bowed, arms out, each bore something, a
box of file, a cluster of labeled effects, moving in
precise synchrony with the jerk and drought of people half
remembered out of the periphery sic TV screens glitch showing
only pinched figures faces a static blare. I saw familiar movements,
the way one adjusted tiny spectacles, another smooth the skirt
near their face clear. Every so often a figure paused
to shelf a box, whispering names in a sibilant stremely
surby are heart and annalists may falk complet Next. The
intonation was neither human nor computer, but something in between,
as though language itself was being spoken anew in syntax
and pronunciation, yielding to the will of the archive. I
tried to move and felt resistance. My own box, now
shelved among the open aisles, had changed. The recent forto
inside now included the image of me crouched in this
very moment, fallen a camera in hand. My own name
repeated endlessly in a chant, scrolling about the barquerd, the
resignation date flashing from one valley to another, nineteen or
twenty twenty three, twenty five, after twenty twenty four, twenty six,
deck nineteen ninety nine. A weight pressed into my mind.
I reached for my own history, where I had lived,
the name of the city I had left, the childhood
address had recalled so easily just days before. Each came
up blank in their place. Archive property e may as
though it was the only biography the vaut would allow.
Desperation jetted through me. I seized the box, resolved to
destroy it. I hammered the lid, tore at the label,
ripped pages free. But every piece I removed was shudded
back into place by the invisible of a vault, each
torn label drifting upward and resealing itself with pristine tape,
each page fluttering home, as if snatched by static air.
It grew hard to say my own name aloud. The
architecture of my memory, a mother's laughter, an old graduation day.
The ring of my favorite magonigranite countertop grew strangely slippery.
There was room only for less, for names and numbers,
departure day and project codes. From nowhere, a voice droned,
Maybe a recording may be a memory not my own.
The vault keeps only what must not be remembered. You
saw too much filing for correction. I spun searching for
it owner. The shadows were closing in now every one,
A blurred echo of the others. I glimpsed between receding stacks,
faces from staff photos, sucrat with age, some far too recent,
all looking through me. I ran at the next corridor,
Hans brush mine. I turned and found a group huddled
in darkness, not quite ghostly, not quite corporeal, older colleagues
somewhere in the same naneods I'd inventoried, others clutching rugged
diaries or work orders with think, go out away. Their
eyes did in focus silvery is blank microphone, while their
mouths moved an anxious repetition. One woman, long hair, ragged, bodge,
bent about her neck, pushadary into my hand. The entries
inside flatlined into meaninglessness, but one phrase survived. The cycles
can be delayed, wreckoed. Make a mark, don't allow full closure,
resist the lock, resist assimilation. Her eyes found mine. There's
a way, but you have to write outside the script.
Don't let them finish you. I shuddered ahl, but she
vanished back into the riding masses, along with the rest,
some clinging to each other, some wandering, others simply dissolving
into the logic of the shells. Back in the stacks,
the shadowy forms now bled into one another, indistinguishable from
the boxes. They tended, one slightly ahead of the others,
almost mimicking my own outlined reach for the untitled box,
with their gentleness that cut through the terror in its face,
a flick of sad recognition, as though in shoving me
it regretted the necessity. All routes out now spiraled inward,
always returning along the same two or three branching aisles.
The vault recognized fugitives. The more I ran, the faster
history grew untraceable. I passed my own hands again, holding
the phone, saw reflection clipped in glass, blurred around the mouth,
my own laugh echoed in a voice I didn't remember making.
There would be no escape, not by flight. The cycle
was closed by design. Every one who witnessed the system,
everyone who pieced together the pattern, would necessarily be boxed, labeled.
They raised and shelved. I press my form's emergency call,
Open Phil. The emergency channel mercifully still ran, though I
didn't trust it would last. I spoke everything. I remember,
my name, my suspicions, the names in the oldest boxes,
jall Know's warning, the janitor's fear, the corrupted tape recorder's message,
the atmospheric data spikes, the system's writing of employee locks,
the code names the resignition forms. There is something here,
a system or a cursion. It files the world, It
files its own keepers. If you ever hear this, if
you ever remember me blocked, the cycle hid a real
record where the shelf cannot reach. Don't let anyone finish
your file. My own voice dotted, sometimes mispronouncing words, inflection
rising to a register. I barely recognized. A presence loomed again.
The voice in the stacks and bodied, but immediate record
cycle knowledge is dangerous. Your memory dilutes. Correction is necessary.
I resisted. I walked to the central aisle, cracked each
box open as I passed. Most were empty, safe for
a smell of old clothes and by rowing and a
rhindstum brooch in the bottom of one. I started a fire,
using a lighter I found in a sealed drawer, last
ditch weapon. The flames blackened but didn't consume. The boxes
reconstituted themselves, tape fusing labels emerging in new block print.
The vault had its own logic. Boxes destroyed would be reconstructed.
Evidence hidden would be replaced with new evidence. And the
historical chain would begin again. I stumbled, coughing. Now the
ethic with dust or memory, I couldn't say. At last,
I reached a wall where the shelves dead ended in heavy,
preposterously solid concrete. I turned back to the maze. There
the forms closing in nearly upon me. Among them, I
recognized it, possibly my own posture, my own bag, my
own badge, a echo perhaps, or neurolaphile of myself. It
looked through me, blinking as if trying to remember whether
my existence was past or pending. The present spoke, not aloud,
but resonating through the metal and concrete. You are needed elsewhere.
Now the record is complete, shell recordingly before I allowed
the cycle to close, I sheet my name into the
foreign and flung the tape sill, running behind an exposed
panel beneath the jagged pipe, I screamed to the emergency channel,
find me, record me, don't let the vault whend, don't
let it erase us all. As the echo converged a
clump to my last thought, hoping the broadcast persisted somewhere
outside the reach of the arkas correction, then a great
crushing pressure, the silence of systems are calibrating. After that,
only the endless humming dark the nextport belongs to someone
entirely new eclipped dry tone practice in bureaucratic calm personnel
note Archive operations following incident has key four hundred seventeen
in the record sub basement that dated security protocols are
in effect for all restricted sections level five slash six,
now accessible only by admin keyholders. Badges reissued nightly inventory
suspended pending risk review. Temporary personnel dismissed by mutual agreement.
Incident assets box labeled, richeld perstenda procedure en no the
sound of typing, the slick whisper of self in tape.
A box slid into place on a steel shelf, joining
the others, each with its own barcode, its own careful label,
property of the most recent eh May departure nineteen Jul
twenty twenty three. A rumor lingers, spoken low across the
lunch tables. Another assistant gone with little fanfare, falls closed
out with the usual digital strokes. Another blank face in
an h L slideshow war for dedicated service quietly ensigned
Jeanna's shrugs. When asked, Chaw offers only policy, citing privacy
and compliance. But late at night the cleaning staff tell
other stories. That you can hear voice, sometimes leaking from
the air ducks, repeating a series of names in a
strangled whisper, something between code and confession, that a corner
of the shelving always sits just a bit empty. Then
it shured, waiting that if you find in a marked
box with a pristine barcote, you set it back in
place and forget, or else the cycle will awaken. The
library on the surface remains unchanged, hush and personal, radiating order.
The vaults silt at the end of an endless by
all stair turn ever inward briefly, another voice flares, strange,
newly invisible, threading the static of the archive's closing ham.
If you hear this, remember me, don't let them finish
the record. Don't sign, don't decree, don't shell the evidence,
remember any of us, or you'll be next morning. Casts
soft and washed up with fog. Somewhere highuba the vaults,
a new assistant sits for orientation contractors whole away plied
uncovering a hidden hatchway. A few steps beyond the map room,
Mama's rise as an old player recorder, cacked in dust
but unbroken, rolls from a bristle broom. The assistant tests
the play button, expecting only gobble. Instead, a singular vus
fragmented agent threads through the hiss file incomplete. If you
hear this, remember name spoken aloud on named shelve forever.
The tape platters in fall, silent. The new hire looks
around goose flush prickling ice, tracing labels on straight boxes
tucked along the hall, each bearing the same format, each
awaiting updates a shelf nearby, Yon's open on it a
neat standard box, label blank before printed bucote. The assistant
lingers take player for gotten in their hand. The vaults
lights flutter overheit. The assistant slides the recorder on to
the shelf, then with a shiver, walks back to their
staff torror, unaware that something vital has already begun to
slip away and deep below the archives size a hundred boxes, dreaming,
each with its own name, each with the date that
need only be filled. Lights settled back into their steady glow.
As a staff tour retreated down the corridor, fits it
soft against an eat and dust. The new assistant shell
e badge, still stiff, break from coffee and touch hung behind.
He let his fingers linger on the ridge plastick of
the old corridor, the odd warmth from its casing, an
echo of a pomlong gone. The group's voices spiraled off,
welcome jokes from mighty, half hearted directions. Don't mind the alarms,
they always squawk. After lunch, as missus Gianna wrapped her
ring knuckles on a spreadsheet and waved them along, he
made note of the yawning shelf. There was something soothing
about its exactness. The steel colt beneath the sleeve of
his new shirt, the catalog numberingked onto the frame, the
emptiness ship to fit a box not yet delivered. Above
the vault, lights flickered in a rhythm that seemed more
deliberate than faulty three short one lawn, then silence. Every
time he blinked, he imagined the shelf's cap had grown,
inviting a presence to fill it. They press play again,
though the message had already faded. A ghost voice so
deep and static. He turned the device in his hands.
On the back side, an eedshplate re archived property no
external reporting. He tapped the recorder on to the shelf
as if returning it, not wanting to carry some one
else's secrets beyond their intended arm down the hall. Footsteps
returned Janner's voice. You coming, rookie. We need to run
you through the level five airlocks. Show you where the
climate readings are. Her words fell flat, but not unkind.
She praised the scene the new assistant the shelf. The
glimmer of unchlf tapped with the unreadable gaze of some
one who trained herself to ignore what shouldn't be seen.
He nodded, hurried to catch up, feeling a chill at
his collar bone. For a moment, he imagined a Pairvonsiyna
set just above the ductwork, taking inventory of his movements.
The two pressed on desmotes, adding as the main stack's
close behind them. In the break from later, as others
filtered out, Lee lingered. He opened his new locker, found
it empty, aside from a slim envelope taped inside the door,
printed on its face welcome e darnel. No welcome note
followed only a folded she blazoned in black with the
phrase non circulating materials never leave the archives. His signature
already printed at the bottom, left a sire taste in
his mouth. They closed the locker. He ran his fingers
over his knee bit It wabbled ever so slightly, as
if recently replaced. By early evening, the orientation torrey dissolved.
Jellner had handed over a wheel card of climate sensors,
a faded map, and a thick Manilla folder of procedures.
If you can count him right, you will do find
she said, vois dry, don't be clever, don't reorganize, keep
to your level unless assigned. She paused in the shadowed corridor,
And if the badge reader on the subbasement jammed for
don't force your way. They reset the system after the
last incident. Her voice faltered on the last word. He nodded,
but his mind wandered back to the desolate shelf, and
the recorders garbled warning. A draft skittered along the floor,
cooling his ankles as he wheel sensors through level four
overhead defense that it to life, mechanical, ancient, relentless us.
The weight of concrete press from everywhere, ceiling seeming lower
than he recalled from the tour doors loomed most locked
in one arc of a place meant for extra shelf space,
but empty stood a single box, no label. He drew closer,
curiosity rising. The box's gray sides caught the buzz of
the fluorescence. He hesitated, then stooped to touch its edge.
Something inside seemed to shift, as if anticipating him. He jumped,
heartbeats starting up recklessly. A voice carried down from around
the stacks. Don't touch tree boxes, they wait for their owner.
It was Chow bursk, his steps echoing with an eerie certainty.
We inventory everything here. If something's not labeled, just leave it.
It'll find Hewitt's for Eventually, the warning sounded, wrote bloodstream deep,
sleeper sided, leaf flush. Pulling his hand back, Chow eye
the box, then em if you're not sure if something ask,
but don't ask too much. Some items just appear cataloging
mix things safer. Understand yet I'll he said a voicecot
between yes and no sore. He prepared to wheel his
car onward when he glimpsed out of the corner of
his eye at the old recorder, blinking once impossible, the
batteries looked dead. He blinked, and it was dark again.
At closing time, Lee dawdled, feigning a need to recheck
the center logs the staff had already filtered out. Jane
gone chow rattling through paperwork, The echo's shoes and laughter
from upstairs felt increasingly muted, as if the library but
had grown further away. Alone. Now Early backtracked to the
shelf in the suburbal the recorder was still there, still cold,
still inert. He pocketed it, this time, unable to leave
the oddness intended. On his way out, the security door
resisted badge reading access denied, then, after a strange pause,
clicking open on the second try. He bolted up the stairs,
the sense of the vault's attention prickling his skin. Back
at his apartment, a sparse unit with the view of
a never finished park, he unpacked only the recorder from
his satchel. He wondered if he should tell any one
about what he'd found, File an unusual incident report, call
a friend, email at you about legacy electronics left in
work spaces, but nothing felt quite appropriate. At ticking, unease
urged him to wait. He played the tape once more
before sleep. This time the static resolved just enough for
him to hear his name spliced him where it hadn't
been before. Voice blood to the edge of recognition, Elie
Dunnell filing complete caution. Once named, never erased. He rewound
the tape. The phrase repeated no matter where he pressed
play at his name crept in, sometimes at the beginning,
sometimes at the end. Sleep eluded him, dreams muddled and
formists dominated by the shuffle of unseen figures, shoving the
same box over and over. When he woke, the air
in his room tasted vaguely of cardboard and glue. At
work the next morning, he ran into Chow at the
main desk. Chow barely looked up. You saddling, all right, Yeah,
the basement. Sometimes the badge reader glitches. Chow nodded and readable.
Just happens. Don't force it. Some doors are only meant
to open in the right order. Later, Johana handed him
a stack of INTI clogs for review. Make sure you
check all the fields. We've had problems with wreckers going missing.
If you find gaps, don't improvise this a form for that.
She softened just a little here, not the first to notice.
Just be careful. She let the word hang. Lee thanked
her and took the forms he sordid rerecord's names, dates,
items filed, effectags, out of habit. He cross checked a
few at random, running a finger down the line Departurer
nineteen Gul twenty twenty three to departure eighten of E
twenty seventeen. Strangely, in the index where signature might go
were only barchoords mechanically printed, but each one with a
slight smear indistinct as if corrected again and again, he
paused at one line, Eh, may the log stopped there?
No item described, no forwarding address under incidents sea enclodre,
no enclosure followed. A shiver walked up his spine. He
closed the file, stacked it neatly, and left the unfinished
stack in his drawer. That afternoon, the humidity in level
five DiPT. He made his way down to check the readings.
Down the aisle, the shelf with the Warrn tape recorder
confronted him, this time joined by a new box. The
label was blank except for the barkuld running the length
of the side. The digits at the end matched his
own employee ID. A pulse fluttered in his He crouched
scanned the box with his phone flashlight. The shadow behind
the barcooted label was uneven, as if hiding a second
layer takes reluctantly a race. In a sudden resolve, he
peeled the label halfayback below, handritten and almost illegible. Don't sign,
don't let them shelve you. Backing away, he bumped into jelly,
passing behind, silent as dust, She registered the scene I shop,
then gunst at his trembling hand the lifted tape. You've
found some one else's message, She murmured, Leave it. It's
not meant for you. Who isoise? May? He asks, foresoft jell,
and his lips thin, her gaze sliding left. People don't
lost long in some basement posts. Some leave quietly summerphile.
You want device, if a box, wait your name, close
the record without reading, walk away, if you're lucky enough
to remember to do so. She looked about to say more,
but Charles Firntrode echoed up the hall, and she faded
off expression and haunted but world weary. They swallowed the
pressure mounting in his chest. The new box his not his.
Both seemed to flicker at the age's chalk out line,
a round a vanished reality He set the barquet flat
with trembling fingers, then wheeled the cop briskly away toward
the blinking comfort of the brightly lit mainstacks. He did
not return that evening, nor the next several. Yet the
tape recorder weighed heavy in his pocket, as if it
demanded attention. Each night, its message sifted minutely, ratcheting up
from whisper to command filing complete, new entry, panting, darnel e,
the waiting record caution reviewed before signing. Sleep grew brittle.
His own things vanished and reappeared at home coffee Moak's
wap for an old library badge, a scarf with arquev
property stitched into the hem. His noteooks reordered, their pages,
enters half eraised in his own hand. One morning, he
woke up unable to recall the last time he'd spoken
to any one outside work. Not a friend, not a
family member. He checked his phone, contacts list empty except
for Wright Support and h R. Racau. No text, no
coal lock. He stared at his blind compartment as dust
pulled in the corners. He pressed play one last time
on the battered recorder. This time, the voice wasn't just
a warning. It was a measure, knowingly defeated in vocation
to whoever finds this remembered. Don't let them box you,
and never sign their names. Write yourself, aware of leave
a mark where the record cannot follow. If you forget,
if the shells were make you, someone else must remember.
Thee's own voice joined in, no longer sounding entirely like him.
Rain battered the city again, swelling the river, washing the
library steps clean by morning, as the vault liked. Below Hunt,
on level five, a box waited level pristine, no longer blank,
e darnel, property of archive, departure date, the dash hum,
waiting for the final stroke, an unseen beneath the low
wine of the fans. Dozens of boxes dreamed in their
steel honeycombs. Each one must bring quietly, for a name,
for a day, for a peace of the world, to
recede again into the quiet false blow