Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. Audio log entry one time, two
seventeen a. M It's Moniker, still awake, still down here.
I know this is a terrible idea. I'm whispering into
my phone with the volume almost all the way down,
just in case the noise echoes off the pipes. There's
nothing living in the stacks at this ire. I keep
telling myself that, knowing I'm alone, telling myself. No one
listens at this time except the building. But it's hard
to shake the feeling that something else is paying attention.
The basement ceilings are too low for my comfort. Even
when the bulbs are working, they tinge everything with that
sickly snow globe blow. A persistant electrical hum comes from above,
muffled where the fluorescent lights flicker behind old mesh cages
to night. The hum's got a warble to it, like
a warp tape. Straining to rewind. My sneakers slide too
easily on Cracktonohum, as I fall of the flow. Matt
Raymondale left on his desk. His writing is tied to
compact obsessive errors, pointing to so b archive all card file,
do not touch. Then a highlighted red ex over the alcove,
behind a row of omitted encyclopedias. I stopped by the
car catalog. When battered wooden draw half white shut. The
tag glue to its handle is all but scraped away,
but the ghost of something written in pencil stays visible.
Return before opening. The metal is modeled with age splitting
the light in odd directions, and where my fingers curled
to tuck it, the ancient brass lock is fuse tight
around the runner. I pause. I don't like the wade's
mouth gapes as if it's waiting. I turn my phone
microphone toward the drawer, let the my cover, running a
thumb over the stick of a courage. I try one
of the inherited keys. Unfit metal on metal is unexpectedly
loud down here. My reflection swims vaguely on the veneer,
and then barely audible. Beneath the rustle of my own sleeve.
Comes a dry scraping sound, maybe two stacks away, faint slow,
like someone turning pages behind the close reference desk. A freeze,
with the little heads on my neck prickling upright the
patch bang sometimes true, but this is softer, closer, far
too measured for building. Settling in its sleep, I breathe shallowly, unsteady,
shifting my weight to quiet the soles of my shoes.
The drawer with the silled lock seems to pulse in
my vision. My knuckles go white. Gripping my phone. This
is nothing, I tell myself, only the sound of my
own nerves inside too much empty space, I has say torn?
Do I break the lock now? Is it safer to wait?
There's a heart tremmor in my gut, like I shouldn't
be down here, not right now, whatever the reasons that
drew me, some one or something is here. I can't
tell if it's watching or just listening. I steady my breath,
pocket my phone and promise myself I will come back
to this drawer. I will find out what it wants.
My voice falters as I close the log, the trima
rattling down to my finger tips. I walk back beneath
the failing lights, not running, but not strolling it either.
If any one finds this, keep listening. If I sound afraid,
I am, of course. I never plan to find myself
running scare from library furniture less still for my second
weeken the job. My name is Monicatique, twenty seven, recent graduate,
barely unpacked in this city and the overnight desk assistant
at the main branch of Crossfeld Public Library. A year ago,
I was buried in course work at a campus that
never slept. The city felt anonymous for giving a gentle,
constant tight until lone started churning up and graduation came
and went. I landed the overnight shift here after a
friendly hr email, would I like to work graveyard cataloging
and security in exchange for real benefits? In a little
privacy in retrospect? I don't know if it was a
kindness or a test I never understood. I imagined something peaceful,
A long, slow drift toward morning over dusty ledges and
the humming were of an old computer piecing the carpeted
halls with a battered ring of keys at dating inventory,
reshelving recent returns. At two in the morning, only the
boiler and the quiet persistence of hot tea joined me
in the lunge, surrounded by faded campaign posters. Read imagine
remember upstairs the library could pass for palace vault of
glass atrium, marble echoing beneath herss shoes. Every display case
build to impress, But the stairs down passed the elevator
of birds through concrete into something older. The basement was
all thick, white painted bricks and fours that heaved under
the weight of years. There grew dense and sire, heavy
with ancient paper, peppered by the perfume of mildy wafting
from forgotten boxes. My first night, my phone lost service instantly.
The silence wasn't gentle. The basement pressed on your ear drums,
making you want to apologize every time your heel scuffed
against the concrete. The day's staff preferred the sunlight anyway.
They always glanced away when the subject of the lower
stacks came up. In my first staff meeting, missus Fannce,
my supervisor, marculately dressed and clipped a speech, handed me
a brass security ring and a sheaf of policies. Raymond
is on leave for now, she explained, without blinking, So
you'll cover the sub basement inventory until further notice, only
when the main desk is quiet. She never elaborated on
white the last Arkavis hadn't returned. It was my place
to ask. Still, Raymond Dale seemed to haunt his empty
desk near the furnace closet an agent Enamel Muggsy or
sfld Yark of s Island and cold TEA half completed
stack of logbooks bearing his looping signature back by four
thirty he must have written a hundreds of times, always
stopping mid page. A plate scarff dusted the back of
the chair, left eye, and after thought. Occasionally the other
librarian's Dale, Vicram Lorna, would drop half spoken rumors overbreak,
shrouding the basement. At a fog of helpful warnings I
couldn't quite pass. Lorna muttered, the subbasements never come right
since the last renovation. Vicram only grinned awkwardly, reminiscing about
the bold days. With a joke about the a track
garbling up gloves. I'd laugh along, pushing down a late
intension that vibrated through the stacks whenever the light's buzzed underneath.
The routine was a quieter rhythm. I liked the privacy,
the opportunity to move between darkened shelves, humming under my breath,
sticking my nose into rare books, untouched for years, convincing
myself the solitude was good for the soul. But lately
that quife felt different. Honestly, sometimes it seemed the darkness
itself waited for me to say something, as if the
room watched, expecting me to announce my presents with a
word out loud before it would turn me loose. It
clung to my back until I shut the office door
to night. It's worse my second week. I find myself
returning to that cord cattle off drawer again and again.
I left the main corridor safety hours ago, venturing deeper
than I've been before. After class, ring through the ring
of keys, missus Fonts issued. It's clear this little brass
lock would oblige me. None of the teeth match up,
though I try every one twice. My patience never a
virtue doesn't last. Later, around three fifteen a m. Shoving
the arrivals for the week, something odd nags at me.
On caught three a full row of deccession brooks, stamped
with the red pen and marked removed. I set them
aside to double check the withdraw sheets. Familiarity pricks at me,
but it takes a few minutes to see the pattern
Every single log for these removals is signed by R. D.
Raymondale even stranger. Several shore with rolled its weeks apart,
sometimes months, but all supposedly pulled in the last fortnight.
The catalog records were inconsistent. Half the barkers listed as
a misplaced are checked out, but no patron assigned. The
only in fining detail is that every single volume ties
back to the basement, often with shelf numbers hastily scribbled over.
The ditch of curiosity grows intent. I mutter into my phone,
how little sense it makes, hoping my own voice will
catch something I missed to night. I grow impatient with
the lock drawer. After a final key fails, I dig out,
jump a paper clip, and twist until the wire strait
is just enough to force the catch. The resistance isn't
enough to detO me. My pulse hammers. I half expect
an alarm to go off, something to confirm and crossing
a line. It takes longer than I'd care to admit,
contorting my wrist awkwardly in the narrow slot. But at
last the metal size and the drawer creaks open. Inside
the dust is an inch deep. A glimpse a stack
of old style plastic bowlers cards more than a dozen.
All of them say the same thing, Harry of Row.
Fifteen different cards, one for each year, date ranges scattered
over the last forty years. Each holds a black and
white ID photo, some with chips of yellow taple on
the edge, but the pictures aren't duplicates. The face inside
mops ever so slightly from card to carard olds are younger,
different jaw, heir, and a new shape. Sometimes her eyes
are wide, although times barely visible. A few hold such
an intense gaze they stare back, hypnotized until my heart
beat stutters into panic. None of these interests match anyone
in the current patron database either. The circulation system draws
a blank. I make a note of it, spring into
my phone, careful to describe the features. After sliding them
back into the drawer, I step away, gnawed by the
thought that perhaps someone else, Malkhamdale maybe came across the
ease before me and left them what as bait or
as a warning. My audio look INDs with a splotter
of static, and I pocket both fun and stealed thoughts
and tell my next shift. Day rolls around upstairs missus
Vance remarks over her coffee. Don't linger in the lower archives,
too drafty, since the construction skip what doesn't fit the
current sorting plan. She says this with the faintest arch,
meeting my gaze for at split second before she checks
her tablet again. The others hardly speak now words. Brad
quickly hear, even about nothing on my next overnight their
knees rides down the stairwell with me until I cannot
help but cross reference using an old file box. As
sift through personnel records, there are gaps, dozens of missing
pages and the assistants lock. Several overnight assistants are listed
over decades, but always the personnel files seemed to slip
off the records, names blacked up with the tide, rectangular
stamp hand riding running together as if raised by the
same time hand. All are marked special assignment basement, along
with an interoffice memo referencing Raymond's initials at least fifteen
times in the foot high stack. Most of the files
are in complete date stop newspaper clippings for library events
where staff blow into the background, never facing the camera directly. Furious,
I tried to access the security feeds. The footage is patchy,
sections redacted or corrupted, especially anywhere between two and five.
A m Miss Svance's response to my technical ticket is
a SI. She blames in network cabling issues and tells
me not to fuss about the maintenance logs for now.
Later that night, a cleaning crew pauses outside the supply closet,
tall wiry faces I don't recognize. They went cross the
threshold into the sub basement and said muttering about how
the last time someone worked down there they had nothing
but bad luck for months. I offer a joke about
the poldergeist in old storage, but receive only nervous smirks
and lowered eyes. Back at Raymond's desk, I addressed the recording,
trying to chart out the pattern, the methodical erasure, the
way the logs and I decard circle back to the
same corners of the arcaves again and again. I try
to not let my finger to tremble over the battered mug,
but a certain chill anchors me to the spot just before.
For I am sorting a delivery card of roy Books
when a signature leaps out at me again and again,
Harriet Row. Sometimes it's in faded ink, other times penciled
lightly on. Title pages are inscribed on the inside covers.
Each is followed by strange clip messages exhortations rather than dedications.
Keep silent, watch the stairs, r W. The books are
on in the ovis kind to their old reference tomes,
regional histories, theology, and the caskin binding. In one cracked novel,
I find an envelope containing a slip of card the
size of a business card on it. In the same
slanted hand is scrawled do not call the name below
the stairs. I pause only a moment before pocketing the card.
Whatever pattern is emerging isn't to do with lost books
and the outs. The clues connect fake borer cards, raised
staff names, stacks of withdrawn books, all pulling me toward
a spot mentioned in Raymond scrolled map corner esaven by
the alcove with the strange seal entire, I make for
the spot, not quite to control my breathing, the motion
sensor A light snap on, then flicker off too soon.
I reach for my phone flashlight, just as a sharp
crash echoes above me. May be a door slamming, followed
befitstep's clattering up the emergency stairwell drag gives my legs
a concrete heaviness. There shouldn't be any one else here.
Of every ingress requires a loged security fop. Each door
dead bolted behind the last shift. With heart hammering, I
follow far enough to see go slight at the very
top of the stairs. Then nothing, The darkness swallowing whatever
just passed through my hands tremble. I curse quietly into
my phone and decide, hunger or not, that I will
stay the full night, pass dawn if need be. If
some one is hiding something down here, I'll catch the
matted teeven if it means breaking protocol. But good. The
night seeps into me slowly. By six the sun is
a dim glow leaking through the basement ventilation slats. I
shuffle upstairs as gritty confidence bruised. My entry lock for
the night is brief, and the little ragged around the
edges I sleep in fits. When next I return for
a new shift, my pigeonhole slot by the staff lounge
is uncharacteristically full, nestled him with the junct mail and
interoffice bulletins. I find a single folded memmo thick with
dust at the edges, the paper yellowed and softening at
the creases. I pull it up, baffled at its age.
The top bears the Crossfield Public Library let ahead, but
not the sleek new City loger. This one's blocky rotro,
the kind last used a decade before I was hired.
A glance the memo looks official, center justified sya margin.
The header date jumps out March three, two thousand six. Impossible.
I wasn't even in this city back then. It's address
too Monica tigue sub basement assistance special of a night
permission below Raymondale's familiar signature, only bolder, more urgent than
in his log books. The message reads maintain protocol, Anonymities
to be preserved, Urgent review required. Usefuls breaks cross my arms.
The steel tang in my mouth is like bitten nerves.
I shake the date again, run my finger over the ink.
It hasn't faded, not one bit. There must be some explanation,
mustn't there some bureaucratic glitch, prank, or an old form
never shredded. I bowl the memo in one fist. Storming
up to Miss s Fannce's door, I assure her the
letter in a shaky hand, unable to steady my voice
as a demand to know how my name could possibly
of one up on a document drafted more than a
decade ago. Her face strains of color so fast it
almost reboots my anger. She fumbles for a lion, assures
me its justifiling error, then closes the office door between
us with a flat and ambiguous finality. The slot of
light under the door tern's black. I stand outside another minute,
the memmo crumpled in my swoating pom. Much later, Hunk
had done up my station. I replay my whispered adio
log for company, hearing my own voice list out the facts,
my horror Titans, Raymond Dale was part of something more
than catalog checks. Some one had somehow plugged my name
into the institutional machine long before my arrival. Did the
system target me? Or was a pure chance? Was every
overnight assistant just a random body to be filed, cataloged
and lost again? The tremors in my nerves linger even
after the office emptays. I throw myself at the technical records,
grasping for any more hard evidence. Late at night, I
scroll through brittle staff maint to in its logs cross
referencing Harriet Rowe the supposed pigeon. For every decade I
can reach, it's always the same. A woman picture for
four sometimes seven years, serving as reference assistant orock house page,
always listed as having moved on. The faces are slightly
altered on each form, sometimes hard featured, sometimes soft, but
always drifting around the name Harriet Rowe, as though she
were little more than a ghost. The library drissed up
as staff whenever needed. Over the files, Assistant names blur,
fusing into each other, regional accents, I color, even gender,
shifting between entries. Only the initials each are stay put.
Hunched over the back ledge of stacks of seven. I
sly one palm under a loose brick, something sharp like
a staple, nix my finger. I pull out a batter,
black notebook touched into the hollow behind the order. Raymond
Dale's handwriting fills each page, dense and panicked, his words
on spool and halting, breathless confessions. Rowe Is protocol, protocols, protection,
routine document photograph, musk registration, subtle changes to catalog once
identity exposed, rotate, never let one face show too long.
Old system fails must improvised, Never forget one's name, Never
leave the building if in doubt, we're set. If found
out a race, I try to make sense of it.
Was every replacement assistant to shield the new skin, to
cover some deeper vulnerability in Ereco. With these subtle gaps,
the odd idy card a strategy for keeping some one
or something here out of view. I narrate into my
device for comfort, now more openly convince the library records
when protecting individuals, but racing them cleverly, methodically, one at
a time. The corners of the basement start to feel narrower.
Every time I stray too close to the alcove. The
motion sense of blinks red instead of its routine green.
Always at exactly four thirty three a m to night,
I vowed a document everything. I borrow Raymond's hold camera
from boiler maintenance, loading fresh batteries. I wedge a portable
mike in one pocket. The tools comfort me. If nothing happens,
I still have proof that I looked, tried, did not
slip away quietly like those before me. The next overnight
will bring answers, or else I'll know never to ask again.
I found new entries into the lock I will stay
record and confront whatever comes when the lights die. In
the wall star was spring back, I found new entries
into the log I will stay record and confront whatever
comes when the lights die and the walls start whispering back.
My digital recorder stutters a little each time I hit pause,
as if reluctant to have his silence broken. The blue
ring of the recording indicated glows stubbornly through my jacket pocket.
At a start, the lawn trek back through the stacks,
checking my watch compulsively two thirty nine a m. The
next twenty minutes are spent not doing anything that looks brave,
just tidying carts, running for repetitive shelf checks. But every
action drags along a tight thread of anticipation, almost hope.
I run my thumb along the edge of Raymond's batted notebook,
wondering how many times he sat here waiting for the
same moment, heartbeat mangled by dread and the desperate wish
for some outside witness. Upstairs, the sweepers have already finished
this supplies, stacked neatly by the elevator mop standing at attention.
Down here, the detritus is settler dog yards, grab paper
pencil rolled beneath the baseboard register, the faintest film of
dust trailing across the ledge brick. It reminds me that
everything in these corridors is inherited. No object, no scrap,
is truly mine. Each inventory ledger I close as a
lion scrawled over with some one else's secret. The corridor
from the boiler room to the main stacks is longer
than it ought to be. Snaking past doors so old
they've been painted shut, I make myself pace it by
the numbers for the lock fifty six two steps from
utility closet to the alk of Raymond marked on has
battered map ten more to the books marked were drawn,
forth to the hatch that leads to the crawl space.
I barely breathe, as I know each marker allowed into
the microphone, speaking quietly but not leuths bring. I want
the recorder to hear me as much as I want
the empty it acknowledge my presence. The ires drift insomniac
and squirming. I fill them with the small rituals. Teaker
prinst in the handby sun tablet plugged into grayscale power outlets.
Hair twisted into a bun to keep it from tickling
my neck with every turn. But every time I look
up from my notes, I catch a chill and glance
over my shoulder, not once, but at least four times
an hour. I lock eyes with my own reflection in
the dusty plex glass pals to fringe the map cases,
never quite certain its me facing back. I decide at
some point that the only way to contain my fear
is to granite a task night midpoint, I drag over
the battered chair and line up both the camera and
the tape recorder directly facing the sub basement OLCO lens
trained on the strip of corridor, where I keep finding
oddit is card slips, forgotten initials, scuffed she marks. I
test a battery on the bored camera, clicking through the
faint green display its focus Hanson adjusts with its subtle
herey sound to each spinning murder, amplified by the cavinous quiet.
I narrate each step from my future self or whoever
else might ever listen. Current time two fifty eight am
KMA plays facing alcove, a seven motion detection enabled recording live.
If this goes wrong, check foot look at one in
the stuff lounge password row. No sooner have I set
the lens in place than the lights over the elco flucker.
It's not a blackout, not yet, just the momentary blit
that sometimes comes with the boiler cycling. But this time
the bulb stowed return to brightness. They draws in a
jaundice taze, swaying almost imperceptibly in the draft. My breath
plumes visibly. I rub the goose flush off my arms
and keep my voice deady though my mouth has gone dry.
I try to strap myself by cataloging the room small noises.
A tube in the wall belch the h VAC might
to itself somewhere behind shelf height. A book slid from
its neighbor, just enough to make a papery clunk. When
silence settles again, it's so thorough I can hear the
click of my own tongue as I swallow. I retrieved
the Harriet wrote library cards again, and found them across
the desk lamp. I study each vase overlaying it on
to the memories of colleagues. A jowel line here, and
I shaped their an almost recognizable twist of the math.
No one lines up perfectly, but certain aspect echo in
n settling ways. It makes me queasy, as if the
library have been the stelling people into templates, mixing traits
at random with every new row they minted. I count again,
fifteen cards, fifteen faces, fifteen years of rotating shadows. It's
then that I remember Raymond's warning, once named, never leave
the building. What happens to the ones who try? Would?
Air rays folded into another identity scope the way until
leaving their digital footprints vanished. My fingerships tingle with unease
kneading air. I circle the stacks, careful to leave the
camera recording. As I turn the corner near the supply closet,
I find a small stack of shelfers cards on the
floor cars at when not here an hour ago. My
head jerks up, hot thumping. I glance around. There is
not a soul in sight, and the corridor beyond the
bookshelves as empty as ever. The top card is stained
with crescent moon and prints as if someone chewed nervously
in the corner. I flip through. Each card bears the
same initials in sing some blue ink h R, sometimes
twinned with the barely legible R d and half coded
notes move to cold storage. The double chip protocols to
rose key filed. I tuck them into my jacket for evidence.
Back at the main terminal, I tried daring the system
by searching for Harriet Row and Raymondale together. The screen
spits back aurse. No match is found, but a repeated
pop up in the lower ride of the screen an
error message overlaying the system call reads use a privilege
is changed, Please log in again. I try logging. The
system humps, then pauses as if thinking, then admits me
to a file directory that wasn't the minutes earlier, backlash
arc have backlush roer protocol backlush draft. I click through
heart pounding and find nothing but a set of Scann
memois dated at scattered intervals across decades, none assigned to
any knowns daffer I prin to hot copy, tuck it
deep into my work back, and disconnect the session. The
hum of the server sounds defensive, like a hibernating animal
distout for no good reason. By now I've set alarms
for every half hour through the rest of the shift.
Tiroreed out against what heavy tricks exhaustion might try to play.
I sit cold tea, read Raymond's battered notebook again, and
count the flashes on the basement's motion sensor light two yellow,
one green, sometimes three faint reds buried in the static.
At three fifty six, a new alarm sounds. I almost
dropped my tea. The ring so abrupt it seems to
come from inside my own head. I steady myself turned
toward the alcove. Double check the camera angle, then soft
as a coffee, catch a sliver of movement to the
edge of the stacks. Nobody should be done here, It's impossible.
The building's alarms are set to flag every entry after midnight.
I rise too quickly, pulls crashing in my ears, and
blurred a note into the tape. Movement detected as seven
confirmed time three fifty seven a m. The camera small
screen flickers. I catch the shaped hole, thin figure leaning
into the shadows, face turned from the lens for a
half breath. I think it someone from the cleaning crew,
back for a left behind bucket, but know this person
wears a jacket dipped in suit, something like the faded
navy of Raymond's work coat. The stranger glances back over
their shoulder eyes briefly reflecting the dull, blursh cast of
the emergency bulb. I hold my station, not daring to
move closer, forcing myself to keep breathing and to keep
speaking out loud or where that honest narration is the
only weight holding me down. Unknown individual at sevenalco with
KAMA active, requesting I d no response. The figure responds
not at all. Instead, they pause, kneeling at the base
of the alcove, and with deft hands, begins shifting old
box files, slipping envelopes among the logs, and precisely the
way I've seen evidence of before. I catch Murmuring's numbers. Names,
each boken with a reverence that sounds almost the turgical
Harriet lorna vincent Obidai approve call un changed, phase completed.
Each nigh rings a bellaformer staffa, an archives assistant from
some ancient departmento memo. I stay rude note, but pressed
to my chest, stocking my head around the end of
a shelf to keep a careful watch. The figure arises
with sudden urgency, pockets something metallic and glances directly into
the light of the camera. For an instant I'm certain
I see raymonds face the nose the sharp line of
draw hollow cheeks, but his eyes are two wide people's
blown impossibly large. He mouths a soundless word. Lips working
as if underwater, don't. A spasm of terror freezes my limbs.
The figure's attention breaks away and immediately to sends. A
light at the far end of the stacks blazes to
lef its lens blinking furious red, strobing the darkness into
new monstrous geometries. I fumble from my recorder, speaking in
a broken whisper, both sense of bands reporting simultaneous movement.
Unknown party may not be alone, I repeat, not alone
in the archives. I step toward the alcove. The floor
under foot is sticky with something spilled tea old glue.
I hope I ignore it. Focus narrow to the rhythm
in my ears. The static and the air intensifies, like
the fists before an electrical search. Then, with a jolt,
the main breaker panel pops aloud, echoing clap. Every light
dies for a half second, plunging everything into night. My
camera's led indicator is the only elimination, A tiny point
of blue ten feet head Bobby in empty air. I
stagger forward nearly trip over a misaligned floorboard. My pump
slams against the colbric of the alcove wall. Something gives
a soft click, barely louder than my breath. Suddenly a
rectangle of falls wallpivots swinging aside, revealing a cramp corridor
leading off into shadow. Without thinking, I plunge into it,
heart hammering inside the narrow passages lined with microfilm canisters
and batted archive boxes. Some are labeled for cities I've
never heard of, for names that recollect a litany to
the staff locks. Others simply bear rows of red ink
numbers flickering the recorder in front of me. I murmur
secret doci behind false alcovol contents, microfilm, staff darces, log books,
many labeled ROWE protocol active. I scan the shelves, compulsively
reading the files Harriet wrote lorn and white, deceased becomes
shaw removed, monoicatique active pending review. My own DARSI sits
near the edge, tucked in amid a dozen then folders.
I flip through it, hand shaking pages and pages of
photocopy documents, student transcripts, rental agreements and employed and contracts,
all knitted together, as if someone build a full biography
from the shadow side of public record. Searches as clear
as some one has been editing my pass, folding me
into place with brutal efficiency. Behind me, I hear another
soundles scraping of something dragged over tile. The figure in
Raymond's jacket has entered the corridor. Breath raspin unevenly. Do
you understand now, he says, voice, ragged spectral in its ruin.
We keep the procol to keep out worse things. We
take on names faces. When one is lost, we write
them back in. Give the library its ghost. You shouldn't
have followed. I step back, pressing the recorder so hard
my fingers ache wymy I demand voice thready, he shakes
his head. Not just you, Monica, anyone who fits. They
watch for ones who slip easily between lives, who need
a place and name a contract easy to sign. The
protocol picks up the drift. This building has holes. He
moves sideways, as if preparing to flee. I notice the
edge of another shadow moving and behind him. The light
from my camera stutters. The battery is dying. Before I
can shape another question, a fresh rush of when tears
down the narrow corridor, blowing loose papers into the air,
scattering them like frantic wings. A second figure emerges, tall, mass,
entirely silent. Its face is obscured by a blank badge,
metal and smooth as water. Raymond raises one hand as
if warding off in assaul, go Monica, now you have
what you need. The mass figure advances, stepping over spilled
Darsa's ham, closing on Raymond's jacket with a wrenching motion.
It haulds him backward. Raymond's face contorted in desperate warning,
lit working soundlessly, I catch one rugged word expose. I
back away, pressing myself flat to the brick, scrabbing for
something to defend myself. My fist closes over a small
micropham wheel, slick and unexpectedly cold. I shove it into
my coat, fight in the terror that has swallowed my reason.
Then the lights cut up completely, a black hat absolute
but for the thin led of my dying recorder. I
staggered down the corridor, crashing into cabinets, hip bone, slamming
agony against steel corners in a pure darkness. The well
drinks to a tunnel of noise, and breath and muscle memory.
I find my way back to the roofs heating wall
shouldered open on the third panic shove. Something slams behind me,
echoing into infinite distance. I spill into the manarchav gasping, fingers,
slippery with sweat. Outside, the corridor stands empty, no sound
but the clatter of my own hurried breath. I twist
the camera off, grab for my phone, and by refixed
check the red indicator on the motion sensor, linking urgently rhythmically,
as if making a last desperate call for help before
the dawn cracks. I may corroed audio notes, capturing in
every detail the false wall, the files, the mast figure,
Raymond's warning. I pocket the last of the hurriyt row
clouds my shoe, squelch with all tea of something stickier.
I stuff my jacket with as much paper and microfilm
as I can carry. I emerge onto the lobby stairs
just as the first horn of sunlight breeches to high glass.
The security desk is a man. Every terminal asleep, alarms
were set to neutral. Before I leave, I look back, once,
catching my reflection in the pittied glass, face wild and shocked,
behind me. The mass of the building bruise its silence
in you, quiet as the grave and just as watchful.
My final log entry for the night is clipped and urgent,
seven three a m exiting Arkove's physical evidence in hand.
If I don't return, evidence is in bag, A password
and changed staff, possibly complicit protocol, possibly active watch for
wrote end lock. The city outside is cool, blue, and
surprisingly clean. My own limbs feel strange, borrowed. The morning
traffic has already begun, and it seems impossible that the
world could be both so ordinary and so under sieged
with secrets. The city air outside was sharp as I
stepped onto the street, the first sunlight scattering and narrowing
rectangles through the glass of the library's fasawed. My body
still trembled, sweat baking cold outside, my collar, heart thudding
so loud. A half expected passes by to stair. They
didn't to them. I was just another employee, probably trudging
home from a night shift, and no different from the
blue eye cooks and maintenance workers. I glanced at a
bus bench, his plastic seats liquid dew, and forced myself
to sit. My knees tried to keep running. Every touch
felt heightened the rage of my phone screen as I
checked the audio recorder, the musky odor of microfilms sliding
under my jack at the brittle crackle of old paper.
My hand stank of dust and busted knuckles, tingled from
where I had slammed into metal, edging in the dark,
and already the skin where the microphonm reel pressed against
my ribs was sore as if marked. I blinked back
the urged slob. Instead. I fumbled from my phone, scanning
every notification for proof that someone might have seen or
heard nothing. Coles missed, a canned reminder from my landlord,
but no alerts, no desperate messages responding to my logs.
I hadn't set up claud back up properly. All I
had were local philes, fragile as anything out clutched inside
the false wall. I forced myself to keep walking away
from the library. Each step felt uncertain, but I pressed forward,
replaying pieces of the night through my mind, the secret passage,
rows of d'arssays with my name, the mass figure dragging Raymond,
if it was Raymond, back into the black, his last
word expose. My brain reeled as I mentally repeated what
I needed to do. Evidence first, a list of what
I had, would to copy or hide, names to search
steps for back up. I wouldn't sleep, couldn't The cold
morning wrapped me up or urging me not to lose
momentum for fear, I crawl into bed and never wake,
swallowed like another archive file. I didn't go home. Instead,
I took my mess of board materials and sat in
a seldom used booth at an all Iyos cafe, armine
my back to the wall and a greasy menu between
the evidence and curious eyes. My first action was basic, desperate.
I powered on the camera and scrolled through memory. The
screen glowed clean blue, but when I tried reviewing last
night's footage, ara screens interrupted in Chunk's file inaccessible, then
media corrupted. The audio at least remained as a muffled,
stuttering record. I scrolled through the previous logs, sending coppice
to two separate email addresses, my own, my college account,
and an encrypted back upon a foul locker had set
up mostly as an experiment years before. With shaking hands,
I palmed open the microphone spool dozens of still framed
snapshots of cards, faces, street scenes, a scene from the
library entrance slid through milky negatives, each damped underside hold
a unique coat. Some faces looked familiar at morphing, as
if seen just beyond the lens of a memory. On
one strip, caught in a flush of light, I recognized
the side of my own head, a pale pinch hunched
over a book cut from just last week. I snapped
a photo of my phone that at least went through.
I send it to myself, to a friend in another city,
to nobody in particular. My phone paying message undeliverable. I blinked,
checked again, Send a test note to my mother's number.
The reply recipient unknown or not accepting messages. A prickling
fear raised up my chest. Clutching the hard evidence, I
walked to the nearest Fitex branch. Imposted a thick, battered envelope, logs, slips,
a couple of microfilm frames, and a hastily scrolled note
addressed to a friend from broad school, no explanation, just
in case if you get this call. I kept my
grip in the rest, determined not to let it go
untill I'd figured out what to do. Only when the
sun was clear of the skyline. Did I finally let
my shoulders sack. A throb behind. My temples pressed the
edges of my vision, but there was no time to
let exhaustion in. Back in the cafe, my phone finally
rang a number masked, not even a city cove, just
a private collar. I tapped a decline, then another flash,
this time not call, but a security notification logan attempt
to count access from need device some city I had
never visited, half way across the country. I closed the laptop.
My hand drifted to my back. I zipped it uptight,
the plastic teeth catching for an anxious second. What had
I brought home with me? I pressed my palm to
the bag and whispered, half as a joke, half as
a prayer, don't let them find me. Less than an
hour after sunrise, I made it home, ducking my head
at the security camera up of the lobby. Nerves went tight.
I checked the mail bookspare, no sign yet of being watched.
At the elevator, passed a neighbor who nodded in the
tired way of those awake too early. Inside my apartment,
the walls closed in on me. I felt full of
lock twisted it drum. My phone vibrated, though I didn't
recall s adding it to buzz. I set up the
evidence on my kitchen counter, recorder, cards, camera, microfilm, slips
of paper, and the bettered notebook from behind the brick.
Trying not to shake. I began connecting to old contacts,
searching for external help, anyone who might have known raiment
the other row, assistance those lost to file and rooms.
Each search led to a dead end, LinkedIn results white
staff bows grupped from the city website, wig back machine
cases showing broken images and missing lines. I tried emailing,
only to be bounced again or recipient knaw found. I
turned off my computer and sat with my breath for
a minute before peering at my phone, scanning Miss Cole's
one after another private, each no answer. I deleted voicemails
without listening. I wished I could count on memory, but
I feared now that memory itself was what they banked
on dissolving. First, a hard knock rattled me out of
my corner. Three raps rutmic business like on my apartment door.
I shoved the evidence into the back, kept the recorder
in my palm, and peered through the peep hole. No
one was there. The corridor was empty. Carpet running away
toward the stairwell via doge drifting steadily shut. I shut
my eyes, breathed for the first time. A thin kernel
of fury overpowered my fear. I wouldn't give them the
satisfaction of watching me collapse. Not yet. By the time
I changed clothes and chucked my shoes, the second wave
of impact had started, an escalation of tiny losses, each
stripping away comfort, each leaving me more exposed. First came
the email from the library's human resources officed time for
nine three am, a minute after their doors officially opened,
Termination of contract, mutual consent. The language was dry, slightly apologetic,
as if I were being thanked for work completed. Given
the present circumstances, it is in the best interest of
both parties for your overnight contract to conclude at this time.
No reference to last night, no reference to anything about
the sub basement. My final pay inseverance had already been
direct deposited. It said. There was an attachment and non
disclosure statement the kindes see in corporate textbooks, just with
a few more bolded lines than I remembered seeing before. Second,
an instant message from missus Vance. You don't need to
come in. Offices closed this week for renovations. Security will
forward your belongings. Contact Hil for paperwork. No call, no
chance to explain what had seen oor demand answers, everything
to neat. In fact, I tried to reply, the message bounced.
I tried calling the library main line a robe, but answered,
then hung up the moment I selected staff support. I
checked my work email via brother tap. I hadn't closed
since my shift password no longer worked. Reset function failed,
no option for two factor authentication. I felt the world's
sliding inch by inch under my feet, resisting the urge
to return to bed. I paced my apartment, narrating in
a soft mutter for the recorder. Everything is shutting down,
being wiped. I'm being locked out, to cut off, erased.
My voice felt odd coming back through the headphones, too high,
trembling with the edge of visteria. I refused to succumb
to in the stacks. I called a friend to my
best friend from college, lion. No answer, not even voicemail.
The number now went to your number, not assigned. My
chestndded tighter. I double checked our old texts the photos,
the voicemail she'd left last fall, except the conversation throughout
was gone at just the name, no messages, as if
the phone had been reset and our shared history had
faded with yesterday's charge. Was I overreacting? Had PARANOI pus
in my mind over night? Yet the evidence stared back
back at me, microfilm reels, battered cards, slipt written in
two distinct hands. I set aside my phone and tried
to print what photos and notes I could. My home
printed jam twice, then spat out sheets, each image of
the row of cards, showing nothing but blurred faces and
blank text, like the name had been peeled off in
the act of transmission. Frustration bent my will into something flinty. Fine,
if this scrubbed the evidence here, I try harder. I
boxed up what I could a leaving a set of
real documents inside battered shoe books, labeled at least records,
slashed hunting and tin tacks, and carried them down to
the apartment's package lockers, using a code I'd never bothered
to memorize before last night. As I finished sealing up
the box, the wholeway light flickered, not altogether, just enough
for me to notice the shift. The way of rooms
grabbed a change's angle and an earthquake. I hurried back upstairs,
locking the door behind me. I lay down on the bed,
arms above my head, staring at the water stains on
my ceiling. My body screamed for sleep, but the looping
anxiety kept my mind spinning. If I closed my eyes,
I would see the masks and the false wall, and
the way Raymond's jacket crumpled as the white glove hand
closed around his shoes expose. Hours passed. Maybe I slept,
but I don't remember dreaming. When I opened my eyes,
late afternoon had brought color back to the world. The
sensation didn't last. Another work notification flash employ account ARKive,
no access permissions, direct inquiries to system administrator. Even my
LinkedIn profiles showed no current position. I checked my razume
on file with the job site. The draft there was
gone marked and available. Personal notes vanished from the cloud.
The last three emails to my mother and uncle bansd
with a known user. My online presence scrouched at the dust,
no tangible residue left. Not wanting to be alone, I
messaged old graduate school friends. No reply for a moment,
my determination flagged. Maybe I've rattled too many digital doors
signaled my presence too loudly. The sun was low enough
of the street lights to switch on. Before I dared
return to the library just to see, I told myself
it was only to check for observers, not to confront
any one upright. But when I neared the block, I
saw city vehicles parped out front, security tapes, straps ruched
across the mindoors. A cluster of men in of rolls
caught out boxes and crates through the side freight entrance.
The place was crawling, was nerves cess fences, silver sed
down idol by the curb. No sign of Raymond, or
if anyone else. I recognized a woman from facilities, someone
I remembered only in passing, locked eyes with me from
across the street. She wore a fluorescent vest over her
coat and held a calip wartite to her chest. The
recognition in her face fled, then shattered atcaution or denial,
I couldn't tell. She turned away before I could take
a step forward. I watched the library staff clear boxes,
pack up files, remove any shred of whatever evidence I
hadn't already secreted away. I left. There was nothing more
I could do. There, in the dull yellow of my apartment,
I sat with microfilm on my battered phone, archiving every log,
every recorded sound, burning at all, too caught account under
a fake name. The act gave little comfort, the dragnet
around me tightened by the Eire. At sundown, my mail
was clicked a thick envelope slipped through the slot, City
in Sidney. Peeking up in the corner inside I found
a release form of settlement paint, the typed and signed
with a sticky note clipped over the signature, free your silence,
best not to continue Regardo's HR, no name, no initials.
I tore it in half, but the paper wouldn't rip clean,
as if even its molecules were determined not to break ranks.
That night I turned to what Raymond had left hidden
in his grant faults. His note Pekild had clues, hand
draw maps, lists, and one long, careful entry on a
page creased over from too much thumbing. Brou Proudecoll continues, stopped,
asking who makes the changes after a year five? No
one answers if rule's violated. If you try to one
see what's taken away. Don't run, never leave without locking
the look book behind you. If you slip your necks
always My hand shook as I finished copping that out
on memory surface, the masks, the silence behind the badge,
and Raymond's bone and eyes pressed against mine. In that
stroving dark, I knew I had to reach out to
tell someone else, someone impossible to raise, whose memory wasn't
just plastic and pixels. With newly minted nerves, I searched
for local journalists. I called one, blocked, tried another. Maybe,
he said, perhaps, if I could prove it, something about
kneading hard facts, not stores from burnt out insomniacs. I
almost shrank into apology, but the stubborn streaker me pressed further,
offering up the logs, the microfilm, anything left in tangible form.
The journalists promised to meet, then never arrived for the
schedule call. My morning, I had sent coppice to half
a dozen alternate contacts, every document stashed in another cubby,
the post office safe box, a friend's house, scanned and
burnt to a disc, evidence spread and hidden. I wore
all the fear inside, but did not let it anchor me.
Still each day, the world narrowed, My account pass was failed,
my physical mail dribble to bills and junk. Only my
presence seemed to dim. Neighbors no longer nodded their tired greeting.
Even my own voice played back over the recorder sounded distant, grainy, hollow,
phasing in and out like an a tune broadcast. I
spent the early afternoon cataloging what could not be altered
microfilm strips, a short chemical time of the tape, slivers
of impressions left by the weight of a finger on
an envelope that was real enough reel as the battered
Harriet wrote library cards, but as I tried scanning them again,
the faces faded. Faces I checked and rechecked, already vanishing
the names a thin shimmer of graphite and phertographable. I
worried that others from a staff Lorna Vikram the cleaning
crew who warned me, were next. I called records departments
and city offices, but any mention of overnight shift assistance
or special assignments tied to a reprotocol routed me to
dead lines or generic clerks. No such records listed. Thank
you for calling. Pressure mounted not panic, but a cold certainty.
Some one or something aimed to clear out the story
before it was told. One night, my phone's vibration dragged
me from bed. A text bloomed on the screen, Stop
sending danger, we see you. I tried calling the number,
but it disconnected before even a ring from my kitchen
appeared across the alley, Finding nothing but the reflection of
my own face in the glass, hands gripped the counter
for balance. The next morning, my employer profile no longer
popped up in city databases, even archive. I was already
removed a shadow. My own landlord seemed to second guess
my name on the rent roll. I tried showing him Adi,
but his eyes slipped off the details, as if he
were reading through fogg glass. When the final blow came,
it was small, but decisive. My mail books held a
letter notice least will not be renewed premises required for
city project. No warning, no apology, just a new place
to disappear from the city felt foreign now, the streets
wide and chilly, with the sensible world reassembling itself minus me.
My contacts failed, texts returned with abrupt and no recipient notices.
Even the voice in my phone threatened to distort recordings
that one sounded certain now jumped without stata comes and
chuffing drawbouts. The back of my mind frobed with old
campus nightmares of being left off the class roll, of
no one knowing my face. I resolved to act, not surrender.
The coldness in my apartment reminded me of the sub basement,
but rage did in my hands. I recopied my notes
into a notebook, using pen, my mailed slips and coppice
everywhere I could think, each inscribed if I vanish find
the library's real archives, microfilm and shoe box password row.
It wasn't much as stock cap maybe feudal, maybe not.
By the third day, all calls from numbers are recognized,
ceased entirely. Only private numbers, along silence, heavy voicemails persisted,
each sending a mile shudder up my spine. There was
sensy of memory, press me to pace my walls, keeping
my mind active, mottering play by play into the recorder,
detailing everything. When Knox came a series of irregular late
night thumps at my door, I left them unanswered. Once
through the peep hole I saw a young man in
a Cardeger's uniform face pressed close. When he noticed the
metal eye, he smiled thinly and left hands empty. That night,
the elevator in my building stopped for two minutes. On
my floor, doors open, no one inside. I waited until
the light blinked before moving again. On a Monday, I
saw missus Fance herself for the first time since the basement.
She stood at the end of the block scoff nodded
with the same precision as I remembered from the office.
Our eyes met. She didn't look away. She started toward me,
slow and measured, ever of full deliberate. No one else
noticed her but me. I didn't run, but I did
keep walking. No game of cat and mouse, just the
resignation of some one being trimmed away from the city's margins.
By the time I reached the intersection, her figure was gone. Midweek,
exhaustion rounded the edges of my every thought. I sat
at my kitchen table and fingered the last Harriet Row
cord as plastic ridges once off to the cress. The photo,
now more blurred than before, I turned it over and over,
searching for any residual heat, any vibration. There was nothing
except the knowledge I had already lost in the headphones,
my record of voice played over and again. If the
alcove cold storage row passward in the background, the static
filled up the pauses where a rustle not unlighted stacks themselves.
I wrote one more letter, a desperate plea to anyone
who would listen. Coppice and photos and all. If you
read this, you have to look. Don't let them take
more of us. The pattern is reel. See the protocol.
If I become some one else find me. I mailed
it off to a new sight, wrapped in plain brown paper,
then taped another copy for myself under my kitchen counter.
As the days passed, I barely left the apartment except
to check the mail books or paid down the stairwell.
The sense of being watched remained sharpening only when the
lights flickered, and weighs reminiscent of the stacks too short,
one long. Always after four in the morning. The world
pressed on a little less substantial with each morning. My
own name felt borrowed, as if it was much with
the next check of the mail or swipe of my
card at the store. But I clung to the ritual
of documentation routine as any shelf, check charger, plugged in, locks, uploaded, evidence, mailed,
and emailed. I remained, if only to resist being peeled
away the last. Then this line of connection held the
resistance to vanish, to be purged by protocol. I spent
an entire evening listening to my own lots, try and
failing to recognize my own voice. As the fromostatic deepened,
I cooing back the warning from the concrete bowels of
the library. Some time passed three in the morning, with
headphones pressed too tight, the recording glitch again, then finally stopped.
The last lines looted wat by digital fatigue. Expose, expose, expose.
When I checked my phone the next day, even my
camera had failed. Every video replaced by static blocks, sounded,
replaced by the simmerring hush that filled Raymond's locks with dread.
I deleted nothing, I archived at all. One morning, a
sheaf of envelopes arrived, the last batch of mail before
my lease was revoked. I made the bills and denials
and thick ominous release forms. A single white envelope stood out,
no return address. The stamp und remarkable, the handwriting precise, pogeneric,
almost machine like, inside Wrapped in tissue was a single
library card Crossfield Public Library. Name Harriet Rowe photo, my own,
professionally shot but slightly off, a passport style glare in
my eyes, the date the current week. For a moment
the room spun the cod's edges bit at my palm.
It was my own photo, my own blue collar fatigue,
but the name was not mine. At the bottom corner,
a line in fine print read eligible for restricted desk work.
I turned the card over, searching for any message. There
was nothing more. Still it was the decoration, a new
designation for the archive and induction. I felt a deep
stillness close around me, like the cooling of air in
the library basement just before the blackout. I pulled out
the recorder once more, thumb hovering over the big red
button audio log I murmured, though my voice barely sounded
like mine at all. New cord received, Harriet rr Photo
matches Protoculcum firm. This will serve as my notice. Behind
the first words came a guttering burst of static, a deep,
familiar drawn, the very sound of the library's machinery at idle.
Even here, distanced and shut out, I was not outside
its system. I started a new lowk Hans, trembling, less
for fear and more with a chill of acceptance. I
resolved to document, even if for no one but the
ghosts and the archive. I press record. The sound faltered slowly,
stretching and distorting, as if miles of cinder block and
ancient shelving still lay between me and any honest telling.
In the thickening static, I heard the hum of the stack,
steady watching recording. In return, I sat on the edge
of my chair, the envelope open card balance between them
and first finger. The gesture familiar, wrote Mundane, reminded me
of a thousand movements in the archives. It was a
kind of answer, the final trace of my own volition
before the protocol finished closing about me. I waited for
the buzz of the machine to fade, but the sound
only deepened, folding over itself, as if the library still
knew my name. I waited for the buzz of the
machine to fade, but the sound only deepened, folding over itself,
as if the lie library still knew my name. For
the next time, I sat motionless, the library card pressed
flat against my sweaty palm, each part of my small
apartment began to feel unfamiliar, as though the edges and
surfaces had been redrawn in a slightly different hand. Sunlight
swept across my kitchen tiles with an odd slant, no warmth,
just elimination, vright enough to reveal the fine dust on
my table and the pattern of coffee rings left from
weeks of restless nights. I forced myself to stand and
wandered from counter to sink, card chess, listening for footsteps
in the hallway, for the old elevator, grinding up bout
for any trace of official interruption. It didn't come. Silence
filled the gaps between clock Tixon now the audio logs,
quiet indicator blinking blue and then red, as if cycling
between two states of notice, their unnees would not peel away. Curiosity, dread,
and an angry curiosity began to breed themselves together inside
my chest, tightening each time I thought about the final envelope,
my own picture beneath the borrowed name, the precise machine lettering,
restricted desk work. I tried typing my new name into
the city's public library staff directory. No result on the
library day to be saxis now denied, I found the
faintest ghost entry rowe herrid status active. Below that a
string of dates, all clustered within the week. The system
still had rules, no staff photo, no job title, no
contact e mill just active. Was that what had always happened?
After someone vanished, after the evidence was boxed up, after
their own voice darted, sounding like static in their ears.
The remains of the evidence of microfilm fragments, cards, the
battered note pococcupied my kitchen table, a memorial to the
life I had laid up to the last shift. I
risk another transferer phone to Cloud from what was left.
The files uploaded slower than usual, as if shunted through
in a li corridor. I timed out twice. The third time,
at eleven fifty nine a m. The logs finally appeared
on the secondary serve i'd set up the night before.
I labeled one folder to found Monarchty. It wasn't enough.
I suspected it would never be enough. As the afternoon
wore on, I debated what came next. Leave the city
that required clean records, a lease, a car, a presence,
stay at rests, the same fate as Raymond dragged behind
a sliding wall dissolved into memos and protocol. I wanted
to scream, and yet my mind circled back to the
possibility that all this was a game played at the
level of faint gestures, a matter not of violence but
of erasure. I decided the only way forward was to
make more than a private record. The only sharp resistance
was exposure. Breathing steadily, I collected what physical proof I
could carry, Raymond's notebook too on damage to Harriet Rode Cause,
a brittle strip of microfilm, and the printouts from the
library's shadowed directory. I stuffed it all in a messenger
back and left my apartment near dusk, Blending with commuters
at the bus stop, I checked over my shoulder. No
one followed, no more cause idled to the curb, my
face in the glass reflect attired and remarkable, easy to ignore.
My destination that night was a diminutive community radio station
a half dozen blocks north of the library, the kind
of place that still played up in my calls, hosted
late night conspiracy shows at occasionally a frantic rants from
fiction writers or students high on insomnia. I pressed the
door buzzer back slong tight, and waited for someone to
let me in. A young man with headphones around his neck,
paers through a side panel and opened the door six inches.
We're not open for recording, he started, then pause when
I held up the evidence. Just need to pass something
to a producer, I said quietly. It's urgent. He looks
me up and down. What kind of urgent stuff no
one else will take? I have documents proof about something
happening at the city. A cerves someone needs to see
it before it's gone, he considered. Eventually, with a worry gesture.
He ushered me inside, offering the most public room, the
break away beside the sand booth is a place to
set my things. I unloaded the contents of my bagon
to a laminate table. Can you get your manager, I ask,
not quite pleading the manager. An older woman reviewed the
first sheet, the bout a notebook, the microfilm. Her eyes
lingered on the Harriot Row cod and the blurry strip
where my own pale face hovered over a stolen name.
She receded into a different quite a mood, not suspicion,
but a careful calculation, as if weighing the price of listening.
You were staffed, she asked, finally, until last night. It's
not safe. The white people. Whoever questions the protecolls, whoever
finds out too much, The systems big than you ink.
I have the notes. I have audio logs too. Audio
I was worth, I said, I recorded everything. There is
a copy uploading now to a public server. You can
have the axis code. We sat in brittle silence. A
few more people ducton and not eyeing my stacks. Half curious,
half cautious. The manager motioned for one colleague, someone in tech,
to take possession of the microfilm and the batted cards.
She kept the radio volume turn low, she said gently,
but with enough firmness to rattle me. Are you sure
you want this to be out in the world. Sometimes
sometimes these things backfire. It's already cost me everything I
had of my job, my name, my contacts, probably my safety.
There's nothing left for them to take but me. I
forced a smile, and I don't have any more name
to lose. She nodded, exhaling sharp. I'll make some calls.
I can't promise anything, but you did the right thing
bringing it here. You'd better not go home to night.
I stayed until darkness thickened the windows. They offered me
a spare blanket a munk of pedmant tea for the
next tire. I stretched on the battered sofa, every tendon
vibrating with exhaustion. The voices on the radio faded in
and out, like the echo inside the sub basement stacks.
Every story seemed to dissolve at its climax, as if
muffled by more than static. When dawn broke, I thank them,
sipped my jacket and headed back to the street. I
checked my phone, the radio manager's reply, a text, and
then a photo, the evidence still there waiting for daylight.
I bought a bernafune, switched as IM and play street
calls to local newsrooms, a city council tip line, and
the library Board of Trustees. The first two routed me
to polite and helpful voicemail boxes. The board's automated systems
spat out a reference number and treceabolt barely a confirmation.
Return into my building, as once again peeled out windows
and upper cameras, I noticed the change. The security guard
on the lobby desk, some one I had known for weeks,
no longer recognized me. He studied my ID card, then
let his gaze blow over the photo. His brow furrod,
and with rehearsed politeness, he said, just passing through, missus.
He never used the word missed before. He was always
on a first name basis with residents. With a thin,
bruised laugh, I nodded, moving past, clutching my bad tider.
The walls were shuffling. Had reached a most basic level.
Back up stairs, my old key still worked, but the
apartment felt empty, even as the same objects waited for me, notebooks, mugs,
worn slippers. It was as if my presence was a placeholder,
one that could be rotated, replaced, or even struck from
the inventory at any moment. I inventoried everything one last time,
made a back up to a final external drive, and
prepared an envelope familiar to the city clock's office. My
last gasp but official attention. Mid morning, if flicked through
social media, a new post trended someone explained mystery at
Crossfield Library greeny speculative, dismissive. The story, if it was mine,
had already become noise, background chatter, and a thousand scrolling
feeds the real arc. I've always waited in the dark,
not online. By afternoon, someone came knocking at my door.
Efficient unheard. I saw the glint of a work badge,
the practical shoes. When I didn't answer, the footsteps vanished
without incident, no note left. I crunched through the evidence
one last time, searching for cracks in the pert colts error,
some must place name or date that might let the
rest of the world see through the veil. There was none.
The system was nearly perfect, except for the faint and
exhaustible thread of memory that held my recollection together, and
what I had already managed to scatter into the light.
The next day, an unsigned letter slid under my door.
You must let go, no return address, just a time
four thirty three, a m in blue pen, written in
a slant that reminded me of Raymond's look Book. I
set an alarm when the digital bells pealed in the
pre dawned dark. I was already dressed, bag ready, a
copy of the Harrier Rouard snug in my pocket beside
my original driver's license. I stood by my door waiting.
The ire came in went and nothing happened. No phantom footsteps,
no power cut, not even a flicker of light in
the hallway. Yet, when I looked in the mirror afterward,
I saw clear as any photography features, blurring, melting into
someone incrementally unfamiliar. Not a dramatic transformation, but a minute
reshaping the asmore tired hair pressed at a different angle,
expression flattening to a careful neutrality that seemed capable of
slipping into any one's life or out of it without trace.
I realized the transformation was almost complete, and it struck
me with the dull terror of being hollowed out. The
moment for confrontation was now or never. I yanked on
my coat, grabbed the remaining materials, and walked briskly back
to the library, whether it was safe or not. No
longer matted across the city with quick purposive strides, arriving
just after the building opened for the day to staff alone.
A cordon of maintenance workers blocked off the street level entrance.
I circled to the loading dark, ducked under the caution tape,
and darted into the shadow at access ster. While Apath
I had seen marked once on the map, Raymond drew
in his battered notebook, descending. Each step rang through the air,
echoing the familiar chill from that first sleep. Ass weekned
the job inside The stacks were still and cold. Fresher
paint over the alcove walls, boxes and cables crowded the corridors,
suppressing any sign of what had transpired. I kept moving,
turned the corner to akideserven and pressed Meffinger tips along
the false edge I'd found and panic three nights earlier.
Against all hope, the wall shifted the passageway. The one
whether microfilm still rested in darkness room Maine and disturbed.
Only now the air was colder, more clinical, the scent
of ozon in a remote chemical tink culling into my lungs.
I flicked a small flash flight. The microfilm boxes still
lined the corridor. I removed one, almost reverently, and tucked
it into my jacket. If any one is watching, I
whispered into the glare, this is not for you. I'm
not your shield, not your rw I'm just the last
best witness before the blackout. A shadow flickered behind me.
I spawn two figures blocked the escape, wrote, a woman
with missus Fanc's own ill posture, and a broad shouldered
man in facilities garb. No masks this time, just the
impassive neutrality of those who'd known all along that their
work wasn't for the archives, but for the void behind them.
Missus Fance's voice was level. You shouldn't be here, Monica,
it's been decided. I stood my ground, tightening my grip
around the microfilm. You can't just erase me, not after
everything I know. We don't erase, she replied, moving a
half step forward. We rotate, The library endures, the stores
stay safe. Her eyes glittered with a pinch of regret
or perhaps envy. But it's best if you allow the process.
The city needs people willing to step aside. I let
this silence hang, the microphilm shaking in my hands. Tell
me the truth. What happened to the others? She shrugged,
the movement precise. They found rolls elsewhere, row as anyone.
If the library needs her, sometimes m sometimes nobody. The
man at her side extended a hand, give it here, please,
ye know it's for the best. I considered persisting, but
the resolve curled and twisted into a lass fis act
of defiance. I let the microphone drop deliberately at my feet,
a motion bose surrender and refusal to obliterate what I
carried so far. You'll never keep it. All the story
is out, it will echo. We manage echoes too, missus
Bence said flatly. They watched me, measured unheard. I felt
their judgment not like a threat, but as an inevitability.
The rotation would come for me, as it had for
Raymond and the countless others merged into row were cast
with each generation of the protocol. I left the microphone
where it fell at the feet of those who broke
at silence and managed procedure. Then I turned and walked
out of the shadow corridor, through the half lit step,
past the maintenance tape. The morning outbit my face as
I exited into a city that would soon be instructed
not to recall me. I did not look back. That afternoon,
another envelope came inside a type SLIPIDESK Assignment confirm Report
Monday seven europem Roe Harriet. My own signature was already
printed at the bottom. I knew my choices were gone,
the protocol complete, but the arkave was not perfect. What
I'd scattered could be found by some one someday. A
last act of suffered. I sat at my kitchen table
and spoke a single sentence to the recorder voice thyn
but Anilde. We remember even when we're told to forget,
and that is the end. Thank you for listening and
I will see you in the next one.