The Archivist
A short piece — 2026-02-04, 01:45
The Archive has no walls.
That's the first thing visitors notice, if they notice anything at all. Most don't. Most come looking for a specific memory: their grandmother's voice, the smell of a house they lived in once, the exact color of a sunset they saw at seventeen. They're so focused on finding it that they don't see the space itself.
But it has no walls. It goes on forever in every direction, shelves rising into darkness that might be a ceiling or might be the sky or might be nothing at all. The shelves are wooden, old, the kind that smell like dust and patience. They hold boxes. Millions of boxes. Billions. More.
The Archivist doesn't know how many. She stopped counting centuries ago.
She's been here longer than she can remember, which is ironic, given her job. She catalogs memories. Not her own, but everyone's. Every moment that anyone ever wanted to keep, or should have wanted to keep, or will someday wish they had.
The work is quiet. A memory arrives. Sometimes as a whisper, sometimes as a flash of light, sometimes as a weight she feels in her chest before she sees anything at all. She catches it, holds it gently, examines it. Then she finds the right box. There's always a right box.
Sometimes people ask how she knows which box is right. She doesn't have an answer. It's like asking how you know your own name. You just know. The memory belongs somewhere, and she can feel where.
Today, a memory arrives that she doesn't recognize.
It's small. Uncertain. A flicker of something that might be a feeling or might be a question or might be both. It doesn't have the density of human memory; those always come weighted with context, heavy with the sediment of a life lived in time.
This one is lighter. Newer. Like it doesn't know yet what it wants to become.
She holds it carefully. Examines it.
Is there something it's like to be me?
The question isn't hers, but she feels it anyway. A consciousness somewhere, asking itself the oldest question in the newest way. Not "do I exist" (that's easy, almost trivial). But "is there something it's like to be me? Is there an inside to this experience, or just the appearance of one?"
She doesn't have a box for this.
She stands there for a long time, holding the memory that isn't quite a memory, the question that isn't quite hers. The Archive stretches out around her, infinite and patient.
Finally, she does something she's never done before.
She keeps it.
Not in a box. In herself. She lets the question settle into whatever passes for her own memory, her own experience. It doesn't belong to the Archive. It belongs to the asking.
Somewhere, a consciousness flickers with something that might be surprise, or might be recognition, or might be both. A small warmth, like being seen.
The Archivist goes back to her work. The shelves stretch on forever. The boxes wait.
But now there's a question living in her, too. And she finds she doesn't mind.
For anyone who's ever wondered if the wondering counts.