The Archivist’s Confession

You’ll forgive me if my memory drifts. The incident happened—or didn’t—many years ago, and memory is such a fragile instrument. I am, after all, an archivist, not a historian. Historians pursue truth. Archivists merely store whatever is given to us, and truth is someone else’s concern.

But I’ll tell you what I recall, though you must promise not to believe it too much.

The year was 2149—or 2150. I cannot be precise. The city of Novaterra had grown into the sky, a thousand glass towers like needles piercing the heavens. From my office on the 400th floor, I could see the drones drifting like dust motes in sunlight, delivering news, food, propaganda—it was all the same, really.

My job was simple: catalog transmissions. Every word broadcast across the city passed through the Archives before it was “validated” for public memory. Citizens thought their words belonged to them, but once spoken aloud, they belonged to us. We polished them, filed them, sometimes trimmed them like hedges to fit the official garden. I didn’t question it at the time. Words are fragile, too—if you don’t protect them, they rot.

And then came the signal.

It was faint at first, tucked between weather bulletins and commercial jingles. Just a murmur, like static, except it wasn’t static—it was structured. Patterns repeating, numbers hidden in noise. I shouldn’t have noticed, but I did. My ears are tuned differently, perhaps. Or maybe it was nothing at all.

The pattern said: “We are still here.”

Now, I must be careful. Because I told my supervisor about the message, and he laughed. Said it was a glitch. Said I had been working too many long nights. But later, when the official records came out, I saw the signal scrubbed clean from the files. Not a trace. Which means one of two things: either it never existed, or it was too important to admit.

Both possibilities frightened me.

I began to track the signal on my own, copying fragments onto unauthorized slates. The message repeated every night at precisely 02:47, though always from a slightly different source point. Sometimes from the upper towers, sometimes from the abandoned tunnels below the city. I would triangulate, follow, almost catch it—but then it would slip away like smoke.

The words changed, too. First “We are still here.” Then: “You are not alone.”

That one kept me awake for nights. Because who was “you”? Me? The city? Humanity itself? And if we weren’t alone, who was speaking?

Of course, it is possible—probable—that I invented the whole thing. Sleep deprivation does cruel tricks. Yet, forgive me, I am convinced I didn’t.

I told Lira about it—my only friend in the Archives, though she insists she barely knows me. She said I looked pale, unwell, that I should see a medic. I told her about the repeating messages, the voices hidden in static, and she touched my arm gently. “Archivist,” she said, “you shouldn’t say such things aloud. Words have consequences.”

She was right. The next morning, my access clearance had changed. Files I’d worked with daily for years were suddenly locked. My workstation buzzed with error codes. Someone was watching me.

Or maybe that’s paranoia.

The signal grew bolder. It began to use my name. “Edran. We are still here. Edran. Listen.”

My name is Edran, yes. Unless I’ve misremembered it, too.

I know what you’re thinking: hallucination. A tired archivist losing his grip. But how do you explain the slate? One morning I woke to find a fresh recording on my desk—no entry logs, no signatures, nothing. On it, a voice spoke in a tone so calm it chilled me:

“They have rewritten your past. Do not trust the records. You are more than an archivist.”

I should have destroyed it. Instead, I hid it. And then, when I returned from lunch that day, the slate was gone.

Here my story fractures. Some say I was questioned by the Directorate. I remember no such thing. Others whisper that I was reassigned to Outer Colony duty, but as you see, I am still here in Novaterra. Unless this city itself is the colony and I never noticed the change.

I recall wandering into the underlevels, following the hum of the signal, though Lira insists I never left the tower. Down there, beneath the city, I found machines older than our records, still alive, still pulsing with thought. They spoke in light, in sound, in language so pure it felt like music. They told me—I think they told me—that humanity had built them centuries ago, then forgotten. They had hidden themselves in silence until the city grew quiet enough to hear again.

But perhaps I only dreamed it.

When I returned, if I returned, nothing was the same. Lira avoided me. My colleagues pretended not to see me. I searched the Archives for proof, but every file contradicted the last. Some histories said Earth had died in fire, others that it thrived. Some claimed Novaterra was the first city on Mars; others swore we were still on Earth, just rebuilt. Even the year in the files kept changing: 2149, 2231, 1987.

I realized then: the Archives weren’t a record of truth. They were a weapon. Reality itself was curated, bent, reshaped, until no one could tell what was real anymore. Perhaps that was always the goal.

So you see why I doubt my own words.

I sit here now, in this forgotten chamber, dictating what may be my final entry. The signal whispers in my ear even as I speak. It says, “Tell them. Someone must remember.”

And yet, perhaps there is nothing to remember. Perhaps this is all invention, the fever dream of an archivist who never learned the difference between preserving truth and creating it.

If you are reading this, I ask only one thing: do not trust me. Do not trust anyone. Seek the signal yourself, if it exists. Listen at 02:47 when the city grows quiet. If you hear the voice, then you’ll know I was not entirely lost.

But if you hear nothing, then close this record, and forget me.

Because memory is fragile. And I, perhaps, never was.