The Book That Shouldn’t Exist

The first time Mara touched paper, she expected it to feel like the screens in the Museum—flat, cold, pretending to be old.

It didn’t.

It breathed beneath her fingertips, a dry whisper of fibres that caught on her skin like it had been waiting. The smell came next: dust and something faintly sweet, like dried flowers pressed too long between pages. It made the back of her throat ache with a memory she couldn’t place.

The book was tablet-sized but heavier, bound in cracked leather, the colour of burnt sugar. No glow. No wake-swipe. No compliance seal.

Just a spine with no title.

Mara stood in the lowest level of the Archive, where the air was too dry, and the lights buzzed like trapped insects. Above her, behind layers of reinforced glass, the main stacks glittered with servers—towers of clean metal humming with approved knowledge. Down here was dead space: ducts, conduit lines, forgotten access corridors no one entered unless something went wrong.

She shouldn’t be here.

But the work order had flagged a temperature anomaly, and interns went where they were told. She’d fixed the vent—loose panel, clogged filter, nothing dramatic. It was when she was crawling back out that her hand brushed something that wasn’t pipe or wire.

Something that bent.

She pulled it free without thinking.

Now she held it with both hands, as if the Archive itself might reach out and reclaim it.

“Mara Rin,” her wristband chirped softly. “Your assigned route—”

“Quiet,” she whispered.

The band dimmed. It wasn’t supposed to respond to tone. The glitch felt like a shared secret.

Her gaze flicked to the corridor camera. The black lens watched the main walkway, not the maintenance crawlspace. Still, she could almost feel it listening.

She didn’t open the book yet.

Opening things was how you got rewritten.

In Lumen, information followed rules printed in light across the city, projected on walls and sidewalks and classroom ceilings:

KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY. SAFETY IS COMPLIANCE. COMPLIANCE IS LIFE.

Paper books were myths from the Before. Relics, teachers mentioned with amused disbelief. People once trusted dead trees to remember for them. Then came the Great Data Purge, and humanity learned better. Everything became digital. Everything became trackable. Correctable. Clean.

Mara had grown up under that cleanliness.

Her father worked in Civic Algorithm Oversight, shaping feeds and filters so citizens only saw what they were meant to.

Her mother was a blank space.

No images. No archived messages. No spoken name that didn’t tighten her father’s jaw.

“Your mother was reassigned,” he’d said when Mara was ten. “She is not relevant to your success.”

When Mara pressed—because ten-year-olds always pressed—he’d turned off every screen in the apartment, as if the walls might be listening. Then he’d knelt in front of her and taken her face in his hands.

“Do you understand what it means to be deleted?” he’d asked softly.

She hadn’t.

“Then don’t try to learn.”

For a while, she listened.

Now she slid the book into the front pouch of her utility jacket, beneath her tools. It fit too well, like it had been measured for her life.

She climbed out of the corridor and walked back into the Archive’s bright core.

At the checkpoint, Mr Tev lifted his scanner. The sensor light swept over her arms, her waist, her pockets, pausing at her jacket pouch.

Mara held her breath.

The scanner buzzed—an error tone.

Mr Tev scowled. “Your band’s malfunctioning again.”

“It’s old,” Mara said, keeping her voice steady.

“Get it recalibrated,” he said, already losing interest. He waved her through.

Mara didn’t run until she was inside the transit lift, doors sealing shut. Her reflection stared back at her from the mirrored panel—eyes too wide, skin too pale.

She looked like someone who’d stolen fire.

Outside, Lumen glowed beneath a curated violet sky. Holo-ads drifted overhead like jellyfish, smiling and slow. Mara walked home with her head down, the book’s weight pressed tight against her ribs.

Her apartment was empty. Her father wouldn’t be back until late.

She locked the door, then locked it again.

The book looked wrong in her room. Too solid. Too real.

On the inside cover was a faded symbol: an eye with a line through it.

Mara opened the book.

The pages sighed.

ARCHIVE OF THE UNLISTED

If you are reading this, you have already been marked.

Her mouth went dry.

Names followed. Dates. Brief reasons.

Spoke the old anthem. Refused calibration. Kept a paper photograph.

Hundreds of lives reduced to margins.

Then the handwriting changed.

They told me it would be painless. They told me my daughter would be safer if she didn’t remember me.

Mara’s vision blurred. Daughter.

I signed the consent because they had already threatened her. Because her father believed in the city more than he believed in me.

My name is—

The ink smeared, as if erased by a wet thumb.

“No,” Mara whispered.

She flipped pages, heart racing.

I hid the book where the city’s heart beats loudest. I hid it inside their Archive.

For you, Mara.

Her name sat on the page like a fingerprint.

Her wristband pinged: DAILY MOOD CHECK INCOMPLETE.

Mara slammed it against her desk to silence it.

Paper is stubborn. The paper does not ask for permission to remember.

Her mother’s words pressed into her bones.

Mara crossed the room and taped over the camera lens. Her wristband vibrated angrily. She ignored it.

Then she read the final instruction.

Transit tunnel under Lumen Square. 23:10. Bring the book. Do not bring your band.

She checked the time. 21:47.

Removing the band was illegal.

Untracked meant dangerous.

Dangerous meant deleted.

Mara opened her desk drawer and pulled out her father’s old calibration kit. Her hands shook as she slid the reset key into the band’s seam.

The clasp popped.

The apartment lights flickered. A warning tone began.

Mara muted it and shoved the band into the drawer.

The silence that followed felt enormous.

She left the apartment without looking back.

The city felt different without the band’s weight—less solid, more watchful. Drones passed overhead. Citizens moved in smooth, guided lines.

Mara stayed in the shadows.

The stairwell to the old tunnel smelled of rust and damp. At the bottom, darkness swallowed sound.

23:10.

Footsteps approached.

A girl stepped into view, face half-hidden by a scarf. Two others followed: an older woman with a cane and a boy carrying a drone pack.

“Don’t run,” the girl said. “It triggers pattern alerts.”

Mara tightened her grip on the book. “Who are you?”

The girl’s eyes flicked to it. “You brought it.”

“You knew my mother,” Mara said.

“We knew of her,” the girl replied. “She was Unlisted.”

“What do you want?”

“To explain what you’re holding,” the girl said. “I’m Juno.”

The older woman spoke next. “The system doesn’t kill people. It removes them. If no one can remember you, you don’t last long.”

Mara swallowed. “Why me?”

“Because you’re inside the Archive,” Juno said. “You can go where we can’t.”

“You want me to steal data?”

Juno shook her head. “We want you to print it.”

Mara stared. “Paper.”

“Exactly.”

They showed her blank sheets—real, fragile, dangerous.

“If they catch me—”

“They will,” the older woman said calmly. “That’s why truth has to spread.”

Mara thought of her father’s careful silence. Of the absence that had shaped her childhood.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Relief crossed Juno’s face. “Then we start now.”

They moved deeper into the tunnel. A low light flicked on. The blank pages were laid out between them.

“Read,” Juno said. “And copy.”

Mara opened the book.

Names waited.

“Aden Sori,” she read aloud, her voice echoing against concrete. “Deleted seventeen point zero four…”

Her hand moved, clumsy but determined, ink biting into paper.

For the first time in her life, Mara wrote something the city could not correct.

When she finished the page, she closed the book carefully.

Not to hide it.

But to keep it safe long enough to open again.