The Last Archivist - Chapters 4 through 6
The Last Archivist - continued
Chapter 4
Elias yanked his hand back. The Archive rushed back in. “What was that?” he said.
“A memory,” Rowan said. “Not yours.”
Days passed. Or maybe weeks. Time didn’t behave normally in the Archive.
Elias learned quickly—how to retrieve a memory, how to label it, how to file it into the endless system that made up Luma’s perfect recall. But something felt… wrong.
The memories weren’t just records. They were alive.
When Elias touched a capsule, he didn’t just see what it contained. He felt it.
A woman’s quiet joy as she held her child.
A man’s regret, heavy and suffocating.
A boy’s laughter echoing through a moment long gone.
Each memory pulled at him—like it didn’t want to be stored. Like it didn’t belong here.
“Don’t linger,” Rowan warned one day, catching Elias with his hand resting too long on a capsule.
“Why?”
Rowan hesitated. Then, quietly: “Because you’ll start to notice things.”
Elias already had. There were gaps. Not obvious ones. But patterns—missing pieces in sequences that should have been complete. Memories that referenced other moments, but when he searched, the referenced moments didn’t exist in the Archive.
People remembering things that had no record. The gaps were small enough that no one else would notice. But once Elias saw them, he couldn’t stop seeing them.
“Rowan,” Elias said one evening, his voice low, “what happens to memories that aren’t stored?”
Rowan didn’t answer right away. “Everything gets stored. Perfect system, right?” he said with dripping sarcasm. Then he looked at Elias—really looked at him—for the first time.
“They don’t exist,” he said.
Elias wasn't one to simple accept an answer and move on. "The man with the regret,” he pressed. “What happened to him? Where's the rest of his story?"
Rowan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. The system kept the regret. That’s the important part.”
“Then what happens to memories that aren't stored here?"
“They do not exist,” Rowan said firmly.
Elias shook his head, insisting. “That’s not true.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened. “Be careful,” he said.
But Elias couldn’t stop, because something inside him had started to wake up.
Chapter 5
The forgetting had terrified him at first. Now it felt like a door. He began testing it whenever he was alone - no Rowan, no guards. Stretching his ability. Small things, letting go of minor details, pushing them out of his mind intentionally. Each time, the scanners failed to retrieve them. Each time, the system… missed something.
Elias realized the truth slowly. The Archive wasn’t preserving everything.
It was choosing what to store.
What Elias couldn’t understand was why.
He couldn’t test often. Rowan watched him too closely.
If Rowan insisted on hovering, Elias decided he might as well make himself useful. "The man with the regret. Where are the rest of his memories? He can’t be only one moment.” He worried he was becoming like a dog with an old bone, worrying at the same question over and over.
Rowan surprised him, "The rest of his story doesn't matter. They kept the regret. Do you see it now? Because regret makes people careful,” he said. “Easy to control.”
Elias stepped back. “That’s not… that’s not right.”
Rowan gave a small laugh. “You’re starting to get it.”
Elias thought back on the memories he had touched. Sadness. Guilt. Depression. Even joy.
The archive was filtering.
Erasing.
Selecting only the memories that served its purpose.
Ordinary days were missing.
The quiet breakfasts. The walks home. The conversations that changed nothing and everything at the same time.
What remained were the extremes - the deepest joys and the sharpest wounds. The memories most likely to shape behavior.
Then Elias realized why he was sent to the Archive. Not to find out the truth, but to keep him away from society and in a controlled environment. Because the only thing the Archive could not control was someone who could let a memory go without attaching emotion to it.
He found Rowan late one night, deep in Section D.
“I know what they’re doing,” Elias said.
Rowan didn’t ask how. “Then you know why they brought you here.”
Rowan stepped closer, lowering his voice. “They don’t study easy minds here,” he said. “They study broken ones.”
Elias’s heart pounded. “I’m not broken.”
Rowan gave a sad smile. “No,” he said. “You’re dangerous.”
Chapter 6
The lights flickered. For a moment, the Archive dimmed—just enough for the silence to feel heavier.
“They’ve been trying to eliminate forgetting for decades,” Rowan continued. “But they can’t.”
“Why not?”
Rowan met his eyes. “Because forgetting isn’t a flaw,” he said.
“It’s freedom.”
The words confirmed what Elias had feared.
Elias looked around at the endless capsules. Row upon row stretched into the darkness. Suddenly, they didn’t feel like preservation.
They felt like cages.
“What happens to people like me?” Elias asked.
Rowan hesitated.
Then—
“They disappear.”
The lights snapped back to full brightness.
And the silence broke.
A sharp, piercing sound filled the Archive. Red lights flashed.
“What is that?” Elias shouted. Rowan grabbed his arm.
“Someone tried to erase something they shouldn’t have,” he said. “Move!”
Officers rushed into the corridor.
“ALL ARCHIVISTS REPORT!”
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