You arrive before the sun clears the glass of the Archive's lower deck. The air in the service corridor is still cool and smells faintly of ozone and paper dust—the synthetic disinfectant the facility uses to keep organic residue from seeping into storage, and the residue of other people's lives. Morning shifts begin with a ritual that has nothing to do with coffee and everything to do with order: scan the slate badge, accept the day’s manifest, read the bullet notes on sensitive items, and move through the stalls like a quiet current. You know the cadence by heart. You have cataloged fragments long enough to recognize the improbable clause on an item before you see the number. Your hands find the same movements: a wrist check for the authorization band, the gentle unhooking of the tamper strip, the breathe-out before you tap the interface to tag a memory as received.
The Archive does one thing very well: it makes disappearance administrative. The devices here are not walls of metal but arrays of discipline—the language of metadata, timestamps, consent tokens, and cross-check signatures. People trust it because it translates mess into ledgered certainty. You like that about it; the order comforts you, docks your attention to a place where accidents become records. You sometimes think of the Archive as a labor of mercy performed with clean hands. Sometimes you wonder whether mercy can wear a suit.
On the desk beside the intake scanner, a sealed carrier waits. It looks like every carrier you see: polymer weave, a soft hum of secure cache, a printed band with an alphanumeric string that means nothing to a passerby and everything to you. You begin the routine—scan the band, log the time, verify origin. The scanner chirps once, then gives a second, softer tone. You frown. The band displays your badge signature when it should show the donor's code. For a moment the world rearranges: a slip of paper in your chest, the small, precise jolt of recognition that precedes a decision. Someone has labeled a fragment for you.