Archive 36. Aug 31, 18:23
Evening brings the only beauty left. The Archive windows stretch high above the city, their glass tinted just enough to catch the fading sun. Tonight, the light fell in wide orange bars, cutting across the marble floor and catching particles of dust in midair. For a moment, it looked like something alive. The kind of scene that once would have been painted, hung in a gallery, and called art. Now it is just another surface to be sterilized when the cleaners arrive.
I lingered longer than usual by the window. The day's work had left my eyes raw, my mind numb from scrolling through famine projections and resettlement reports, each stripped bare of anything resembling life. The curves and graphs have become their own language—a tongue that reduces a thousand deaths to a dip in a line. Sometimes I try to imagine the people behind the numbers, but the figures resist me. They are too clean, too obedient to Archon's order.
That was when the voice arrived. The loudspeaker cut through the quiet like a blade. Archon's words, though not his own voice, filled the plaza outside and the halls within: "Order is stability. Stability ensures life. Archon ensures order." Always the same cadence, as if the sentences had been carved into stone and simply replayed each day.
I looked down through the glass. Already the people were gathering. They came quickly, without hesitation, abandoning whatever task they had been doing. Some still held utensils from their meals, some papers, some tools. None of them seemed to notice. They simply drifted into place, eyes lifted, waiting for the message to finish.
I timed them—less than four minutes, and the square was full. Not a sound, not a disruption, just hundreds of bodies still as statues. The reminder ended, and just as swiftly, they dispersed. Every head turned, every foot moved, every hand lowered in uncanny synchrony. It was like watching the winding and unwinding of a clock.
I stayed at the window, fingers pressed into the sill. I tried to recall the sound of crowds from before. My memory is faint, but I remember noise—arguments, laughter, sudden bursts of song, the unevenness of it. There was texture in the sound, the roughness of life. Now all I hear is silence that has been carefully shaped to resemble peace.
When I finally left for my quarters, the light was gone. The plaza lay dark, swept clean, as though nothing had ever happened. Only the emblem remained, glowing faintly above the screen: the three rings, spinning without end.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who notices. Other times, I wonder if noticing matters at all.