Neon rain falls differently in New Babel. It doesn't wash things clean—it only makes the dirt shimmer. Every droplet carries the ghost of a memory: laughter, pain, fragments of someone's yesterday bleeding through the city's endless advertisements. The air hums with static and old sorrow.
I walk beneath the holographic sky with my collar turned up, a fountain pen warm in my palm. The streets around the Archives are half empty tonight, except for the usual merchants peddling bottled nostalgia. A man shouts about "first kisses in pristine condition." Another offers "childhoods lightly used, no trauma included." I keep my head down. I've seen too many people trade their pasts for the illusion of peace.
They call me an archivist, but most days I feel more like a funeral director. My job is to mourn the truths that no one wants to remember. I take what's left—the forgotten names, the half-erased letters—and bind them in ink so they can't vanish completely.
The city pays me to preserve its history, but I suspect no one really wants it saved. Memory is a dangerous thing here; it keeps people from obeying. Still, I write. Because somewhere beneath the noise and neon, I believe words still matter.
The pen pulses once in my hand, faint and alive. The ink hums like a heartbeat.
And for a moment, I swear I can feel the city breathing back.
Every morning, the city wakes to the sound of forgetting. It starts in the markets—people queuing beneath flickering holo-signs that read "Erase to Heal." They step into memory booths and walk out lighter, smiling, hollow. The Mnemonic Consortium calls it mercy. I call it erosion.
From the observation deck above the Plaza, I can see the transaction screens flash like constellations. Each sale a tiny death: one heartbreak deleted, one betrayal archived for study, one grief converted into data credits. The numbers climb. The sky glows.
Martina says it's progress. She works for the Consortium's healing division—Memory Reconstruction. Her voice, bright and steady, always tries to convince me that forgetting pain means starting over. But when I look at her, I see shadows where her brother's face should be. She never speaks of him, and I never ask. In New Babel, silence is respect.
I turn away from the plaza and head for the Archives, the pen in my pocket thrumming like a restless thought. Every time I touch it, I remember my mentor's warning: "Ink remembers what humans wish to forget. It will not always obey." I never understood what he meant—until now.
As I approach the steel gates of the Mnemonic Archives, a faint chill runs through the air. The scanners flicker, glitching for the first time in years.
Somewhere in the city's digital bloodstream, a memory is being deleted—and it's screaming.