ARCHIVE DISTRICT — MORNING AFTER
The lists came in by noon.
Not the names we saved.
The names we lost.
Mira had organized the count herself because no one else could have borne it with sufficient precision. She stood at the central table with three verification clerks, four oral witnesses, and the expression of someone performing surgery on something already dead.
"Forty-seven complete erasures," she said.
The room went quiet.
"Meaning?" Director Chen asked. He had finally emerged from his blanket cocoon, looking like a man who had aged three years in one night and was furious about it.
"Meaning no record. No witness. No duplicate. No private family notation. No church backup. Nothing." Mira's voice stayed level, but her hands had stopped moving entirely. "Forty-seven people for whom we have no proof of legal existence remaining."
Forty-seven.
Not thousands.
Not even hundreds.
Just forty-seven names eaten by black water and authorial malice.
