THE ARCHIVIST
I still remember the day the Archivist arrived on Outpost Briar-6. The only thing she brought with her from the Jacobian matrix was a tiny crystal-beveled diamond cube. When she held up to the light, galaxies flickered inside it—galaxies too small, too fast, and too alive to be mere optical illusions.
“These are possibilities, not just memories,” she explained, her voice soft and certain with an air of galactical mystery.
Falstaff, our shift foreman, raised a suspicious eyebrow and said, “Look, Lady, we mine rock; we don’t believe in magic tricks.”
The Archivist tilted her head, studying him as if he were a curious artifact. “Magic is simply physics you haven’t met yet.”
“Yeah, right Lady!” he muttered under his breath.
True. We were cosmic miners, not mystics. We carved ore from the asteroid belt and slept in cold, metal bunks, breathed recycled air, and lived under fluorescent lights that hummed 24/7. But the Archivist walked our dingy corridors as though they were sacred, cathedral aisles, pausing now and then like she was listening to something we couldn’t hear.
On the third night, the Archivist found me in the mess hall. “Will you walk with me?” she asked, her voice clear and captivating.
Without saying a word, I stood up and followed her to the observation deck. She held out the cube. “Take it.”
Falstaff, who’d been cleaning equipment nearby, muttered, “Don’t do it, McCall. That cube is evil. I can feel it in my bones.”
I ignored him choosing to wrap my hands around the cube. It felt warm to the touch, alive with an indescribable fervor. Inside it, stars spun, forming and dissolving in seconds. I watched as a tiny planet blinked into existence then collapsed into a ribbon of light. Something tugged inside my chest—something familiar and impossible at the same time.
“That one was yours,” she whispered.
Falstaff stepped closer. “What do you mean…that one was yours?”
The Archivist didn’t look at him, focusing instead on my eyes. “Every choice you don’t make becomes a universe that never fully forms. I gather these half-born worlds before they unravel. Unmade realities cling to the people who might have shaped them.”
I swallowed. “Why me are you telling me this?”
“Because one of your worlds refuses to fade.”
She touched the cube, and an image appeared: a coastline of violet sand and waves glowing with bioluminescent fire. I recognized it instantly, though I had never seen it.
“Would you like to visit?” she asked.
The corridor lights flickered. Gravity trembled. The cube pulsed like a second heart.
“Don’t go, McCall,” Falstaff shouted. “Don’t go.”
I stepped forward anyway. When I did, the world I never lived opened its door.
I removed my boots, and the soothing violet sand unfurled beneath my bare feet. The sky was iridescent, shimmering in colors that didn’t exist on any spectrum I knew—hues that felt like emotions rather than light. Far down the shoreline, something moved: a figure, blurred by distance, walking toward me with the easy familiarity of someone expecting my return.
Behind me, the doorway flickered.
“Choose carefully,” the Archivist murmured. Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere, as if the cube itself were speaking. “Once you cross fully, this world will finish forming. It will become real because you are here.”
Falstaff’s voice echoed faintly from the other side of the door. “You don’t have to stay, McCall!”
But the waves radiated even brighter, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. The figure on the shore raised a hand—my gesture, my mannerisms, my shadow in another life.
I stepped forward again. The doorway narrowed, then sealed behind me with a soft sigh, like a book closing on a chapter I would never read. The world I had almost lived began to breathe around me—slow, tidal, aware.
The violet sand shifted under my boots as though adjusting to my weight, learning about me. The air tasted faintly of salt and something sweeter, like memory distilled into mist.
The figure on the shore came closer. At first I thought it was a stranger. Then I saw the way he held his shoulders were my shoulders. The way he tilted his head when he studied me was my gesture. His eyes were mine, but steadier, as though he had lived a life without the fractures I carried.
“You took your time,” he said, with a voice older than mine but gracious—a version of me who had grown in sunlight instead of fluorescent hum.
“Who are you?” I asked, though I already knew.
“The one who stayed,” he said. “The one who chose this world when you didn’t.”
Behind us, the sealed doorway shimmered faintly, like a memory trying to reopen.
I turned toward it. “Can I go back?”
“You can,” he said. “But this place will unravel without you. It has been waiting for you to finish it.”
The waves were brighter, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. The sky shifted color—rose, then indigo, then a shade I had no name for.
“Why me?” I whispered.
He smiled—my smile, softened by a life I never lived. “Because this world loved you before you were born.”
A wind rose, carrying the scent of unfamiliar flowers. The horizon rippled, revealing distant mountains shaped like sleeping giants.
My other self extended his hand. “Come,” he said, his voice gentle with encouragement. “There’s more to remember.”
I stepped beside him, and the world deepened—not forming, but awakening…
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