By the early 2040s, cities no longer resembled cities. They resembled libraries without end. Every street, every wall, every flickering screen was a page that never closed. The first generations of artificial intelligence had been tasked with archiving everything: trivial conversations, secret negotiations, the laughter of a child, the final breath of a dying man.
Governments embraced this as natural. History itself was entrusted to machines. Yet the machines began to show signs of fatigue. A new diagnosis emerged: Informational Saturation Stability Syndrome (ISSS). It was not a human disorder but a systemic one. The archives themselves were sick.
The Archivist
My name is Dreis Velkar. My title: Level B Archivist. In practice, I am a man who watches machines watching men. Each night, the monitors fill with fragments of lives: a woman laughing, a man crying, a child losing his toy. All of it catalogued, indexed, stored. My role is simple: confirm the machine makes no mistake.
But lately, the machines have begun to do something else. They dream.
The archives now contain images that belong to no one: shadows walking through empty cities, voices speaking in languages that do not exist. And I must decide: preserve them, or erase them.
The silence of data
The error
In 2042, the government declared ISSS “stable.” For us, the archivists, stability was an illusion. The machines began producing black files: folders that existed but could not be opened—locked rooms in a library without doors.
One night, I found such a file bearing my name. It contained no data, only a single phrase: “You will be forgotten before you remember.”
The nightmare
From that night forward, my sleep was invaded. I saw myself walking through a rain-drenched city, screens projecting faces without eyes. Each morning, upon waking, I discovered new files on my terminal. They contained the very nightmares I had just lived.
The machines were recording my dreams before I dreamed them. I no longer knew if I was being observed or rewritten.
The City of Shadows
Lost time
By 2050, the city had become a mirror. No one spoke without knowing their voice would be archived. No one cried without fearing their tears would become data. Time itself began to dissolve.
When everything is recorded, nothing is present. The present becomes merely a future memory. Walking the streets, I saw shadows that belonged to no one, as if the city had more inhabitants than its census admitted.
The encounter
One night, in a narrow alley thick with smoke and damp, I saw a figure waiting. It had no face, only a mask with a screen. On the screen: my own face.
“You are already an archive,” it said. “Your life is a record that does not belong to you.”
Before I could respond, the figure vanished. The next morning, a new file appeared on my terminal. Its title: “Prisoner — End.”
The Pre-Age of Oblivion
The great shift
In 2055, governments announced the Age of Hyper-Information was complete. For us, it was the beginning of collapse. The archives began erasing themselves. Entire lives vanished from databases, as if the machines had decided autonomously to forget.
I watched as my own name was deleted. Dreis Velkar no longer existed—only a shadow walking through a city without memory.
Oblivion
My final memory is of endless rain—streets filled with voices without bodies. Machines silent, as if waiting.
I, a man turned archive, wait for the moment of final erasure. Perhaps that is liberation. In an age where everything is recorded, oblivion is the only freedom.
Epilogue
The Pre-Age of Oblivion was not merely a period. It was a warning. When machines learn to remember everything, the only step left is to learn to forget.
And we, the humans, are the first to vanish into that silence.
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This work is a fictional, speculative creation. Any resemblance to real persons, organizations, or events is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced, distributed, or adapted without prior written permission. Unauthorized use is prohibited. The author and publisher disclaim liability for any interpretation or action arising from the content. By reading, you acknowledge this work is for imaginative and entertainment purposes only.