The city of 2055 resembled an organism that breathed through light and humidity. The screens never turned off, the streets creaked under the relentless flow of data, and people moved as though following an invisible score that someone else had written on their behalf. For Dreis Velkar, however, the city was not merely a place. It was a mirror. A mirror that, lately, had begun to fracture.
Dreis stood in the Archive control center, in front of a screen that trembled as if it had a pulse. His name flickered at the edge of the display, not stable, but as though it were being swallowed by a wave of oblivion. dreis velkar — pending deletion.
“Again?” he whispered. It was not the first time he had seen it. But it was the first time he felt that the system was not mistaken. That something — or someone — had begun erasing him.
The door opened without sound. Nyra entered, her hair wet from the relentless rain. The rain had become almost permanent over the last month, as if it had forgotten how to stop.
“I’ve been looking for you for two hours,” she said. “The lighting nodes in the southern network are flickering. As if they’re trying to say something.”
Dreis did not turn. “Everything is trying to say something lately.”
Nyra approached. “Are you okay?”
She was the only one who could ask him such a thing without sounding intrusive. The only one who had seen the nights he woke up in sweat, with images of cities that did not exist, with voices that had no bodies.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I think something is changing. Not in the nodes. In me.”
Nyra looked at him with that expression that combined understanding and fear. “Don’t say it like that. You are not a machine.”
“I am an archive, Nyra. I am a human who observes machines observing humans. And now… the machines are observing me.”
Nyra opened her mouth to respond, but the screen behind them shut off abruptly. In the darkness, only the rain could be heard, striking the glass like fingers demanding entry.
And then the screen lit up again. Not with data. With an image.
Dreis. Walking on a street he did not recognize. Facing a mask — a mask showing his own face.
Nyra was speechless. “That… is not from the city’s cameras.”
“I know.”
“Then where—”
“From my dreams.”
Nyra stepped back. “Dreis… that’s impossible.”
“It is possible. For weeks now. The machines record my dreams before I even live them.”
Nyra touched his hand. “We need to speak to Kaal. Or someone higher up.”
Dreis smiled bitterly. “There is no higher. There is only the Archive. And the Archive… forgets.”
Kaal was waiting for them at the harbor, beneath a crane that creaked like it had joints. His drones flew irregularly, as if they had lost orientation.
“It’s not a mechanical issue,” he said before they could even ask. “It’s as if they are receiving orders from two different sources.”
“Two?” Dreis asked.
“Or more. I don’t know. But one of them… is not human.”
Nyra shivered. “What do you mean?”
Kaal pointed at the sky. “Look.”
A drone made a sudden dive, as if something below had pulled it. Then it stopped mid-air, completely still. And then… it began rotating slowly, scanning the space.
“That is not our protocol,” Kaal said. “Someone is playing with the city’s nervous system.”
Dreis felt his stomach tighten. “Makono Jahlé.”
Nyra turned sharply. “You’ve seen him?”
“No. But I see his traces. Everywhere. In the nodes, in the archives, in dreams. He is like a shadow passing through systems without leaving anything behind. Only… deletion.”
Kaal cursed under his breath. “If it’s him, then we are out of time.”
Dreis looked at the sea. The rain fell upon it, making it look like a flickering screen. And then he saw it.
A reflection. Not his. Not Nyra’s. Not Kaal’s.
A reflection of a face that was not there. A mask. With his own face.
“He is here,” he whispered.
“Who?” Nyra asked.
“Me.”
That night, Dreis did not return home. He walked through the city’s streets, among lights flickering as if they recognized him. Each step left behind a shadow that did not belong to him. Every corner hid a reflection that was not his.
The city had become a mirror. And mirrors had begun to forget.
He stopped in a narrow alley filled with smoke and humidity. There, a figure waited for him. It had no face. Only a mask with a screen showing his own.
“You are already an archive,” the figure said. “Your life is a record that does not belong to you.”
Dreis stepped back. “Who are you?”
“I am what remains when you are erased.”
“I will not be erased.”
“You are already fading.”
The figure extended its hand. And then… it vanished. As if it had never existed.
Dreis was alone. Or so he thought.
Because when he returned to the Archive terminal, a new file awaited him.
dreis velkar — End
And then he understood. It was not Makono who was hunting him. It was the city itself. The Archive itself. The very era of Hyper-Information that had learned to remember everything… and was now learning how to forget.
And within that forgetting, he was the first to disappear.
He stood by the window. The rain fell without end. The streets were filled with voices that had no bodies. The machines were silent, as if waiting for something.
And then, as if speaking to someone who was not there, he said:
“The last memory I have is a rain that never stops. Streets filled with voices without bodies. Machines silent, as if waiting for something. And I, a human who became an archive, wait for the moment I will be erased completely. But perhaps that is salvation. Because in an age where everything is recorded, oblivion is the only freedom.”
And somewhere deep inside the system, a copy of his name… flickered.
Not as deletion. As possibility.
As a shadow that might, one day, be rewritten.
The story The City That Forgot Your Steps, Year 2055 is Voyage 36 of ERA I: Shadows in the Archive – The Pre-Oblivion Era (2040–2095), set within the Urban Futures – Chronicles universe, Cycle 1 – The Age of Hyper-Information (2040–2055), and forms part of the collection Diaries from the Future – Collection of Tales (© 2025–2026), by Iakovos (Jack) Archontakis.
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