STATUS REPORTS
REVIEW LOG
REGISTRY
Using the arrow keys, I select the first file, then press ENTER. I brace, preparing myself to wait. The computers in the campus lab always take forever, whirring, clicking, and grinding as if they have to process every command before responding. Sometimes it takes long enough that people get up, walk away, and come back.
This one doesn’t. The screen instantly changes.
C:> ACCESS MESSAGES? (Y/N)
Easy enough. I clickY.
The computer makes a single soft beeping sound as the screen changes again, lines of text replacing the prompt in a clean, structured list that fills the display. At first glance, nothing about it is unusual. Messages are arranged by date.
My shoulders relax slightly as I begin to read, the pressure in my chest easing.
FROM: ADMINSchedule confirmed for Thursday. Attendance expected.
FROM: FINANCEQuarterly review complete. No discrepanciesreported.
FROM:REVIEW COMMITTEEMeeting moved to 0900. Please confirm availability.
I scroll through the rest, my eyes moving more quickly now as the pattern becomes familiar. The messages are all the same, short, direct, stripped down to the bare minimum. No greetings, no signatures, no wasted words. It feels ordinary or close enough to it.
But the longer I analyze it, the more it resists that label. There’s no small talk. No variation in tone. Everything reads like it was written for someone who already understands what’s being said, as if context exists somewhere else and this is only the record of it.
Tapping at the keyboard, I scroll a little further, but it’s all more of the same.
I glance at the door again, a clock ticking down in my head. I should stop now. Go back to the bedroom and wait for him.
Instead, I click the ESC button and go back to the main menu.
This time I pick the last selection:REGISTRY.
At first, it doesn’t mean much. A few titles are administrative, dry enough to be meaningless. One references deaths, another lineage, another says active and there’s an item titled as removed. It’s all strange, but in that clipped, institutional way strange things often do when they want to pass for normal. There’s a bunch of last names listed as well, some of which I recognize from the news. Senators, Congressmen, Judges.
One file catches my eye.
CARR INDEX
I open it.
Rows of names fill the screen, the information arranged with a meticulousness that makes my stomach flip before I fully understand why. At first glance, it resembles a genealogical record, with birth dates, death dates, line after line of names stretching backward far further than I expected.
I notice the names.
Carr.
Every one of them.
Not Carrson. Not Carrow. Not Carrick or Carrington. JustCarr.
Over and over again, across years, lifetimes, entries.
-----------------------------------------------CARR INDEX — PRIMARY LINE — ACTIVATED 1587 -----------------------------------------------
ID NAME BIRTH DEATH------------------------------------------------
