In the sub-basement of an old government building long since condemned, beneath rusted pipes and forgotten cables, there is a room that does not appear on any blueprint.

Its door is steel, unmarked, without handle or keyhole — but if you press your hand against it, and you’ve been forgotten by enough people, it opens.

Inside sits the Archivist.

No one knows what the Archivist is. Not quite human. Not quite machine. Wrapped in layers of yellowing paper and coiled ink-dripping tubes, it hunches over an ancient writing desk, endlessly recording in books that never fill.

The shelves stretch into blackness.

Each spine bears no title. Only numbers. Each one belongs to a person. Not their life — not their deeds — but the exact moment they ceased to matter.

The final conversation no one remembers. The smile no one saw. The last sentence, cut off in someone else’s distraction.

The Archivist does not judge. It only writes.

Sometimes, it murmurs names aloud as it scribbles. Names no longer spoken. Names that once filled rooms. The sound is like wind over stone — too dry to enjoy.

People come here for many reasons. Some arrive by accident. Some come on purpose. Some want to know if they’ve already been forgotten.

Others want to ask if they deserve to be. And a few — the quiet ones, the ones with the thousand-yard stares — come hoping the Archivist will record them just so they’ll be written somewhere, even if it’s only in the end.

But there’s a cost.

If you stay too long in the room, the Archivist begins to write you — not the moment you were forgotten, but the moment you chose to disappear.

And it’s always sooner than you think.

Once that line is written, you begin to unravel. Not die — just . . . come apart.

First, people stop making eye contact. Then they forget what your voice sounds like. Then your name, your presence, your shape in a room. Even your own reflection avoids you.

And eventually, you realize you don’t need doors anymore. You pass through them. Through walls. Through lives.

Until the only place you exist is in a book, on a shelf, in a room no one remembers how to find.

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© Secret Agent Man
info@secretagentman.net