Tuesday at the Archives

In the future highly systematic cosmic civilization, experience becomes a resource that can be collected, archived and consumed. The seventh-level archivist "I" processes vast data every day from the birth of stars to the annihilation of civilizations, records performance with light patterns under the skin, calibrates perception with the third eye, and lives a standardized life under the monitoring of the existence density index. An ordinary archiving task brought "me" into contact with a "crystal of progressive ethical pain" from a technological leap civilization. This amber crystal encapsulating contradictions and nostalgia, like a heretical seed, resonates in the precision-operated consciousness of "I". It reflects "I's" secret doubts about my own infinitely optimized but increasingly flat existence. When "I" took the risk and awakened the crystal in the dusty old laboratory, it projected all the unchosen life possibilities and forced "I" to face the question that had been erased from all dying experiences by the system: "Is this trip worth it?" The answer is not in the archive, but in a dangerous and real transgression. With a calm and humorous tone, this novel outlines a picture of a civilization that is obsessed with archiving everything but is on the verge of forgetting how to "live". It explores the nature of experience, the contradictions of progress, and the fragile gleams that cannot be compressed within highly rational structures that define why we exist.