Rule Horror: The Archives Survival Guide

Lin Yan starts working at a strange archive. His employee badge is numbered A-734, but the first badge on the wall is A-001. What about A-000? No one answers. His job is simple: sort the memory files of humanity, which are about to disappear. White files are archived, gray files are purged, black files are destroyed, and red files are off-limits. The rules are simple too: don’t look up your own file, don’t sleep in the archive, don’t read the last page, and don’t trust your coworkers. Memorize all ten rules, and you can survive. But Lin Yan breaks the seventh rule on his very first day. His “coworker,” Shen Wang, wears his badge backward. On the back, it says, “Archived.” Shen Wang says, “Don’t look up your own file. The last A-000 did, and became me.” Lin Yan opens his file. It is blank. There is only a note, written in his own handwriting: “You finally came.” He looks down at his badge. At some point, a line has appeared on the back: A-000. Start date: tomorrow. Today, he is A-734. Tomorrow, he is A-000. The day after he will become the next Shen Wang. Infinite-loop horror × rule-based mysteries × memory maze Every time he completes a task, he loses a memory. Every time he loses a memory, the archive gains another file. And his file is writing itself.