Epilogue
Stalking Venus
chapter 9
by
Paok
Author’s note: This was uploaded at the same time as the 3-part chapter, "Venus".
If you didn’t read that first, go back!
In the underground annals of the national Friebsachs House of Records, archivists young and old busy themselves day by day with the endless organization, transcription, translation, bookkeeping, maintenance, and preservation of all manner of books, letters, deeds, tax documents, genealogies, birth records, and everything deemed worthy of keeping for future generations. Many employees contract anxiety and hypertension trying to keep their prescribed divisions organized and available. Every day, the public submits thousands of new records, and hundreds more are requested for retrieval, without any thought to the lengths custodians must go to fetch, stamp, get approved, and maintain chains of custody of each individual item, even ones stashed at the bottom of the deep Arhnaikuris.
Despite the mental load on its servants, the bureaucracy of the Friebsachs results in real care being taken of every individual trinket, no matter how important, or not. A great history is kept there. The cultural tradition is so highly esteemed that the archive’s administrators enjoy a great deal of respect and influence among upper society. They are paid handsomely and retire in comfort. To many young Lillecians, the job is considered the fast track for an easy, comfortable life, and the limited number of seats are always hotly contested before each school season.
One day, long into the future, historians will wield electric aggregation machines to draw up a vast and rich history of the old centuries of this busy Lillecian society, using all the minutiae available to them, every bit dotted, lined, cross-referenced, and categorized, thanks to the archive. They will tell intricately detailed stories of industry, of society, the accidental discovery of the Lillecians, the failed negotiations and treaties that followed, precipitating the horrific fumigation and speciecide, ending in the decimation of the Lillecians and their mass migration all across the region. Other more novelistically inclined historians will make use of the Arhnaikuri – the ones that are not mere slabs, engraved by the bereaved – to find individuals who exemplified their time period, or who were historically important, about whom to write short stories inspired by their collected memorabilia.
But down below, in the heart of the earth, within the deep and labyrinthine sandstone halls which are home to the Arhnaikuri, there is an empty shelf. It is singular and alone among hundreds of thousands of others. Above the shelf is a fading paper placard that reads:
Tristan Syphaeus, 3256-?
presumed dead
Thank you for reading.
This story would not have been possible without the help of my immensely talented editor, Fenugreek.