Archivist Quotes

How cyclical and bittersweet for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document their archivist.

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes.

In a few minutes I heard the books' voices: a low, steady, unsupressible hum. I'd heard it many times before. I've always had a finely tuned ear for a library's accumulations of echo and desire. Libraries are anything but hushed.

Ro trails his hands against the wall as he walks. The archivists look at him as he passes. Ro is good at irritating people; he'll find the one thing you don't want him to do, and do it every time. It's one of his many gifts.

I am an archivist. I am a librarian. I collect words because words are the truest and longest-lasting craft in the world.

I have no earliest memories, Archivist. Every day of my life in Papa Song was as uniform as the fries we vended.

What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unourned, well, you get the drift.

Its deadpan and her sarcasm sailed straight on past each other, strangers passing on a dark road in the night.

Well, you seem to have embraced Union propaganda wholeheartedly, Sonmi-451. And I might observe that you have embraced corpocracy propaganda wholeheartedly, Archivist.

The Archivist, who had seen a thousand friendships become unbalanced by assumptions about who owed who, even when no one walked cloaked in feathers, was silent for a moment.

It is enough," she said finally. "But there will be another, less tangible cost." "Anything," said Lundy. "That word, that promise, strike it from your tongue," said the Archivist. "With that word, I could ask for the heart in your chest and the blood in your veins and you could not stop me. There is no value fair enough to warrant an open check.

All rising suns set, Archivist. [...] All revolutions are [fantacy, lunacy], until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities. [...] I was not genomed to alter history, [...] no revolutionary ever was.

With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced. And everything has more than one definition.

It's really fine that you found a good archivist to do the basically difficult and at times harrowing work of cleaning out old papers. I hope you keep her digging into all the old boxes as long as there is ONE left.

There are worse ways to die than trying.

Librarians and archivists and teachers are the Fort Knox of memory, history, and truth. We must defend them with everything we’ve got.

Most archivists don't like surprises. That's why we work in the past.

If you only believe what you like, and reject what you don’t like, it is not truth you believe, but yourself.” - Possidius Adeodat, Archivist of Kenatos

There are two type of cages, hatchling,” the Archivist said, holding up a bony finger. “One is where you have no choice in the matter. The door is locked, and your freedom has been forcibly taken from you. But the other is where you become a willing captive, caging yourself, because the alternative is not acceptable.

Like any dissidents they were neurotic archivists. Agree, disagree, show no interest in or obsess over their narrative of history, you couldn't say their didn't shore it up with footnotes and research.

I think you’re more an archivist than a librarian,” he said. He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They’re pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. ”They like everything,” he said, “gum wrappers as much as books.” He said this with a hint of disdain. ”Librarians like throwing away garbage to make space, but archivists,” he said, “they’re too crazy to throw anything out.” ”You’re right,” I said. ”I’m more of an archivist.” ”And I’m more of a librarian,” he said. ”Can we still be friends?

If Wasp were writing field notes on herself, they’d read: plans attempted: 1000000 plans succeeded: 0 never learns. better off destroyed.

With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced.

So you’re a sort of archivist for the future,

So where does one go in such a wobbly, elusive, dynamic, confusing age? Wherever the librarians and archivists are. They’re sorting it all out for us.

It's cold in the archives, and there's nobody there. I belong in the archives. I am cold too.

And even if I fail-this is always the archivist's consolation-perhaps I will have laid a foundation for someone wiser.

I refuse to be what you want me to be. I will never set you "free"- Noé Archiviste

A good deal of time spent researching this book might well have been wasted and valuable opportunities missed if it had not been for the help and suggestions of archivists and librarians.

She knew all the household tips that lessened the strain of poverty. This knowledge - handed down from mother to daughter for many centuries - stops at my generation. I am only the archivist.

The result is of unique historical importance despite the Archivist’s decision to leave in blatant falsehoods, self-serving allegations, and many amoral anecdotes not suitable for young persons.

Archivists were passionate people, some of whom dedicated their whole lives to the pursuit of unbiased truth. Given the wealth of information that needed sorting through, professional archivists relied heavily upon volunteers to help keep public files current. Rosemary had always imagined them like guardians from some fantasy vid, defending the galaxy from inaccuracies and questionable data. ‘What

He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful.

She thought she was facing a quiet archivist, a wheelchair-using smith and a noble’s girl, but she was wrong; she had chosen to come for two brawling survivors of the Blenraden gutter, a god, and his powerful protector.

You keep me because none of you can kill me.

Past a certain point it is not interesting to think about childhood as the central drama and adulthood as its reprise.

You may not have heard, Duke, that there is a new word to describe that sort of attitude," said the archivist, who was Secretary to the Committee against Reconsideration, "One says 'mentality.' It means exactly the same thing, but it has the advantage that nobody knows what you're talking about. It's the ne plus ultra just now, the 'latest thing,' as they say.

A year is a year anywhere, a day is a day for everyone, and yet with a few tricks these archivists make others believe that they have packed something into their days, something precious, enviable, everlasting, that is not available to everyone.

Behind every text footnote is a file folder with all the hardcopy documentation needed to document every sentence in this book at a moment’s notice. Moreover, I assembled a team of hair-splitting, nitpicking, adversarial researchers and archivists to review each and every sentence, collectively ensuring that each fact and fragment of a fact was backed up with the necessary black and white documents.

Sage-Archivist Ochelby had a kindly face. It crinkled in pleasant, paternal ways when he was conducting the more demanding tasks his position required. Such as deconstructing primitive magical belief systems – a task that often involved deconstructing primitive magicians.

Dario, What you do or do not want applies to you, not me. I didn't ask your permission, and I don't seek your approval!' Khalia's voice had taken on a hard edge, and Dario was the first to look away. 'Congratulations,' Glain said 'You're both wildly independent, and now the Archivist has to be wondering why both of you would want to get close to him at the same time. Clearly, neither of you are cut out to be spies.

The books were in no particular order, and Lundy found the process of sorting them remarkably soothing, involving, as it did, a strange sort of scavenger hunt through the entire shack. Books had been used to prop up tables and level out shelves; they were piled on surfaces where books had no business being and tucked under the edge of the thin mattress of the Archivist's bed. In the case of books that had become load-bearing, Lundy used her school ruler to carefully note their heights and went searching for rocks or pieces of scrap wood that would do the job as well, if not better. In the case of books left too near to water or exposed to the air, she rolled her eyes and whisked them away to literary safety.

Surely a program of incremental reforms, of cautious steps, is the wisest way to proceed? You show xtraordinary erudition for an eighth-stratum, Archivist. I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: “An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.” We

Failing at everything except his fear of success. Passed over yet again. Archivist of slights. Everyone else's good fortune is food out of your mouth or a hug you never got from someone who should have loved you better. Halfway through lunch she realized glass ceilings allow glimpses up into another person's hell.

She was my champion. She was my archive. She had taken the utmost care to preserve the evidence of my existence and growth. Capturing me in images. Saving all my documents and possessions. She had all knowledge of my being memorized. The time I was born. My unborn cravings. The first book I read. The formation of every characteristic. Every ailment and little victory. She observed me with unparalleled interest. Inexhaustible devotion. Now that she was gone, there was no one left to ask about these things. The knowledge left unrecorded died with her. What remained were documents and my memories. And now it was up to me to make sense of myself, aided by the signs she left behind. How cyclical and bittersweet, for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document the archivist… The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes and I had to seize it, foster it, so it did not die in me, so that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her.

That's right, bitch. I'm still here.

I had come to appreciate the reality of solitude and the illusion of community that bars provide.

Archivist: And what if no one believes this truth? Sonmi~451: Someone already does.

Paul Williams and reflected his deepest values—California living and “a passion for small homes for everyday people”—according to his Memphis archivist, Deborah Brackstone.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.” - Possidius Adeodat, Archivist of Kenatos

What is placed in or left out of the archive is a political act, dictated by the archivist and the political context in which she lives.

He was the archivist, and all the archives of the town were in his office. That has nothing to do with the story. Anyway

I am not a “who,” Archivist, I am a “what.” A “who” requires a degree of identity I can’t ever retain.

All rising suns set, Archivist. Our corprocracy now smells of senility.

In November 2009 archivist Rima Jaen at the Goncalves archives in Seville, Spain, comes across Diana's journal in a forgotten box in the archive attics.

XXIII. Present On his way back to the precinct, Oliver got a call from Klaus: Dietrich Hellenbruch, the archivist, had been taken into custody.

Librarians, too, are gatekeepers -- not of actual experience, of course, but of its written accounts. My job is to safeguard those accounts. Not to judge them; simply to see to their proper dissemination.

Survival tip for immortals of all sorts:  Librarians are the secret masters of the universe.  Whether they be dusty archivists or VR data-gurus, they have access to lots of information.  Stay on their good side.

Is the mist... it can’t be... some kind of magic?” Lina frowned. “The archivists never use that term,” she said. “Saying something is ‘magic’ just means we don’t have a scientific explanation for how and why it works.

If a ghost was a recording of a memory, as some believed, and Wasp pulled back the curtain from the third alcove on the right, she might find the wide-eyed bloody-handed ghost of herself, hugging her knees and shivering, trying to unremember the sound of her little dagger sinking hilt-deep into girlflesh, the day she earned her name.

Over the phone, the archivist was frosty until I told her I work at the NYPL. Then she thawed because she believed we’re kindred spirits. We are not. I’m nice to everyone, and I resent people who are stingy with basic kindness.

My work is whatever I want it to be, and I report to no one regularly. The head librarian -- the man in charge of the University's entire collection -- is a figurehead, well-to-do and poorly read, with whom I have only perfunctory contact.

Yours is a holy calling,” he told her. “Or a useless one.” “Perhaps,” he said, ever the optimist. “Perhaps.” Then he embraced her again and departed. It was, the archivist suddenly realized, the last human contact she was likely to ever have.

Sometimes, overwhelmed, she retreats into the forests of the past. She has come to think of them as her private Archive, herself as Archivist, and she had found that the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.

There are people who call themselves Archivists...Back when the Hundred Committee made their selections, the Archivists knew the works that didn't get selected would become a commodity. so they saved some of them. The Archivists have illegal ports, ones they've built themselves, for storing things...

Books never cease to astonish me. When I was a child, I knew--in the incontestable way that children know things--that God was an author who'd imagined me, which is why I (and everyone else) existed: to populate His narrative. My task was to imagine God in return: this was all He and I owed each other.

When I buy Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, the acquisitive part of me is buying it for the deluded part of me that thinks I’ll read it one day, while the archivist part of me keeps it on a shelf with all the other books I haven’t read, so that one day it can present a logistical problem to those who survive me.

There are some people for whom the only fair value is their own dominance over everyone around them,” said the Archivist. “They can’t look at someone who is equal to themselves and see them clearly; they assume that for anyone else to be the same, they must be cheating, or that something must have been taken from the first and given to the second, for surely it can’t have been earned. For them, a level stretch of ground is an unfair advantage given to others who don’t deserve to be elevated to what they consider their rightful place. They believe themselves above the world, above the Market. They never understand what it can cost to care.

It was this idea that books contained secrets. Important information that would be lost if someone didn't preserve it. And then I studied history and got really into that and I realized that was true not just about sex but lots of things. If someone doesn't care about books, shit gets lost. And then I became a librarian. And archivist.

I’m looking for information.” She lifted her arms, indicating the breadth of the library, and declared with self-parodied drama, “I’m surrounded by it!

I began waking up slowly into history, from which we do not emerge as from other nightmares.

She was the only one of us who’d rather die her way than live theirs. That was Foster’s discipline

Now that she was gone, there was no one left to ask about these things. The knowledge left unrecorded died with her. What remained were documents and my memories, and now it was up to me to make sense of myself, aided by the signs she left behind. How cyclical and bittersweet for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document their archivist.

At the time, few Americans gave much thought to preserving legacies for history. The new was worshipped, the old usually cast aside. To the dismay of archivists and preservationists, the White House of the nineteenth century was a revolving door of styles and motifs, and successive occupants discarded past desiderata with little consideration for the desires of future generations for artifacts.

The word archive Jacques Derrida tells us, comes from the ancient Greek work “the house of the ruler.” When I first learned about this etymology, I was taken with the use of house (a lover of haunted house stories, I'm a sucker for architecture metaphors), but it is the power, the authority, that is the most telling element. What is placed in or left out of the archive is a political act, dictated by the archivist and the political context in which she lives. This is true whether it’s a parent deciding whats worth recording of a child’s early life or---like Europe and its Stolpersteines, its “stumbling blocks’"---a continent publicly reckoning with its past. Here is where Sebastian took his first fat-footed baby steps; here is the house where Judith was living when we took her to her death.

You know how the waypoints work. I don’t. I get it. But if what you were doing was working, I wouldn’t be here. You brought me down here to figure this out, and I’m going to figure it out. If you don’t want to split up, then help me. Or find a chair and sit in it.

There is a 98 per cent probability that the same will happen to sports referees, 97 per cent that it will happen to cashiers and 96 per cent to chefs. Waiters – 94 per cent. Paralegal assistants – 94 per cent. Tour guides – 91 per cent. Bakers – 89 per cent. Bus drivers – 89 per cent. Construction labourers – 88 per cent. Veterinary assistants – 86 per cent. Security guards – 84 per cent. Sailors – 83 per cent. Bartenders – 77 per cent. Archivists – 76 per cent. Carpenters – 72 per cent. Lifeguards – 67 per cent. And so forth.

Books never cease to astonish me. When I was a child, I knew -- in the incontestable way that children know things -- that God was an author who'd imagined me, which is why I (and everyone else) existed: to populate His narrative. My task was to imagine God in return: this was all He and I owed each other. Between people it is less clear what is owed. Yet perhaps what is love is really an empathetic and hungry imagination. One must be willing to enter other stories -- even terrifying or dangerous ones, or those of uncertain outcomes.

Like a key handed down across centuries until nobody remembered anymore what lock it belonged to or what door it opened, it had waited, as Foster had waited, until it had fallen into the hands of someone who, not knowing the door, was willing, against all odds, to try and find it.

Elisabetta Gonzaga de Montefeltro, Duchess of Urbino, was one of the most celebrat women of her age. . . She was much praised for her saintliness in enduring a sexless marriage to Guidobaldo who was both impotent and for much of his life crippled by what was described as 'gout' but was probably rheumatoid arthritis, which deformed his body from a young age. According to the archivist Luzio, despite his impotence Guidobaldo was extremely erotically inclined, so that Elisabetta was in a state of suspense every day in case he might fall upon her and have a relapse.

Kosson threw me a hurt look, for a moment a child with his enthusiasm dashed. “Yes, but see who we have here!” We edged around the invisible glass surrounding the man. That was how it felt. Slick glass, cold to touch, the edge of time where hours and minutes die to nothing. “See?” Kosson pointed to a white rectangle attached to the man’s chest, to the left. It looked to be a piece of plasteek and bore the legend “CUSTODIAN” in black. “That means he’s the guardian, the protector. The guard archivists have books that tell the meanings of ancient words.” “He looks soft to me.” Weak, white, fear in his eyes. “The

How many thefts have there been?’ I asked. ‘That depends on how you define it,’ said Adrian. Because material went missing off sites all the time, which is why important finds were collated and secured the day they were found. Important in archaeological terms not always being the same as valuable – at least not in the fenceable sense. Archaeology came in all shapes, sizes, and apparent degrees of nickableness. ‘We wouldn’t have even noticed some of the thefts if they hadn’t been important to the context,’ said Adrian. Context being the key concept of modern scientific archaeology, and what separates your modern professional from the fumbling archivists and swivel-eyed tomb raiders of the past. It’s a religion they share with scene of crime technicians and it had been drummed into me from my first day at Hendon. Context – where you find an object – is more important than the actual object. In policing it’s whether the broken glass is on the inside or the outside. In archaeology it’s whether that datable coin is found in the wall foundations or its demolition infill. You can live without the coin, but you need the dating information.

Infinite Jest (V?). Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. 'Madame Psychosis' ; no other definitive data. Thorny problem for archivists. Incandenza's last film, Incandenza's death occurring during its post-production. Most archival authorities list as unfinished, unseen. Some list as completion of Infinite Jest (IV), for which Incandenza also used 'Psychosis,' thus list the film under Incandenza's output for Y.T.M.P. Though no scholarly synopsis or report of viewing exists, two short essays in different issues of Cartridge Quarterly East refer to to film as 'extraordinary' and 'far away [James O. Incandenza's] most entertaining and compelling work.' West Coast archivists list the film's gauge as '16...78... n mm.,' basing the gauge on critical allusions to 'radical experiments in viewers' optical perspective and context' as IJ (V?)'s distinctive feature. Though Canadian archivist Tete-Beche lists the film as completed and privately distributed by P.Y.E.U. through posthumous provisions in the filmmaker's will, all other comprehensive filmographies have the film either unfinished or UNRELEASED, its Master cartridge either destroyed or vaulted sui testator.

River was in his office, having spent the day staring at his screen, or else through the window, which had planted a square of sunlight onto the vacant desk he shared the room with. It had once been where Sid Baker sat, and that remained its chief significance even during JK Coe’s tenure, which hadn’t been fair on Coe, but Slough House wasn’t big on fairness. And now Sid was back. All this time, she’d been in the world, hidden away; partly erased but still breathing, waiting for the moment to appear to him, in his grandfather’s study. For months he’d been wondering what secrets might be preserved in that room, encrypted among a wealth of facts and fictions. Bringing them into the light would be a task for an archivist—a Molly Doran. He remembered sitting in the kitchen once, watching his grandmother prepare a Christmas goose: this had involved removing its organs, which Rose had set about with the same unhurried calm she had approached most things, explaining as she did so the word haruspicate. To divine the future from the entrails of birds or beasts. He’d planned the opposite: to unshelve those books, crack their spines, break their wings, and examine their innards for clues to the past. His grandfather’s past, he’d assumed. Instead, what he’d found in that room was something broken off from his own life. Now read on.

Since the first satellites had been orbited, almost fifty years earlier, trillions and quadrillions of pulses of information had been pouring down from space, to be stored against the day when they might contribute to the advance of knowledge. Only a minute fraction of all this raw material would ever be processed; but there was no way of telling what observation some scientist might wish to consult, ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now. So everything had to be kept on file, stacked in endless airconditioned galleries, triplicated at the [data] centers against the possibility of accidental loss. It was part of the real treasure of mankind, more valuable than all the gold locked uselessly away in bank vaults.

After its initial concentration on 1912-1942, the American Film Institute widened its net to incorporate any title which had been unseen for many years and was not currently held by US archives. The intention was nothing less than to change the way film history was written: “A great deal is going to have to be revised on the basis of what turns up,” said David Shepard, employed in 1968 as Associate Archivist and interviewed for a magazine three years later. He went on, “In every case, good, bad or magnificent as the film itself might be, each restoration adds to our knowledge, and is as significant to film history as the unearthing of one more ancient human skull is to the palaeontologist.

archivists leave, and you’ll be on your own. Think you can handle that?

As a librarian and archivist herself, she knew that history wasn’t just written by the victors. First it had to be erased and rewritten. Replacing troublesome truth with self-serving myth.

I can give you something much grander than coin. Fame. Fame for having been the archivist of an amazing tale. I could’ve chosen any scribe to record this, but I chose you. Among many. And you’ll have the rarest of opportunities to record something exceptional firsthand. For now, I’ll tell you this much. All empires crumble. All borders change. All kingdoms die. Where I’m taking you, you’ll witness the death of a body politic, the expiration of a way of life, the redrawing of a map. Something singular and priceless.

With its glass walls, you can enjoy the view even when it’s raining. It has a huge outdoor terrace with a panoramic view across the city, but the big draw is that you are up high, directly in front of the ‘cricket cage’ balustrade of Brunelleschi’s dome. Just between you and me, the Folco Portinari–Dante connection had me sold before I even arrived. It could have had a view of the men’s toilets and I still would have been thrilled, just because I love the Alighieri-Portinari story! (See Chapter 23: A Walk With Dante.) My first time here was with the city archivist I told you about in the chapter on the Duomo, so I associate this place with cool local 30-somethings with fascinating jobs in the city and endless stories about Florence, dating back to Julius Caesar. Caffeteria della Oblate is a little tricky to find, but that means the tourist crowd can’t find it either, so walking around in circles trying to get here is worth it. And of course, there’s that view… Address: Via dell’ Oriuolo, 26

As you said, a passion,” Rosamund agreed as she looked up from where their hands were still touching, holding. He wasn’t letting go, and now, his thumb was brushing the back of her knuckles. It sent a shiver down her spine, and she felt her heart, already rapidly beating in her chest, pick up speed. “But if you mean if I work with them professionally, then yes. I’m an archivist, specializing in older books, particularly the preservation of manuscripts that are falling apart. I always note the stitches along the binding.

As wonderful as a personal relationship with Jesus is, the people that show the most enthusiasm for it do not give much thought to all the things that have to be in place in order for it to be possible. Take the Bible, for instance, or the sacraments, or the creeds, or even prayer. All of these things must be in place before you can even imagine having a personal relationship with Jesus. Without archivists, and translators, and publishers, we wouldn’t have Bibles that tell us about Jesus. Then there are Church councils that gave us the creeds which summarize what the Bible says about Jesus and His divine nature. And this is just a start. Even beyond those things, just consider all the ways that the Christian religion has influenced Western civilization for the good. Think about how the arts, the sciences, and our laws, customs, and holidays wouldn’t even exist in their current forms without the Christian religion. No, you cannot reduce Christianity to a relationship; it is bigger than that. Religion really is a better word than relationship for describing what it is.

The great librarians have all been religious men--monks, priests, rabbis-- and the stewardship of books is an act of homage and faith.

A crash sounded from the exhibition room. OrbaLin spun around to face the smashed doors. “And maybe they never left.” The archivist flicked out his wrist and a short lightsaber appeared in his waiting hand, delivered from a secret compartment in his suit. For all his quirks, the archivist had class, but would it be enough to keep them both alive?

Reine-Marie picked up the top one and wondered, not for the first time, what the next generation of archivists and biographers would do. No one wrote letters anymore. No one had printed photographs and albums for historians, or even family members, to pore over. Everything was in a cloud and needed a password.

That’s crazy! We can’t go the way of—” “Since when has human history been anything else?” asks the woman with the camera on her shoulder—Donna, being some sort of public archivist, is in Sirhan’s estimate likely to be of use to him. “Remember what we found in the DMZ?” “The DMZ?” Sirhan asks, momentarily confused. “After we went through the router,” Pierre says grimly. “You tell him, love.” He looks at Amber. Sirhan, watching him, feels it fall into place at that moment, a sense that he’s stepped into an alternate universe, one where the woman who might have been his mother isn’t, where black is white, his kindly grandmother is the wicked witch of the west, and his feckless grandfather is a farsighted visionary. “We uploaded via the router,” Amber says, and looks confused for a moment. “There’s a network on the other side of it. We were told it was FTL, instantaneous, but I’m not so sure now. I think it’s something more complicated, like a lightspeed network, parts of which are threaded through wormholes that make it look FTL from our perspective. Anyway, Matrioshka brains, the end product of a technological singularity—they’re bandwidth-limited. Sooner or later the posthuman descendants evolve Economics 2.0, or 3.0, or something else, and it, uh, eats the original conscious instigators. Or uses them as currency or something. The end result we found is a howling wilderness of degenerate data, fractally compressed, postconscious processes running slower and slower as they trade storage space for processing power. We were”—she licks her lips—“lucky to escape with our minds. We only did it because of a friend. It’s like the main sequence in stellar evolution; once a G-type star starts burning helium and expands into a red giant, it’s ‘game over’ for life in what used to be its liquid-water zone.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

She says that if this were a movie, someone would find a poem about cursed snakes and it would give us the clue we needed, so she’s gone off to find one. The archivists don’t know what to do with her.

SIS told me how in 1992 it had exfiltrated from Russia a retired senior KGB archivist, Vasili Mitrokhin, his family and six large cases of top-secret material from the KGB’s foreign intelligence archive.

Dorjan didn’t know whether to admire the record keeper who’d been added to his family or just call the man odd for his dedication to recording small things. Some people are record keepers. Lighthouse keepers, for instance. Weather keepers for the almanac. There are organizations with profound record-keeping characteristics such as archivists for arts and history museums, research scientists, political biographers, and the recent Internal Revenue Service which could be up to no good, but what was Rich up to?