The Trouble With Recording History

Sister Hypatia wired the recorder into the archival machine and set it carefully onto the edge. She was lucky to even have this recording; the last surviving person to experience one of New Glory's darker periods in history had, on his deathbed, granted her this interview. She'd gone that morning and waited at FirstHealth for more hours than she was expecting before he was finally lucid enough for them to let her see them. But she'd made it in, and he had spoken at length, with pauses for prolonged coughing spasms, about the government before the MegaCorps took over. In the space it took her to return to the Dragons' archival library, she'd received a message that he'd passed away.

This recording was all that was left.

The archival machine didn't respond when she flipped the power switch. Her breath caught in her throat, nearly provoking a coughing fit of her own. True, she could save this recording to a data crystal another day, but the recorder was old and she couldn't risk losing the interview. It wasn't like she could re-do the interview. She shook the machine, listening for anything loose. She checked to make sure the machine was receiving power. With a snarl, she flipped the power switch off and on several times until the machine whirred to life. She checked to make sure the recorder was still connected, and went over to the shelf were the blank crystals were stored.

The first few boxes she opened were empty. She didn't think they had been archiving much lately. That was part of why she had picked this moment to make one last effort to reach out to get her interview. The boxes told a different story. Trying to not panic, she systematically moved through all of the boxes, each one as empty as the last. Finally, she found one lonely amber-colored crystal in a box far back on the shelf. She clutched it tightly and made her way back to the machine.

The crystal wouldn't go into the slot. Hypatia stared at it and the slot for several moments, turning the crystal over in her hands in the hopes she had simply tried to put the crystal in incorrectly. But she knew it didn't really matter how a crystal was fed into the machine so long as it was fed lengthwise. The problem, and likely the reason the crystal was still available, was that the crystal wasn't cut uniformly. She sat down and tried to work out the best way to make the crystal fit, before finally settling on folding a piece of archival-quality tissue paper to help fill out the areas where the crystal wasn't thick enough to fit well on its own.

She sat down in front of the monitor. By now, the machine had had more than enough time to run through its initialization cycle. And it had. The Golden Dragon seal looked back at her from the monitor, an error message neatly printed right across the middle.

The machine could see that something was in the crystal slot, but couldn't make out what it was. Hypatia closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. This couldn't be happening. Not with this particular bit of history. She moved back to the crystal's slot and pulled on the crystal. It wouldn't budge. "No." She tugged on the crystal again. "No!" She yanked. The tissue paper had unfurled ever so slightly, and with the heat of the machine had fused itself to the wall of the slot. Hypatia gave the crystal one more solid tug, and became sick as she heard the telltale sound of cracking crystal.

"Should have seen that coming," Sister Hypatia muttered. Why shouldn't the crystal have cracked? Nothing else had gone right. Nothing except the interview, that is.

Glumly, she cleaned the crystal shards out of the machine, making sure to reach far back with a brush to clear out any dust that might have lingered. If nothing else, I'm sparing some poor novitiate this chore tomorrow. The machine was cleaned on a near daily basis as part of the novitiates' morning chores, but it wouldn't need it after this afternoon.

Satisfied that the machine could continue working another day, she unplugged the recorder and just stared at it as she held it gingerly in her hands. It contained an irreplaceable piece of history, a piece that couldn't be stored more securely for the moment unless she stumbled across another crystal. But she'd seen the state of the supply shelf already; no luck would come from that direction. And the recorder would be needed sooner than new crystals could be brought in, assuming someone had already ordered a new set. She would have to check on that. It was difficult to archive without appropriate archival material.

For now, she had to decide what to do with the interview. She couldn't just let it be lost or erased. Her years of archivist training balked at the thought just as much as her heart did. The falling of the municipal government prior to the city being run by its five major MegaCorps was a turbulent time in New Glory's history, one very few documents and first-hand records existed from because of a unique situation that had left over half the city's native residents illiterate. This interview was one of the only testimonies on record from someone who actually lived through that period, one of the residents who had been illiterate until the MegaCorps wisely decided to implement adult literacy programs across each sector.

To lose it was to lose a critical part of the city's history. But without the machine, she had no way to preserve that account. She searched furiously around the room, desperate for any crystal that might be tucked away or show any room for one more recording. Nothing.

Finally, she stumbled across some blank scrolls not too far from one of the student work tables. She stared longingly at them, her eyes full of dread. But there was nothing else to be done. She located a pair of headphones for the recorder, and adjusted the light over the work table before settling in to transcribe the interview.