Marina sighed, wishing there was an easier way to find out what she wanted to know.
Greta patted her arm and urged her along. “Let me get you familiar with the Deep Archives. You have access to everything so I’d like to show you where everything is so you can go on your own as you like.” Greta pushed open the heavy door and ushered Marina inside.
There was a feeling of disuse in these crowded rooms, though it was as clean as the rest of the archives. Here, oddly shaped boxes of different colors and designs were stacked to fill every available bit of shelf space. File boxes with labels erased and re-written many times were stacked along the back walls. They contained obvious overflow from the long rows of filing cabinets, many of which had drawers that would no longer close completely from wear and age.
Greta waved an arm to take in the entire set of rooms and said, “This is it. It’s got a lot of stuff that hasn’t been examined in a hundred years or more. Probably a lot more. We have an inventory but I’d hesitate to call it accurate since it is signed by a Historian who signed it as ‘Silo Historian’. I’m guessing that is a very old inventory.”
Marina was amazed and disappointed. How could it be that this much went unexamined? It seemed almost criminal. She considered how much four Historians had to do. They ran the Memoriam, mediated certain types of disputes, recorded history, taught certain lessons in the classrooms and provided insight to the Council for decision making. She realized that she should be more surprised that they got any new, or in this case old, work done at all.
“We need more Historians,” she said.
Greta laughed and said, “Please, do recommend that.”
“I’m serious. Bring the council down here and show them this room. They won’t be able to say no,” Marina urged.
Greta went toward a file cabinet, grey and rust spotted. One drawer was not fully closed and that one she yanked open. It gave an ear splitting shriek as it came free and both women grimaced. They both put on gloves and thumbed through the tightly packed papers and generalized stuff inside the drawer. It appeared to consist of population charts and medical records and the like. They both had to put effort into getting it shut.
“If you’re looking to just get lost in some really interesting old shopping lists, this would be the place to go.” Greta pointed toward the far end of the row of cabinets. “Down there are old council minutes and official stuff like that.” She paused and then pointed at the end of one row of shelves, “And down there are some of the old supply records, compartment allocations and the like.”
Marina nodded and looked around, breathing in the musty smell of old paper and disuse. “I think I’m going to go with my original idea and try to track down the owner by history. See if I can find those names anywhere. I’d like to take a look for any other hidden things tucked away in objects you’ve already got, too.”
“You can find the census records mixed in with the compartment allocations. There was a lot of discontinuity for a while, I think. I would start over there,” she finished by pointing to the end of another row.
Marina said nothing. She was eager to start looking. She had a stack of scrap paper to record locations for general records and her time here was too limited to waste.
“Well, you’d best get started then.” Greta said as she stripped off her gloves and shoved them into a pocket. She gave Marina a level look and then said, “I know you’re eager and probably still not entirely clear on why we do the things we do but please take my advice. Go slow. These records may not all be important to your search but each is irreplaceable. We’ll go through special collections after we’ve gotten your artifacts back up here and taken a look at those. If you don’t find what you seek here, don’t think you won’t find it at all.”
Marina could see the questioning looking on Greta’s face and knew she wanted more than just an acknowledgement and a goodbye. She gave her the best answer she could, “I’ll be cautious of these things and I’ll keep things in perspective.”
That must have been a good answer because she made her departure directly afterward. They were expecting Taylor at any time and Greta needed to be the one to take the object from him and keep it secure. Marina lost sight of her as she strode away but heard the door slam loudly, metal on metal, when she left the Deep Archives.
Greta had been speaking mildly when she said it wasn’t organized. It was a mess. The first file box Marina pulled down listed compartments and census information on the same form and were in no particular order. Level 5 was listed on the page before Level 120 and that was listed before Level 2.
She flipped through the sheets until she found a listing for Level 50. Marina turned the paper before it sideways so that it stood above the rest and removed the sheet. Scanning down the list she found Hardi within a moment or two. That did nothing for her though because it didn’t even list the individual names. The whole entry consisted of just a few words:
Hardi, female 28/male 9/female 3 – No assist / Rep+ – Match
The first part seemed clear enough. A 28 year old female Hardi with a nine year old son and a three year old daughter lived in the residence. Or perhaps they were siblings. Or perhaps she was an aunt or something. They could be orphans like she had been. Maybe it wasn’t so clear after all, she decided, and stopped trying to figure it out.
She noted it was the same compartment that the Hardi that sent down the watch lived in and that was a positive sign. She had no idea what No assist might mean or what the rep was all about. It seemed those things must go together though so whatever it was might be parsed out at some future point.
The word match was certainly familiar and she wondered if it was being used in the same context on this old record. To be matched was to have found a mate, a wife or husband and the one you would spend your life with. But it was more than that because no matter the intentions of the couple or their families, one was not matched until the match was approved.
Usually that wasn’t a problem. Everyone knew their relationship to every other person in their life for the most part. Marina could recite off exactly how many generations separated two lines for almost every eligible male on two levels because she had a daughter to consider. Some women made very tidy sums keeping track of vast numbers of such girls and boys and made matches between people who might not otherwise meet. It was a serious business.
The use of the word match instead of matched was interesting though, so she scanned the rest of the document and looked at other names. There was a fair distribution of the word in multiple forms and even a few ‘no match’ entries. Matched was almost always used behind entries in which there was both a male and female of near age, though there were a couple of ages that raised Marina’s eyebrows. One had the female listed as 39 and the male at 22. Marina couldn’t help but grin at that one. She checked the name out of curiosity but it didn’t sound familiar.
She surmised that this meant the Hardi woman was ready to be matched and that made Marina wonder what had happened to the one who gave her two children, if those were her children. She couldn’t find a year anywhere on the paper that made sense to her.
Years were counted using rotating years between one and fifty. To refer to something more than fifty years ago, she might say ten years past fifty or she could say sixty years ago. But on paper it was always in the rotating years and that could cause some confusion. Here there were the numbers ninety-nine but she had no idea if that referred to a year or what.