A Curation of Ghosts

In a post-disaster exclusion zone, a group of data-archaeologists hunt for pre-AI records of the catastrophe, battling decay and automated patrols to uncover a truth the world's curated history has been programmed to forget.

"Sweep pattern's changing," Kyle's voice crackled through Brandon's earpiece, thin and tight with static. "The Archive must be updating their routes. We've got twenty minutes, maybe less."

"Acknowledged," Brandon murmured, their own voice absorbed by the sound-deadening decay of the hospital corridor. They knelt before the door labelled 'Chief Engineer - Maintenance Operations'. The magnetic lock was a solid block of rust, but the power conduits behind it were still, theoretically, intact. This was the gamble. The Archive’s official narrative stated that the meltdown at the Okuma-Daiichi plant was caused by an unpredictable tsunami. A tragedy of nature. But the whispers among the Zone-born, the descendants of the survivors, told a different story: one of budget cuts, faulty parts, and warnings ignored.

The truth, if it existed, was on a server inside this room, a pre-Archive, offline backup from the engineer's personal terminal. Raw telemetry. Unfiltered. A ghost in a machine that predated the all-seeing, all-curating AI that now wrote their history.

Brandon pulled a custom-built induction device from their pack and placed it over the lock. "Sari, power," they whispered. From the end of the hall, Sari grunted and connected two heavy battery clips to a junction box, the metal sparking briefly. The induction device hummed, its field bypassing the corroded tumblers and tricking the ancient magnets into releasing their grip. The lock clicked, deafeningly loud in the silence. They were in.

The engineer's office was a time capsule. A layer of grey dust covered everything. A coffee mug sat on the desk, a dark ring of residue at its bottom. On the wall, a calendar was turned to October, 2031. Brandon moved straight to the terminal, a bulky, beige tower under the desk. Kyle was right behind them, hooking up a portable power pack and a modern interface.

"Come on, you beautiful relic," Kyle muttered, as the machine whirred to life with a groan of failing fans. A green cursor blinked on a black screen. No GUI, no friendly welcome. Just a command prompt. A language few people still spoke.

"It's asking for a password," Kyle said unnecessarily.

Brandon's fingers flew across their portable keyboard, typing commands. They weren't trying to guess the password; they were looking for a way around it, a vulnerability in the thirty-year-old operating system. "The encryption is pre-standard. It’s a custom job. He was paranoid."

While Brandon worked, Sari moved through the office with a quiet reverence. She wasn't a tech. She was the team's historian, their anchor to the human cost. She ran a gloved hand over the spines of books on a shelf—engineering manuals, technical specifications. Then she saw it. Tucked behind a row of binders was a slim, leather-bound notebook.

She opened it. The pages were filled with neat, cramped handwriting. It was a logbook. A diary.

---

### The Engineer's Hand

"Listen to this," Sari said, her voice hushed. She read from the book. "'October 14th. Another false positive from coolant pump B. Management refuses to authorise a replacement. They say the budget is frozen until the fiscal review. I told them the sensor isn't faulty, the pump is cavitating. They ran the numbers through the corporate simulator. The AI says the probability of failure in the next five years is 0.012%. They trust the machine more than the man standing next to the damn thing.'"

Brandon paused their work, the blinking cursor on the screen suddenly feeling like a heartbeat. Kyle stared at the book in Sari's hands.

Sari flipped a few pages. Her breath caught. "'October 19th. The vibrations are getting worse. I can feel it through the floor of my office. It's a low, hungry sound. I falsified the daily report. I wrote that the pump was operating within acceptable parameters. They threatened my pension. My daughter starts university next year. What have I done?'"

A profound, chilling silence filled the room. The abstract hunt for data had just been given a human face—a tired, compromised man trapped between a failing machine and an unforgiving system. The official Archive narrative never mentioned a Chief Engineer Tanaka. According to its records, his position had been vacant at the time of the incident.

"I'm in," Brandon announced, the triumph in their voice muted. "Bypassed the primary auth. But the data files are partitioned. Corrupted. I need to run a deep recovery sequence, but it's going to take time."

"How much time?" Sari asked, looking up from the logbook.

"Fifteen, twenty minutes. Best case."

"Drone's ETA is nine minutes," Kyle said, his eyes glued to his own screen, which displayed a schematic of the Zone. A small red dot was moving steadily toward their position. "It's not just a patrol drone, Brandon. It's a Scrapper. They've been clearing this sector for salvage. It won't just scan us, it'll… clear us."

Brandon stared at the progress bar crawling across their screen. 2%. The data was spooling out, fragmented and slow. It was the raw telemetry from the reactor core: temperature spikes, pressure drops, radiation alarms—all the things the Archive claimed had never happened until the moment the wave hit. It was the truth, in its purest, most damning form.

Sari closed the logbook and placed it carefully in her pack. "The book is enough. It's his testimony. Let's go."

"No," Brandon said, their focus absolute. "His words need the data to back them up. Without the numbers, he's just another ghost story. The Archive will dismiss it as a forgery. But it can't argue with this." They pointed to the streams of code filling the screen. "This is the machine's confession."

The low whine of the drone's engines became audible, a faint sound filtering through the shattered windows. The red dot on Kyle's map was terrifyingly close.

"Five minutes," Kyle hissed. "Five minutes max, or we're part of the salvage."

Brandon didn't answer. Their fingers moved in a blur, their entire world narrowed to a single progress bar, a race against the approaching, sanitizing future.