The Archivist Case File

“You’re sure?” the technician asked, adjusting the dial with fingers that didn’t shake—though maybe they should have.

Across from her, the woman nodded. Late forties, neat blouse, lipstick the color of dried roses. She didn’t fidget. Didn’t blink.

“I don’t want to remember his voice anymore,” the woman said. “That’s all. Just his voice.”

The technician hesitated. People always said just. Just a voice. Just a scent. Just a song. But those things were never just anything. They were the threads that pulled the whole thing apart.

“Please place any vocal recordings, analog or digital, in the collection tray,” the technician said gently. “You’ve submitted transcripts, correct?”

“Yes,” the woman replied. She pulled out a phone. A cassette. A chipped microdrive. Even a tiny answering machine tape in a labeled case. “I burned the letters myself,” she added, almost smiling. “Felt appropriate.”

The technician nodded. It wasn’t her job to ask why. It was her job to press buttons. To make things go quiet.

Her badge read:

Auditory Redaction Division

SUBLEVEL 3 // REDACTOR // ARD-15

She booted the system. A low hum stirred the silence. The lights dimmed slightly. She tapped the console.

“Do you understand what auditory redaction entails?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You may encounter phantom silences. Pauses in old memories. Laughs with no sound. Sentences you remember being spoken, but can no longer hear. We call this resonant dissonance. It fades, usually.”

“Good,” the woman said. “I’d prefer the absence.”

The technician typed a sequence. Waveforms filled the screen—his voice, sampled over time. Voicemail apologies. Wedding vows. Arguments in the rain. A drunken rendition of a Springsteen song at a birthday party. The laughter at the end of that one was hers.

She isolated the timbre. The cadence. The breath.

A voiceprint formed. Unique and irreplaceable.

“You understand,” the technician said quietly, “that if you remove the voice, you may not know how he sounded when he said ‘I love you.’ Or ‘I’m sorry.’ Or your name.”

“I know.”

“Even good memories will be altered.”

“I know.”

The technician hesitated.

“Most people… they come here because they want to forget something awful. A scream. A cruel sentence. You’re the first person I’ve had who

wants to forget kindness, too.”

The woman exhaled slowly.

“It’s not that I want to forget the kindness. It’s that kindness in his voice was a lie. Or maybe just a trick of time. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m tired of being haunted by something that no longer feels like it was ever real.”

Silence passed between them.

“Begin,” the woman said.

With a single press of a button, the waveform began to deconstruct.

Soft, at first. Then complete.

The technician watched the voice fall apart in spectral layers. Harsh consonants dissolved. Vowels unraveled like threads. Laughter split into static. In moments, it was gone.

Just like that.

She powered down the machine. The room felt quieter than before—like it had swallowed something important.

“It’s done,” she said.

The woman nodded, stood.

“Do I pay here?”

“No, ma’am. Your account was processed already. Someone will escort you to the surface shortly.”

The woman hesitated. Then: “He used to call me ‘mouse,’” she said. “When I was quiet, which was often. Now that word feels empty. Isn’t that strange?”

“No,” the technician said. “It’s not strange at all.”

The woman left.

When the door closed, the technician turned back to the console. She opened a secure folder. Inside were hundreds of saved audio fragments, carefully anonymized.

She added a new label:

ARD-15-472B // Client Submission – Voiceprint Null // “Mouse”

She clicked play.

Silence.

She sat for a long time, listening to nothing.

And somehow, even that had a sound.