The Archivist of Lost Futures"

[by Hussain Ullah]

In the oldest corner of the city—where ivy strangles the lampposts and pigeons nest in the eaves of forgotten architecture—there stands a building that most people don’t see. It has no address, no signage, and no visible entrance. The only hint of its presence is a metal grate near the sidewalk that exhales warm air precisely at 3:17 p.m. every Thursday. Most passersby don’t notice. Most people are not meant to.

Mira Finch noticed.

She was twenty-four when she found the grate, when she pressed her palm to the stone wall beside it and felt it pulse like something alive. An hour later, she was thirty floors below the city, standing in a chamber filled with shelves that curved in impossible directions and doors that led to nowhere—or everywhere.

That was the day she became an archivist.

The Archive of Lost Futures is not a library in the traditional sense. It does not lend books or store historical records. Instead, it catalogs what could have been. Every choice not made, every path not taken, every word swallowed or love left unspoken—those moments generate alternate timelines. Possible lives. Unlived futures.

And Mira's job is to organize them.

The files arrive daily, often in stacks, each labeled with a name and the point of divergence. Some are mundane: Smith, Daniel – declined job interview, 2007. Others are tragic: Lee, Juniper – left bar ten minutes later, survived. Some futures last only seconds before collapsing. Others stretch for decades.

But all of them are past potential, nothing more.

Until one night, during a thunderstorm that shook the Archive’s roots, a file appeared that should not have existed.

It was thicker than the rest. Bound in dark leather, humming faintly under her fingertips. There was no branch code, no origin moment. Just her name, etched deep into the cover.

FINCH, MIRA — DESIGNATION: TRUE FUTURE

That was impossible.

The Archive only receives records of unrealized futures—versions of reality that did not, and never will, come to pass. A “true” future meant one that was still unfolding. One that was... hers.

Hands trembling, Mira opened the file.

Inside were hundreds of pages. Some handwritten in her own script. Others typed in languages she didn’t recognize. The ink moved when she blinked, as though trying to settle into a shape she would understand. Snippets leapt out at her:

If you had turned right at the crosswalk instead of left...

If you had confessed what you saw in the mirror...

If you had opened the gate.

One page near the center was sealed with violet wax. Her name, written in her own unmistakable handwriting, marked the envelope.

She hesitated.

Breaking seals was forbidden. The oath she swore—the one that made her stop aging, stop existing in the normal world—was clear: the archivist does not interfere. She observes. She records.

She does not choose.

But the envelope pulsed with warmth. And a voice inside her whispered, You already broke the rule by reading this far.

She opened it.

Three pages fell out, each describing a different future. In one, she returns to the surface, ages, falls in love with someone she has not yet met. In another, she takes control of the Archive, rewriting the fates of millions. In the last, she walks into a forgotten door buried beneath the shelves and disappears from every version of reality, freeing all futures from constraint.

Below the pages, a final line:

You must choose.

The lights overhead flickered. A low hum built in her ears, like the sound of a thousand timelines vibrating at once.

Mira Finch, who had lived outside of time for nearly fifty years, closed the file and stood. She removed her gloves—the ones that stopped her from feeling too much—and stepped out of the circle of light that had held her in place for so long.

The Archive sighed as she passed. The shelves rearranged. The walls seemed to lean in.

And for the first time in half a century, Mira Finch made a choice—not for a life she could have lived, but for the one she still might.