Page 5 of Between Earth and Eternity
El opens the heavy wooden door before we cross the lobby to the security gate. I go first, scanning my thumbprint on the reader. My information pops on the screen next to the door.
Skyler C. Andrews
Age: 22
Work Station: Earth Preservation Society, Archiving - Musical Media
The glass barrier rises and then quietly lowers back to the ground once I pass through, Elliot following behind seconds later. “Ah, the last time you’ll see two-two on that screen,” he says, holding up two fingers on each hand.
“Is this how the day is going to go? ‘Skyler, your last lunch as a twenty-two year old.’ ‘Skyler, your last time clocking out as a twenty-two year old,’” I reply with a hint of humor. He just laughs as we continue down the long corridor. “Also, isn’t it a bit trivial to celebrate birthdays these days?”
He furrows his brow. “Hell no! We’ve gotta hang on to the little things.”
I shake my head just as we reach our department’s door. “If you say so.”
The sundering took more than just lives; it nearly wiped away all evidence that we were ever here to begin with. Everything was scattered to the wind. Apparently, several servers and cloud backups weren’t enough when the oceans decided to drown the world. With the servers gone, the only way to collect and restore music, movies, books, and all other forms of media was by physically scraping them from what could be found. E.P.S. sorts through everything from handheld devices, CDs, hard disks, worn books; if there’s a chance it may contain a song or text in the hard drive, we store it, download it, and record it into the new servers that are built better than ever. Indestructible. Never to be lost again. All made possible by Mannox Industries, of course.
There are several departments in the society, but fortunately, with my father’s influence as one of the founders of E.P.S., Elliot and I have spent the last three years deep in the archives department, specifically in the music field.
Words may write history, but music paints it, brings it to life. It’s a multilevel landscape of media in all forms, a sea of melody and story.
There’s no way Elliot and I could ever touch every artifact or listen to every song, so we’re part of a team of many archivists who store, refine, and upload media into the new cloud.
My father’s role as founder is overseeing the management and cataloging of records, determining if we have enough of a certain media already uploaded or if others are in better condition. For storage purposes, especially when it comes to physical items, it isn’t logical to have hundreds of copies of the same thing when we are transferring from one planet to another. Digital storage is another thing entirely, and it’s where El and I spend most of our days: standing at our work stations, listening to song after song, and cataloging them correctly. Earlier on, we spent the majority of our time sorting through physical media and scrapingdownloaded files, but as less tasks come through on the front lines, we mostly work in front of screens now. I know it’s been a good day when my earlobes are sore from being compressed by headphones for hours and I have a list of songs I want to download onto my phone. Technically, it isn’t allowed. Everyone isencouragedto use Mannox applications for all things from shopping to food and entertainment—it’s the only option, so it’s not much of a choice—but being on the inside has its benefits. The amount of hours I’ve spent creating perfect playlists is probably equal to several days at this point. Same goes for Elliot, as he and I song-swap or listen to our new discoveries after work practically every day.
As we continue through the office, we greet our peers, who are already at their workstations. Our department has slowly been compressed in the past year. With less work coming in and the first crossing approaching, I don’t take for granted that my father is the reason El and I are still here.
I power on my console, the large glass screen and keyboard lighting up with a couple of taps of my fingers. Before I adjust my headphones over my ears, Elliot interrupts.
“Your last time—”
“Don’t even start,” I interject before he can go on.
He snickers, slipping his pair on.
I look at the current catalog I’ve been working on. For several months, I have exclusively been archiving indie records from the years 2000-2030. The dark folk tunes in particular have quickly become some of my favorites. New discoveries have decreased in frequency over the last several months, so I will be listening to duplicate recordings today, verifying that they are versions we don’t already have stored, such as a live session or a cover recorded by a different artist.
Out of all the archivists here, I’ve probably cataloged the least. I let the music sweep me away too often. They take me over,those feelings of love and loss. I can’t help but repeat a song again and again before I have to move on to the next. That “dillydallying” Mom was talking about earlier manifests itself everywhere, it would seem. But it’s not the feelings alone that capture me, it’s the memories. The songs that carry that source of inspiration from wherever the artist found it. An experience of pure love or devastation, a raging heart or a sad one. It makes me feel like I have experienced them all beside the artist, especially in those very special instances where I hear a song and think,I know exactly what you mean or I hope to someday.
I savor each one and hope the work we have done will not be for nothing, that the meanings of the lyrics and emotions of the melodies stay with us long after we all turn to dust. Here on Earth or out there in space, no matter where we meet our ends, a song is a footprint of a life, a part of a soul that lives on.
A few hours into our shift, Elliot taps me on the shoulder.
“Break time already?” I slip my headphones around my neck.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he says, shrugging. “Come on,” he adds, flicking the brim of my hat. “I’m buying.”
Most days, we eat packed lunches in the courtyard outside the E.P.S. building, but today, El insists we eat at the campus dining hall. Once, there was a plethora of vendors, but it has since trickled down to a handful of options, and the prices are much too costly.
I pull his shirt sleeve. “El, this is too much.”
“Come on, it’s the last time you’ll—”
“Seriously,” I reply, hitting his shoulder. He is relentless.
“I was gonna say this is probably the last time you’ll get a chance to eat a hamburger without paying three months’ worth of work in the archives. Sheesh.” Well, that’s depressing.
“Whatever,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him.
