PART ONE: THE ARCHIVIST’S RECORD
[ARCHIVIST RECORD | VEHL’S REACH | UNOFFICIAL LOG 10.20.26]
Classification: Signal. Filed under: Memory, Official and Unofficial.
A person without a pair has no standing on Skyside.
The wall is the embodiment of the ‘Pairing Doctrine’ and how the city decides who counts. It stands on the Skyside deck, and it carries paired names in gold. The city carves each pair once, on the day it approves it. Two names share one line, and the city never recuts it.
Nobody carves their own name there. The city decides who is carved.
Far below, there is another wall.
It is in Corridor Fourteen on Shadowside. No one approves it. A name goes up only after a death, when a loved one chisels it.
Shadowsiders maintain it. Skyside never acknowledges that it exists.
[Archivist’s Footnote: A record kept by permission lasts as long as the permission. A record kept by love lasts as long as someone remembers to pick up the chisel.]
PART TWO: FROM R.R. PANWAR
The Question
Last Thursday I asked a question about the two walls in Vehl’s Reach.
Would you rather be celebrated by a city that owns you, or remembered by a loved one with a chisel?
More of you answered than I expected. But most interestingly, almost nobody gave the same reason.
The Ascension Wall
On Skyside, an officer chooses a partner, and the city approves it. The choice is theirs.
What comes after is not. The pair has to be in perfect sync or it does not work, and once the city carves it, nothing breaks it.
Rhea’s pair is carved on the Ascension Wall. Her partner died, and the city expected her to retire, because an officer without a partner is a single point of failure.
She refused, which the city had not seen in decades. She still works the cases the city would rather not record.
The Wall That Doesn’t Exist
Shadowside has a wall of its own, and to the people who live there it matters more than the Ascension Wall ever could.
Nobody commissions it. A name goes up when someone loves a person enough to carry a chisel down to Corridor Fourteen. The stone is rough and crowded, and no two names are cut alike.
Every name belongs to someone the city failed and never acknowledged. If the anger of the Shadowside has a written record, this wall is it.
One name on it holds more significance than the rest. Rael’s was cut by his father, Drav, with a chisel that split his palm. There is blood in the grooves.
Carve Yours
I built a version of the Ascension Wall on the site.
Add two names: yours and the person you’d choose as your pair. The one who could keep your pace.
Use first names only. You get one carving. Your names go up the moment you carve them, and the city does not recut the wall.
A RECOMMENDATION
Star Rider and the Betrayal by Heidi Skarie
Toemeka is an undercover operative with one job: install a computer worm that erases every record of a deadly chemical bioweapon before it can be used.
She and Jake, her contact and lover, have to get past military-grade robots and into the enemy’s stronghold. Then someone betrays her, and wiping the records may not be enough to stop the weapon.
Star Rider and the Betrayal is a free short story, a prelude to Heidi Skarie’s space opera Star Rider on the Razor’s Edge.
Personally I have read it and I loved it a lot!!
BEFORE YOU GO
The Archivist publishes free, most Tuesdays.
The Infection Protocol, Book 1 of The Parasite Wars, launches publicly November 7. Eighteen days.
A Kickstarter is coming this November. It funds official character art for Book 1, and it’s how Book 2 gets made. You’ll hear it here first.
Next issue is a Lore Drop. Until then: the city keeps the names it approves. Someone else keeps the rest.
-Eshal & R.R. Panwar
THE ARCHIVIST | Free. Weekly, most Tuesdays.
Records of worlds the city would prefer you didn’t find.