jml297

There were only 24 hours before it would all be gone. William sighed, inhaling the musty air which had surrounded him during his professional life. With a tender hand, he touched a clutch of folios lining the nearest shelf. He’d been part of the project which had scanned a sample of the wealth of information that had been gathered over decades. And now that project was coming to an end, and the removalists were booked to clear the archive contents tomorrow.

Well, they were called removalists, but William knew the reality. All of the records were being pulped and repurposed into bench seats which would be installed around the city. He’d been appalled when he’d first found out about that, thinking that it would be preferable to fire up the old chimney stack that used to puff smoke as it consumed unwanted papers and the like. But those days were long gone, and his colleagues had looked appalled when he’d suggested it. He’d tried to make it sound like a joke when he saw their reaction, but then he was used to being considered as a relic of another time.

William had prided himself on being able to locate just about anything within a day; no mean feat considering the documentation held in the archives would cover many miles if laid out in a logical order. But now that knowledge was redundant. William knew that the funding for his role would vanish along with the archives: an online search tool might find a reference using a key word, but could it understand the nuances contained within an information request? His chest tightened at the thought of all the knowledge, the facts, theories and inconsistencies contained within the archives being lost to future generations.

‘Hey, Bill. Take care of this request for me?’

William frowned. Nobody he liked called him Bill. He reached out to accept the envelope offered by Dylan. Dylan was his supervisor, and was young enough to be William’s grandson. It was addressed to the archivist. William adjusted his reading glasses, his eyes speeding across the handwritten page. A ghost of a smile twitched at his lips. The request was quite obscure, and a little vague in parts. But he had the sense of it, and closed his eyes as his mind roamed up and down the compacted shelves, working out possible locations for the required information.

William set to work, too engrossed to stop for his usual morning tea or lunch break. Dylan had interrupted him at three o’clock to tell him that the removalists were now arriving at five o’clock, and that he’d need to be finished by then. William barely registered the news as he slipped up and down the aisles, digging deep into the treasure trove of documents.

With minutes to spare, William scanned in the documents that he’d extracted, savouring the sense of satisfaction of a job well done.

This piece was written to a prompt on the Writer’s Digest website. Unexpected Deadlines: an archivist has a day to solve a mystery.

Photo: a timer