231 Archives
231 Archives
Will led the way, his steps measured and unhurried. The hallway looked the same as before, long and austere, but I could tell immediately that the destination had changed. The air felt different, heavier somehow, like the space itself knew where we were going.
“Here,” Will said as he pushed open a pair of massive double doors.
I followed closely behind him and stopped short as the sight opened up before me. It was a grand library, vast enough that the ceiling disappeared into shadow, with staircases spiraling upward and outward in careful symmetry. Rows upon rows of shelves stretched into the distance, perfectly ordered and disturbingly pristine for a place that felt almost entirely devoid of activity.
“Follow me,” Will added, already moving. “Just don’t expect too much. I don’t think you’ll find anything new or particularly useful.”
At my request to see the files on my counterpart, before it became what the multiverse now knew as the Entity, Will had decided to escort me personally. That alone told me this place mattered more than most.
We reached a corner of the library, tucked far enough away that even the ambient silence felt thicker. Suddenly, an apparition of a woman descended before us, her form semi-translucent and glowing faintly.
“How may I help you, Lord Will?” she asked politely.
“I’ve got it handled,” Will replied.
Her gaze shifted to me, and her expression tightened into something that looked like fear layered with sorrow. Will gestured in my direction. “This is Eclipse.”
The woman nodded once. “I understand.”
I had no idea what she meant by that, but I didn’t press the issue.
“I shall take my leave,” she said, fading away as gently as she had appeared.
Will reached for a nearby shelf and began pulling books in a precise sequence, one after another. As he worked, he spoke casually, as if explaining something mundane. “She’s the librarian of this place. Your fan.” He paused, then corrected himself. “More accurately, the fan of the other you. He even mentored her when she was starting out as a cape.”
The mechanism clicked softly.
“Intangibility,” Will continued, “is a power with a very high ceiling. It’s notoriously hard to control, let alone master. A lot of people die because they mishandle it. That tends to breed fear in those who wield it, so their abilities develop defensively, with restraint and avoidance in mind.” He glanced at me briefly. “Unlike your lot, who seem to swim through it like fish through water.”
The shelf slid open like a door.
Will stepped through first, and I followed. The shelf closed behind us with a quiet finality, cutting off the library entirely. At first, it was pitch dark, but the space slowly illuminated on its own.
What greeted me was another hallway, seemingly endless, with shelves lining both sides as far as I could see. What struck me most, however, was that everything was monochrome. Black and white. Perfectly sharp, perfectly clear, but entirely drained of color.
Will, notably, still had color.
So did I.
“What’s this place?” I asked, unable to hide my curiosity.
“The Archives,” he answered. “The real thing. It records everything Mr. Known and his predecessors have accumulated over a very long time.” He turned to face me. “As one of the Five Continuities, you now have access to this place.”
“Continuities?”
“I’m going to leave you here,” Will continued. “If you need to find one of us or have questions, just ask your liaison. We’re planning to attach Guesswork to you, if that suits you.”
It really had come full circle. Guesswork was my problem again… or rather, I was his boss again.
“I’m fine with that arrangement,” I said, smirking faintly. “But I have to ask. Continuities? No offense, but there was a cape I fought who literally called himself Continuity—”
“I’m aware,” Will interrupted calmly. “We’ve been keeping a close watch on you.”
That didn’t surprise me nearly as much as it probably should have.
Of course, I was curious. The word ‘Continuity’ carried too much weight for me to ignore, echoing an old SRC fiasco I hadn’t quite forgotten. I remembered a certain crazy white-haired man, supposedly tasked with hunting and monitoring anything related to the Entity.
Will continued casually, as if he were talking about office politics instead of multiversal absurdities. “It’s an experimental existence of your predecessor. The other Nick. I honestly don’t know much beyond that. I’ve only been ‘Will’ for a few thousand years. If we’re talking about tenure, then there’s the Doctor and your predecessor ahead of me.” He gestured vaguely down the endless shelves. “As for the ‘Five Continuities,’ that’s just the official term. Most of us inherited our positions from predecessors. Some earned them through meritocracy. Others were selected through mentoring opportunities. More often than not, it involved a rigorous selection process that sent the entire SRC into a panic.”
He glanced at me, studying my reaction. “Your situation is unique. You were fast-tracked from an outsider straight into being one of the highest authorities of a multiversal organization. If you feel like people are shunning you, don’t take it personally.”
I found myself liking him more by the second. He was calm, straightforward, and oddly human for someone on this level. Still, my curiosity refused to settle.
“I don’t mean any offense,” I said carefully, “but how are you related to the Monarchy?”
“I created them,” he answered without hesitation.
For a moment, I wondered if I’d asked a stupid question. Then the meaning hit me.
Will continued, his tone unchanging. “Some decisions create ripples that reflect across many worlds. I was once called the Seer. I saw so much of the future that I decided not to leave it alone. When I saw how people of my skin would be enslaved, marginalized, and exploited, I chose to change that destiny. I centralized an entire country’s worth of us, monopolized psychic abilities, and created the Monarchy… a feudal system ruled by psychics during the Dark Ages.”
He paused, then added, “My predecessor noticed me. He invited me, mentored me, and eventually I inherited his mantle. It wasn’t my intention for the Monarchy to become what it is now. But I have no regrets.”
He turned to me. “If your curiosity is satisfied, can we move on with the agenda?”
I nodded slowly. “Tell me how to use the Archives.”
“Close your eyes,” he instructed. “Think about what you want to learn. Open your eyes, then grab a book. This place is partially sentient. It adapts to your intent.”
I did as he said. I closed my eyes, focused, then opened them and reached out. My hand found a book immediately, as if it had been waiting for me. When I opened it, I found myself staring at my mother’s files.
I read about the suffering she endured. The compromises she made. The quiet, relentless work she put into protecting me, even when the world gave her no reason to hope. It felt like I was torturing myself, digging into wounds that never fully healed, but curiosity won out again.
What I read didn’t stray far from what I had imagined.
That, somehow, hurt the most.
“I will leave you to your own,” Will remarked as he turned away.
“Wait,” I said, stopping him. “How does time pass here compared to my world?”
He glanced back, expression neutral. “Facilities like this, and many SRC locations, exist in a space outside of time. From your perspective, it’s paused. You don’t need to eat, sleep, or even hydrate, so take as long as you want.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I replied.
He left me alone after that, his footsteps fading into nothing. The Archives felt even quieter once he was gone, the kind of silence that pressed against the ears rather than simply filling the space. I returned the book I was holding, closed my eyes, and focused on what I wanted to learn next. When I opened them again, another book was already within reach.
I started with the ‘Archives’ themselves. How they worked, what distinguished them from the Grand Library just outside, and why access was restricted the way it was. The scope of this place extended beyond the visible shelves, bleeding seamlessly into the larger library, yet remaining separate in purpose. The Grand Library was administrative, archival in the bureaucratic sense, meant for reference, record-keeping, and daily SRC operations. The Archives, on the other hand, were personal. Exclusive. They responded not just to authority, but to intent. To my intent.
Once I understood the mechanics, I let my curiosity run free.
I read about the multiverse and its creation, about the first fracture and the cascade that followed. The narrative matched what I had already been told in that courtroom, which was both reassuring and unsettling. The SRC did not, and could not, monitor the entire multiverse. That would have been impossible even for them. They could not control every parallel world in existence, and that limitation was precisely why organizations like the NSD existed in the first place.
What impressed me was how they managed to unify timelines across every observable parallel world. Deviations in time were slowly corrected the moment a world was observed from outside of time itself. The concept was absurd and elegant at the same time. Observation as correction. Presence as enforcement.
I told myself I didn’t care about their mission or vision, yet I kept reading. Maybe it was because of how futile it all seemed. Was it really worth it? Would all of reality collapse if they simply left every world alone? Or was this just an elaborate attempt to impose meaning and order on something that was never meant to be controlled?
After hours, or what would have been hours anywhere else, two conclusions stood out clearly. First, the SRC existed to preserve peace by hiding the existence of parallel worlds from one another. Second, they sought the Source, the heart that connected all worlds, with the ultimate goal of undoing the multiverse entirely.
That part bothered me more than I expected.
I read several of Dr. Time’s journal entries on the matter, his thoughts meticulous and disturbingly calm. Undoing the multiverse meant erasing worlds. It meant erasing my world. I hoped, quietly, that day would never come. The others among the Five Continuities clearly did not share the doctor’s ancient perspective, and that difference in ideology felt like a fracture waiting to widen.
Once my curiosity about the structure of reality was sated, I turned my attention elsewhere. I searched for the founders of the SRC and for the other Nick. Dr. Time’s presence among the founders was expected. The other three were strangers to me, their lives distant and difficult to relate to.
Nicholas Caldwell, however, was different.
My counterpart came from a world without powers. There were conflicts there too, discrimination and societal issues, but nothing as extreme or warped as what I had grown up with. The absence of powers seemed to have softened the edges of his world. He had an average childhood. He finished high school. He went to college.
I hated him almost immediately.
His father was not a gambler. His mother was not an alcoholic. He lived a life that, despite its own struggles, was stable in ways mine had never been. It was the kind of life I would have envied if I had ever allowed myself to imagine something better.
Did that mean I cheered when my counterpart’s life suddenly took a turn for the worse?
No, I didn’t think so…
When people in his world suddenly gained powers, everything collapsed into chaos, and he lost his parents in the fallout. I waited for the bitterness, the rage, the spiral that mirrored my own life, but it never came. It didn’t break him the way it broke me.
Instead, he rose.
He was among the first generation of superheroes, and his cape name was Solstice. Of course it was. The irony almost made me scoff. Unlike me, he used his intangibility to save people openly, to inspire hope, to punish criminals in broad daylight. He became a symbol, celebrated and admired, one of the most iconic heroes of his era. Where I learned to survive in the shadows, he learned to shine in them.
At some point, the past and future connected, and a war followed that reshaped everything. He survived that too. Not only survived, but endured long enough to become one of the five founders of the SRC. Reading it all laid out like this made me realize how absurd time truly was. Butterfly effects rippled outward endlessly, and somewhere along the way, the Entity’s interference had nudged my world just enough to turn my life into what it was now.
If I traced my suffering back far enough, I could blame the Entity for it. At the same time, a bitter thought surfaced that I didn’t entirely hate the outcome. I had survived. I had Nicole. I had a son. Somehow, despite everything, I came out okay.
I stopped when I reached the picture of Amelia.
“I see,” I muttered to myself, the realization settling heavily in my chest. The memory I had seen before, the one influenced by the Entity, hadn’t come from the future at all. It came from a distant, ancient past. It was the Entity’s memory of his wedding. The files confirmed it plainly. Amelia Caldwell, this version of her, had lived a full life and died of old age. She never had powers. The warmth in that memory suddenly felt alien, almost incompatible with the monster the Entity had become.
I wondered if that memory had been corrupted over time, eroded by power and madness. Still, it told me enough.
“I’ve got a rough idea of what kind of person the Entity was,” I said quietly. More importantly, I understood what he was no longer. With that clarity came certainty. The Entity and I were not the same person. I would not walk his path, and I would not become what he became. Whatever destiny this multiverse tried to shove onto me, I was my own person, and I intended to triumph against it.
That resolve didn’t change the reality of my situation. If I wanted to survive what was coming, I needed to grow stronger. Ratings mattered, whether I liked it or not.
“But first, I have to raise my ratings,” I said, already knowing what I needed next.
I focused my thoughts and spoke with intent. “Archives, give me a list of highly rated capes I can hunt. Preferably ones who are morally bankrupt, the kind whose deaths would actually make the world better.”
I closed my eyes and meant it with everything I had. When I opened them, there were books waiting for me. Not one, but many. That alone told me how rotten the world really was.
“Guesswork’s next,” I muttered.
I walked out of the Archives with one of the books under my arm and nearly ran straight into the blind man himself. He was standing just outside, as if he had been waiting the whole time.
“You called for me?” he asked calmly.
I hesitated, suddenly feeling awkward. “They’ve been… really nice to me,” I admitted. “So this feels strange to say, but please tell the Five Continuities that I’m quitting. They can keep the seat of Space for someone more willing to do the job.”
“Are you being serious right now?” asked Guesswork.
I have no plans to align myself with an organization I didn’t agree with there principles. This was an organization that desired to undo the mistakes of time travel, and revert the multiverse to its origin. I couldn’t have that, even if it sounded impossible and that taking the seat would only give me advantages. I’m not here for a power grab.
Guesswork froze, confusion written all over his face. “That’s the highest position here,” he said carefully. “Why would you turn it down?”
I didn’t hesitate this time. “Because I have a wife and a kid waiting for me,” I replied. “I have to think about them first. I’m a family man now.”
The words felt heavier than any title they could have offered me, and a lot more real.