That’s how I feel now. Captain Blitner’s voice plays in the background as I tap and swipe and tap and swipe. It’s almost methodical to me. This isn’t so different from my work at Gray Wall. But instead of logging shipments of spacecraft and warp engines, I’m reading about treatises and the fountain of the Modern Embassy Program. Here’s Zacharias Slater, visiting Belvun in 4218 as part of his galactic tour, only two years before he would pioneer the Restructuring Era and develop the Modern Embassy. And here’s the Undilaen Pipeline Project of 4048, which built Undil’s only water filtration facility at the edge of a small settlement that later became Orvad. Back then, the Embassy was still a small scientific colony, not the fully-fledged city it is today. I can hardly believe we’ve come so far since—

“Have you, Arman?”

I snap to attention and stare at Captain Blitner. He’s waiting for me to respond…except I don’t know what he asked.

“Have I what?”

Captain Blitner’s mouth stretches into his saggy smile. “I was wondering if you’d thought about what you want to do once you’re no longer an archivist. They won’t need us doing this work forever, even if there is talk developing a new archives program.” He waves one hand, then rests it on his knee. “People like us come and go all the time, you’ll see.”

I stutter trying to think of a response. “I never really thought about it,” I say. It reminds me of the first day in the Embassy, when Victoria asked about our goals. I was the only one who didn’t have a straight answer.

“The Ember used to be mine,” Captain Blitner says. He chuckles. “I liked to think she was, at least. David has owned her since the day she was commissioned, but I was his first captain. Some nights I dream of those days. In them, I am sitting in my chair, and the Ember speeds into the void.” He lifts his hand and moves it through the air. “I always fly to Belvun…but in a different time, in the days when Belvun was whole, and strong, and beautiful. It still is beautiful, but I cannot say for how much longer, not with the desert ravaging it.”

Captain Blitner sucks in his lips, and his chest rises and falls in a large sigh. He reaches inside his pocket, retrieves the white bottle, and shakes out a pill. When he swallows it, he looks up at me.

“Would you mind getting me some water?”

I fill a cup at the dispenser behind his desk and take it back to him. He gulps the water down in a few short swigs, then wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

“Thank you, Arman.”

“No problem.”