Unique, precious, and historically important records were kept in a fireproof vault at a far corner of the deepest archive room. Even if the whole island were to go up in a great conflagration, the signature of the territories’ first director general, Lord Corn; the speeches of the beaver mayor Nanfan St. Bernard; and that famous photo of city council speaker Niceto “Needles” Catanzarese, the trailblazing swine, would survive for future creatures to ignore.

Alfonzo’s official title was second assistant to the commissioner of records. As second assistant, he had a series of unchanging tasks. One was to receive incoming documents, record said documents, and then file them in their proper locations. The pneumatic tubes wheezed before each new document arrived, that airy heave followed by an excremental plop as the envelope fell into the bag beneath the chute. That sequence sounded in Alfonzo’s dreams.

In addition to tending paper, Alfonzo was in charge of recycling office materials, sweeping dust bunnies, and monitoring the humidity. The Department of Records was in a persistent battle with dampness, leaks, and mold. Those in City Hall who bothered to consider the combination of vital papers and subterranean damp knew that the department’s location was far from ideal, but they knew just as well that moving the department was impossible, politically speaking.

It would be reasonable to assume that above Alfonzo there existed a first assistant, as well as a commissioner requiring assistance, but the positions were both vacant, and had been for some time. Alfonzo had been hired by Ketzel Tres Marias, the last commissioner of records. She pretended to be a nice raccoon grandma but was in reality a sharp-clawed operator. When Alfonzo started, a studious border collie named Lucky Saint Cloud was first assistant. Ketzel and Lucky did most of the challenging work and made Alfonzo handle the basic tasks they found too boring. But Alfonzo had just started grad school and was reeling from the collapse of his serious relationship with Vivi, so this arrangement had suited all of them. While Alfonzo moped and sorted, Ketzel could keep arguing about funding with the beasts upstairs and Lucky could run circles around the basement. He’d appreciated his two bosses, and they all worked in harmony for seasons.

The situation unraveled when Baldwin Shergar III was elected mayor.