Forgotten

It rained for the first time in weeks as Lanie walked to work one dreary Monday morning. She walked into the building, head down even once she was alone in the elevator. Sweet, earthy petrichor clung to her jacket and gradually faded as the lift descended.

Down, down, down it went all the way to the basement. By the time the elevator door slid open, the smell of rain had vanished, replaced by strong scent of mildew.

As the company’s sole archivist, Lanie had the basement to herself. There was no one else to drink the gourmet coffee that she brought from home. No one to complain when her lunch made the microwave smell like fish.

No one to fake a smile for.

Fresh cup of coffee in hand, Lanie dropped into her office chair, breath pushed from her lungs in a weary sigh.

Her company specialized in cognitive space management. Today’s world had so many distractions that it was impossible for one person to juggle them all. Those who wanted to prioritize the storage in their minds were able to hire Lanie’s company to extract memories that the client was willing to part with. As an archivist, she didn’t know many specific details about the extraction process. All she knew that was that she was the end of the line. Every discarded memory made its way to her for categorization and storage.

Booting up her computer, Lanie wondered what kinds of memories she would see today. Ex-partners, both happy and angry moments, were common. Or an old domineering boss who got off on humiliating their employees. Strict, or straight up abusive, parents. Tragic funerals were some of the worst. And guaranteed Lanie would drown in a sea of embarrassing memories that clients couldn’t get rid of fast enough.

She couldn’t have been less prepared for the first file she opened.

A child—a little girl in pigtails—running through a lush green park. She looked over her shoulder, a smile that funneled sunshine lighting up her face. Lanie didn’t have the audio enabled, but she could tell that the girl was laughing with abandon.

Someone wanted to forget this child.

The hollow pit in Lanie’s stomach that was never quite filled yawned wider. She had no clue whether this girl was alive or deceased. She didn’t even know if the girl was still a child or if this memory was fifty years old.

Finding it difficult to swallow, Lanie set her coffee cup aside and downloaded the memory onto a USB thumb drive. Sorting the memories in such a manner wasn’t officially sanctioned, but the discarded memories of children always hit different than the others. Therefore, they deserved to be treated different. This thumb drive was filled with discarded kids, forgotten babies.

Forgotten by everyone except Lanie.

She lovingly placed the thumb drive in a desk drawer that she had transformed into a miniature bedroom, complete with tiny paintings framed on the metal walls and itty-bitty fairy lights. Lanie tucked the thumb drive into the miniature bed and blew it a kiss.

Hopefully, somehow, that sweet little girl felt that someone still remembered her.