Loop
My name is Linda.
I work at the Registry of Narrative Connections, third department, semantic block B.
For six years, I’ve been verifying compatibility between projected biographies and actual historical fabric.
To put it simply: from fiction to fact.
When someone invents a character coherent enough—say, for example, a ruthless capitalist who runs a hazardous industry with criminal negligence, or a failed singer with an amateur boxing past—their file ends up with us.
If the plot holds, if it has dramatic weight, it gets submitted for retroprojection.
That’s when we come in: we analyze the timeline, find a compatible space—a forgotten war, a banking crisis, an undocumented festival—and we place them there.
The character becomes real.
Or rather: has always been real, officially.
I don’t find the job too dirty. Ethically, I mean, if that word still has any meaning.
I like what I do. It’s clean, orderly. It makes sense.
It’s always reassured me to know that reality—at least the written kind—passes through filters.
And that there are people like me keeping it in balance.
Giving dignity to the lie.
But today something changed.
When I read the Council’s new document, my blood ran cold.
It was just a paragraph, tucked at the bottom of the page.
Written in dry legalese.
But I felt its weight instantly:
> “In cases of coherent narrative ownership, fusion with pre-existing historical identities is permitted, subject to appropriate creative adaptability.”
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
It wasn’t a mistake.
It wasn’t a joke.
It meant we no longer just inserted new characters into the past…
We could now rewrite existing ones.
Gandhi. Newton. Maria Montessori.
Anyone.
Merge. Adapt.
Be revised.
A thin nausea rose within me. A kind of vertigo.
And also—don’t ask me why—a sharp, lucid sensation: the feeling that I could still do something.
I stayed frozen at the terminal for an hour.
Then I made a decision.
I used an old access code, one from the early years of the Retro Project.
Archival strings never deleted because they were deemed obsolete.
Useless. Invisible.
I typed slowly. The screen blinked.
A grey, bare interface appeared:
**ARCHIVE OF PREVIOUS PROPERTIES – Restricted Access**
Below:
**Cross-verification of authorization: Linda B. // Narrative Connections // Semantic Block B.**
Confirmed.
A list appeared.
Endless.
I couldn’t believe it.
All names I recognized.
But next to each, a symbol: a small circle with an “R” inside.
Registered. Trademarked.
**L. Da Vinci – IP: CineMond East**
**S. Freud – IP: DreamCorp Ltd.**
**J. of Arc – IP: VisionaryScope Holdings**
**M. Gandhi – IP: Prism Pictures Intel.I**
**G. Bruno – IP: Prism Pictures Intel.I**
**H. Arendt – IP: VisionLab Europe**
The list went on for thousands of entries.
Some were under negotiation.
Others in “narrative revision” phase.
The blood rushed to my head.
Not only could they do it.
They already had.
The great names of history.
The icons of collective memory.
Acquired, branded, manipulated.
Rewritten with subplots, updated motivations, and a nice uplifting ending.
But most of all: functional.
Something told me they’d start with the promoters of free thought.
Those who ask questions. Those who disrupt.
Those who break convenient narratives.
After all, the guideline was clear:
> “Encourage cultural fluidity. Eliminate cognitive friction.”
My hands were shaking.
I opened a file at random.
**Barry Marshall.**
In this version, he doesn’t drink the bacteria that causes ulcers.
He doesn’t risk his career. Doesn’t challenge anyone.
He writes a polished academic essay:
> “Gastritis is psychosomatic. Stress is the enemy.”
He receives pats on the back.
But millions continue to suffer needlessly.
His experiment never happens.
The Nobel goes to someone else, for something harmless.
Another file.
**Hannah Arendt.**
She returns from Jerusalem.
Writes a perfectly compliant article:
> “Eichmann was a demon. Horror can only be explained by the exceptional nature of evil. None of us could have done what he did.”
The piece is praised.
Awarded.
Printed everywhere.
No one is scandalized.
No one reflects.
The concept of the banality of evil is never born.
The Eichmann trial becomes a moralist play, useful only to reinforce the divide between “us” (the good) and “him” (the pure evil).
And when evil returns, it does so undisturbed.
Under the gray guise of tomorrow’s bureaucrats.
I close the files. I can hardly breathe.
I look for understanding.
I go to my colleagues, one by one.
They advise me to stay quiet.
They look at me as if I’d said a forbidden word.
And then I remember her.
Beth.
They used to speak of her in whispers, like one speaks of the dead—or the insane.
They said she wanted to know too much.
Beth.
Disappeared months ago.
Transferred, they said. No details.
No goodbye.
That name keeps pulsing in my head.
Beth.
I return to the terminal. I search frozen files, removed folders, unindexed backups.
Eventually, I find a folder with no author.
**BETH LINDA – Ownership Assigned. Authenticated.**
My chest tightens.
I open the file.
> “Female character, documentation sector, archivist role. Age 34. Obsessive yet composed demeanor. Tendency toward methodical doubt. Progressive loss of institutional trust. Search for truth triggered by internal anomalies. Discovery of ongoing narrative interference. Failure. Disappearance.”
A narrative file.
A script.
But not written by me.
Not meant for me.
And yet… it is me.
Every detail.
The desk. The obsolete code.
The nausea. The vertigo.
The very sentence I just thought.
It’s already there in the file.
A chill runs down my spine.
The character Beth Linda… is my historical transposition.
Written, signed, and retroprojected.
I don’t exist.
Or rather: I exist because she discovered too much.
Because her identity had to be rewritten, and the most efficient way… was to turn her into me.
A narrative substitution.
A convenient fusion.
And now here I am, in her role.
In her office.
Living the same path.
Asking the same questions.
Until I read this same file.
I feel faint.
Outside, footsteps echo in the hallway.
Someone who knows.
Someone waiting.
The loop is closing.
Or maybe it’s being written right now, as I live it.
My name is Linda.
I work at the Registry of Narrative Connections, third department, semantic block B.
For six years, I’ve been verifying compatibility between projected biographies and actual historical fabric.
To put it simply: from fiction to fact.
