The conservatory had its usual smell after a transfer: a mix of citrus oil, solvent, and a faint sweet scent from glue. The machines hummed softly in the background. Mara sat at her bench with paperwork in front of her, still tasting the warmth of someone else's sunshine on her tongue. It was a small, stubborn feeling, like burnt sugar from an orange, that no paperwork could capture.
She gave the stream logs one last check. The checklist showed green, except for one line that was marked "subjective residue": logged, recommend cooling period, debrief conservator. She initialed it out of habit. The municipal ledger liked initials because they turned messy human choices into a neat history.
But habits didn't quiet the buzz in her chest. She pressed play on a private recording and watched a summer memory again at low volume, not to fix it but to remember what she had briefly claimed as her own: a woman named Lena, humming into a tea towel while a child tugged at her, and a hammock swaying slightly. The scene was so vivid that Mara could almost feel the floorboards beneath her feet.
She clicked over to the city registries, driven by curiosity, not procedure. A conservator's curiosity wasn't something they taught in training. The municipal database was long and boring, filled with names, tax IDs, volunteer lists, and work permits. You typed in a name, and the system returned facts, employment records, aid receipts, housing files. For most donated memories, the registries confirmed identities, linking the memories to the world they came from.
She typed in the name Lena and watched the search come back empty. No Lena Rhee, no Lena Morales, no Lena Raith. She tried different versions, Lenka and Lena with different last names she had heard, and still found nothing that matched the summer's details. The emptiness made the memory feel sour.
Mara looked over the intake sheet again, scanning the donor details as if they were a map leading to missing landmarks. The donor had filled out the basics: age range, general neighborhood for indexing, and a list of items, but there was no extra information. The many legal disclaimers at the bottom were written in a comforting font, but they only added to the emptiness. The summer had depth and detail in the memory, but nothing connected it to the city's records.
Mara's heart raced a little. The first rule for conservators was to document everything, but now it felt like a desperate need. If a memory arrived without clear proof, several things could be true: the donor might have been honest but not registered; the memory could be a mix of several people's experiences; or a restorer had added their own life's details into the memory. Each possibility carried ethical weight.
She could have just let it go. The rules allowed for uncertainty when there wasn't enough evidence. The city valued community benefits over strict proof; if exchanges helped people, the ledger could handle some messiness. But she felt a small mark on her arm and a lullaby stuck in her throat. Knowing that a memory might be disconnected felt like a responsibility.
Mara printed the donor's summary and impulsively gathered some files from the conservatory's small reference shelf: outreach program lists from five years ago, volunteer sign-in sheets from storm relief efforts, and an old folder labeled COMMUNITY AID ARCHIVE that smelled of dust. The papers felt reassuring in her hands, a solid counter to the city's vague records.
She worked in the short time between transfers, pages spread around her like a small investigation. Names repeated like a pattern: temporary relief driver, anonymous volunteer, outreach coordinator, contracted. Many lists used first names, nicknames, and handwritten notes about shifts and food deliveries. The more she read, the more the idea of a single Lena faded into a collection of small acts performed by different people. Someone poured tea here, someone else handed out blankets there, the city's memory of these gestures half recorded and half forgotten.
A voice at the door broke her concentration. "You look like you're haunted by something," Naveen said, leaning against the doorframe with a mug he had taken from the staff room. He had that fresh technician look, still surprised that the city trusted him with other people's stories.
"Maybe I am," Mara replied. She covered the intake sheet with her hand so he wouldn't see that she had underlined the names three times. "I can't find Lena in the records."
Naveen squinted at the paper and then at her. "No record at all?"
"Nothing that fits. Either she's not registered, or the summer memory is a mix of many people's experiences. Or" she paused, swallowing the thought, "something else."
Naveen fiddled with his mug as if hoping to draw answers from the warmth. "Jonah Vale was asking questions the other day," he said at last. She had heard that name connected to restless journalism in the city before. "He's looking for stories about the Exchange. He mentioned rumors about missing records. Maybe you should talk to him?"
Mara's first instinct was to reject the idea. Journalists were trouble; they took stories and turned them into soundbites. But the pull of curiosity was strong. The thought of someone else searching for answers made the absence feel less like a personal loss and more like a community issue.
"Not yet," she said slowly. "I want to catalog everything first. I need to see the pattern." She grabbed a pen and started jotting down leads in the margin: local relief drives, shelters, volunteer coordinator names. The act of organizing her thoughts calmed her. It focused her feelings into a task.
She packed the papers into a cardboard folder and slid it into her locker beneath a stack of padded packets. The conservatory's clock moved toward the afternoon intake. A courier called out from the entrance. Mara closed the folder, feeling the lullaby echo under her skin.
Before leaving for the day, she made her way to the small municipal library on the corner, where physical records gathered dust that databases didn't catch. The librarian recognized her; municipal workers often came by to remind themselves how fragile paper could be. Mara requested a closed folder: COMMUNITY AID PHOTO ARCHIVE, box seventeen.
When the box opened under the lamp, photographs spilled out like memories, people with windblown hair at soup kitchens, volunteers in gloves holding blankets, a hand-stitched banner that read HELP AFTER THE STORM. They were ordinary pictures of ordinary kindness.
She took a deep breath and scanned the rows until a familiar face blinked up at her from a small, grainy photo: a volunteer at a relief table, hair tucked into a scarf, hands around a paper cup of tea. The photo wasn't labeled. On the back, someone had written: Lena? or Lenka? Temporary, summer relief.
Her throat tightened. The city's records had been silent, but here was a human connection, faint, hesitant, and messy. It didn't give her certainty, but it offered her a direction.
Mara slipped the photograph into her pocket, treating it like a precious relic. It felt warm against her fingers, like a secret. The aftertaste faded slightly, replaced by a new kind of energy: a chance to connect a summer memory back into the city's history or to discover that the thing she had repaired belonged to more people than the rules would allow.
As she turned off the lamps and locked the conservatory door behind her, the quiet in the building felt different, no longer just the hum of machines, but the calm of a place where stories were shaped. The street outside buzzed with the sounds of Litus: trams, distant laughter, and a soft advertising slogan that promised a kinder city because strangers helped one another.
Mara walked home with the photograph pressed against her chest. The lullaby played in her mind like a thread. She didn't know yet which truth she would uncover, the photograph, the list, or the idea that kindness crossed boundaries but she was moving toward it, and that movement felt like a responsibility she couldn't ignore.