As intimidating as the thought of an archive of all the colonists was, the reality of it was much more mundane. When we entered the room, the lights above us activated and we found ourselves staring at row after row of file cabinets. The cabinets had ten drawers apiece, and inside the drawers were consoles much smaller than our personal ones, no larger than a man’s hand. Each drawer represented one year; inside were twenty-six consoles, one for each person born. They were alphabetized, and began the year the Colony was created.
The guide led us partway into the room and stopped before a cabinet marked 4600. Our year was three drawers from the top. More cabinets stretched away into the shadows where the lights hadn’t yet come on. The future of the Colony was out there, in rows of cabinets,
