On This Day... (very short story)

     Cessiu placed an old cassette into storage.  If it were old photographs, or one manually turned a handle on a device which produced the motions which involved replaying an essence of time, likely she sensed the tomb of a long since buried archive being easily understood.  The old player had broken a long time ago, and the meticulous art of magnetic head cleaning with cotton swabs and alcohol long since had given way beyond even the piled clutter of optics laying in heaps.  It would seem if this were art at first glance, the collections of Rembrandt, Monet, should seem without so much merit.  In ten thousand years the plastics found in media tape, wouldn't these bubble, contort, become less pliable, brittle, likely warp, break and whither, or it should seem, she thought even the long lived materials of media wouldn't.  Tapes had been an analyzed and carefully the tapes were deconstructed in a way, like turning fragile leaves that would shatter at the slightest hesitation of wind and vanish in a puff of dust, magnetic records recorded in a vast sheet, that could little be read in terms of a clear code, not like binary, not visually like a structurally marked surface but more a surface given by impression of waves fluctuating in and out.  Translating analog signals into magnetic ones had this effect, interpreters were built to synthesize the sounds that were left in these impressions.  Analysis would in turn be performed on this synthesis and in turn other rounds of translations performed, and then given so much storage, the predominance of materials themselves and the diversity of authorship given to production, it would seem the old ancient world that existed were obviously one given to abundant communications.  Then it would seem any number of representations kept were served for time thought of on the order of decade, but in some ways neither beyond this.  While many components might have lasted the more complex any particular representation in design would mean potentially much difficulty in the way of its lasting preservation, and matching placement of code architecture to hardware design itself was another matter altogether.  Much of physical art itself had vanished, or decayed beyond recognition.  At least if judging by the nature of data found in one particular archive itself, much were gone.  Then perspective for perspective, ten thousand years prior, an old commons On This Day would read, Matthew Ingress celebrated columnist for the Evening Herald, passed away, and then Cessiu thought of her own retirement, not in this exact context, but another, her job would be ending soon here.  If funding malaise weren't enough then as it were now.