2025-2026, Borgesian Fiction

"The Lottery of Fates" – Gavyn Samuels '27

The city of Buenos Aires has long been seen as haunted or perhaps ruled by a god or some higher power. Federico Rossi's book Destined by Archive (1900) suggests the theory that humans' fate is assigned by an unknown society. He claims that this establishment,  The Archive, assigns the life narratives to the body of a human. The general public's reaction to the release of Rossi’s work was mostly accepting of this establishment. People really didn't care about what fate they assigned to them, and determined that the fate they had before was and still would be unknown.

Each person is assigned their document when they have became and adult. From then on, their whole life is planned out, every job, every conversation, every relationship, every achievement, and death. Many people end up being scholars like the great Federico Rossi, becoming amazing scholars and doing incredible research. Others end up with horrific deaths  like being stabbed with a knife in the back repeatedly every year until they reach their demise. It is unknown how The Archive works. Princess Duez of Argentina slaughtered her own family and left with all the money. The son of a slave in the Chile Mountains grew up to raise the biggest army. The Archive is unpredictable.

The mountains on the other side of the island are the prospective location of this entity. It lies a larger circular building with rocks and stones covering its windows. Clerks, administrators, and archivists are all seen leaving and disappearing into the woods. Marco Huez hypothesized in his edition of the Archives of Destiny that these very people are the elites who determine the lives of the citizens of Buenos Aires.

At thirty-nine years old, Marcos Roberts has lived for twentyone years with the knowledge of his death. Graduating from Columbus College, Marcos strives to become the owner of a new dental clinic. Mrs. Roberts and Marcos agreed to never share their fate as they thought it would compromise the promise of their marriage.

On March 3, 1914, marcos has received his fate documentation. He was ecstatic to receive his letter. He would grow up to be the father of three girls, marry the love of his life, and become the owner of a dental clinic. But as he read the last lines, he saw the sentence,” Executed as a traitor to The Archive in his forty-third year.” Since living with this information, he has become high-strung. Trying to deny this fate and prevent it from happening.

The certainty of his fate had been bearable for the past two decades. But as his final years have been getting close he has noticed deja vu moments. Dreams about his childhood, entering a room with a journal with his handwriting. Recognizing passages that he has never made. Furthermore, circular rope burns on his wrist and faint scars. A week later, a bruise started to appear on his temple. Though he had no memory of these restraints, he began to grow paranoid, unable to sleep. Noticing corridors and mirrors, he’d never seen. One dream of the journal entry five years prior was,” I will be here again”.

The pain of his esticintinion has become unbearable. He decides that he is doomed if he does not change. Unable to live with his fate, he must try to change it. Through intense research at the library of Babel, looking at the mastery registry, he learns the entire layout of the Archive building. While looking through the books, he notices a historical case of a failed attempt. Frank Morris was fated to die in a fire. The archive anticipated the escape, knowing his exact moves. Morris burned the archive building trying to delete his document, but ended up dead in the fire he had started. With only four years left to live, he must dispose of the documents; there is no other choice.

Before leaving in the dead of night, Marcos glanced at his daughters assuring that this was the right thing. Approaching the Archive, streetlights became increasingly dark, almost to the point that the dark Archive building became almost invisible. Getting closer, he noticed two large males in the doorway dressed in black. Infiltrating the front will be nearly impossible. To the left is a brightly lit road leading to the rear entrance. He had studied the architectural plans for week nothing could prepare him for this. The back door was propped open with a stone from one of the windows. The air was thick, dimly lit with candles. Silence, except for the scratches of pens, clerks working even at this hour.

Exploring on, he discovered the desks were placed in a pattern, a circle perhaps, but leading to another, and another. Getting a sense of deja vu, he decided to keep looking. Entering the room, he realized that it did not resemble the architectural plans he had studied. In the second room, there was a circle of mirrors, and he caught a glance of himself, as if it were some type of warning to him from another dimension. In the corridor, Marcos sees the room names “The Dead”, maybe this will lead to his file. The room was hexagonal, and looking up, he saw it went on forever. The deja vu began to overwhelm him, putting pressure on his temples. Each wall is filled with drawers of the deceased, but nothing remotely close to his file. While leaving the hexagonal rooms, he began to stumble and forget things, yet at the same time, he remembered more and more distinct details of the building.

For what seemed like hours, Marcos consulted his pocket watch and found that only eight minutes had passed since his entry. At last, the corridors of mirror and hexagon rooms ended and led to the central room, guarded by a heavy metal door with a lemniscate engraved in the front. The doors are locked, but Marcos came prepared with tools. Exhausted by the pressure on his temple, he is almost unable to move. He began to pick the lock, shaking his hands in what seemed like a pattern, like someone in another dimension had been doing it for him. Pin by pin, the door slowly opened. The door swung inward, revealing darkness from within and the smell of old leather.

Lighting a lamp, it cast a shadow extending into rows and rows of file cabinets. Each drawing label has names and dates, organized by some system that seems familiar. He found a drawer with the label “Marcos Roberts”. Inside the drawer, nothing but a lone journal. He thought maybe they had hidden my document. But some magnetic force impulsed against his temple, attracting him to this leather journal. He lifts it out and opens it notices that the handwriting is his.

Inside the journal, it states, “I am thirty-nine years old. I have four years to my execution.” The following pages contain his very detailed plan to infiltrate the Archive, nearly word for word, what had been prepared for. Marcos read the date on the top of the page, March 3, 1921. This was written fourteen years ago, but Marcos has no memory of this happening

The journal contained at least dozens of entries, each dated differently. Some years ago, others from decades past. The earliest entry dates to when he was only nineteen years old. Each entry describes the same set of events that led up to this point. Fear of death, research planning, infiltration. Each story leads to the finding of the journal. Counting the past invasions, this is at least his twenty-third attempt.

Every entry seemed to end suddenly, “I hear footsteps in the distance” or” The guards have found me”. One entry stood out to Marcos:” After capture, there is an execution. Is there a reset? I have no memory of this, just unexplained scars and dreams.” Another: “The loop is perfect. The fate document predicted this. I will be executed as a traitor. The treason is this.”

Marcos now understands it. The Archive didn't predict his treason; it created a self-fulfilling prophecy. By assigning him the fate of dieing of a traitor, they knew that he would crumple under the fear and try to change his fate. This attempt is treason. He can not escape the loop; he can't avoid his fate without attempting to, and attempting to avoid it is his fate.

He turns to the second last page. The top is dated with today's date, hour, and minute. In his handwriting, “I am reading this journal for the twenty-third time. I will read it again”. Later, it states,” footsteps below me, they are coming for me.”...” perhaps this time I will remember.” The last page is left blank.

As if the guards appeared as he was reading, he heard footsteps front he stairwell. Multiple sets of guards. He thinks of running, but what does attempting to escape accomplish? Deciding not to run, he waits inside the vault with the journal in his right hand. Two guards enter the room, and behind an Archivist official in robes arrives. With a straight face, one guard says,” Again, Marcos”. The official says,” The twenty-third time, when will they learn?”

The official explains that the lottery is not random, nor predetermined. But operates on a paradox. Assigning certain fates that cause people to fulfill them. He is not the first, but there are also many trapped in this cycle. The guards take him away gently. He peeks into the execution chamber. A plain room with a chair and a rope. The guards set him down in his seat, mockingly asking if we would be back. Marcos does not answer. The rope is tightened, and the lights are turned off.