Clips.com says it keeps your videos forever. In practice, forever is a basement in Lodenburg, under an old department store.
I found this out on Thursday morning. I am Jo Varga, a wedding videographer, and clips.com had deleted my account and the four hundred and twelve weddings on it. The robot that did it was called Sieve.
In fifty-eight hours, Sieve's decision would become permanent. One of those weddings belonged to a couple whose twenty-fifth anniversary party was Saturday night.
My mother came with me. She said it was because she knew the roads. I think she wanted to see the basement she had been warning me about for a decade.
We took the studio van. It says VARGA WEDDING VIDEO on both sides, with the swan. The swan winks on the van, too. I had never noticed how much winking our brand did until a computer accused me of it.
My mother slept for the first hour. She woke up outside Carver Junction and began talking about curling, which is how she wakes up from most things.
"Lodenburg is a curling town," she said. "The 2009 regional final was played here. Best final ever. A man threw a double takeout in the last end with his eyes closed."
"Did you record it?"
"Of course I recorded it."
"Onto what?"
She looked out the window at a field of cows. "Something from 2001, I'd imagine."
I did not ask which. I was driving, and I wanted to keep the van on the road.
At a red light, I texted my two Thursday clients and moved their consultations to next week. Both of them replied, "No worries!"
Nobody in my industry has ever had no worries. We say it the way pilots say "a little chop."
We stopped at my mother's diner on the edge of town. It was called the Hack and Hammer, and the placemats were maps of the Lodenburg curling rink. My mother ordered without opening the menu.
"You've been here before," I said.
"Every February since 1997."
"You told me you were at a quilting retreat."
"I was quilting," she said. "Spiritually." She pushed my coffee toward me. "Drink. You look like a deleted account."
400 Commerce Street was a four-story brick building with tall arched windows. The upper windows were painted over. On the brick, in faded white, the ghost of an old sign still showed.
PEMBERTON'S. FINE GOODS SINCE 1911.
Beside the door, someone had screwed on a small steel plaque. CLIPS.COM REGIONAL STORAGE — NO PUBLIC ACCESS. Next to the plaque was a buzzer, and next to the buzzer, a handwritten note. PLEASE DO NOT BUZZ UNLESS YOU ARE A DELIVERY.
My mother buzzed.
"We're not a delivery," I said.
"We're delivering ourselves."
After a long time, the door opened eight inches. A man looked out at us. He was sixty-one, I learned later, with a gray mustache and a brown cardigan. A digital thermometer was clipped to his pocket like a pen.
"No public access," he said.
"Are you Augustin?" I asked.
His eyes narrowed. "Who told you that?"
I had promised Benny. "Lucky guess."
"Nobody guesses Augustin."
"I'm Jo Varga," I said. "Your company deleted four hundred and twelve weddings last night. They're in your basement. I'd like to say goodbye to them, at least."
Augustin looked at me. He looked at the van, at the winking swan.
Then he looked at my mother. She was wearing a knitted hat that said LODENBURG CURLING CLUB — 2009 REGIONALS. I had never seen it before in my life.
"Where did you get that hat?" he said.
"I was there," my mother said. "Section C. I brought a thermos."
Augustin opened the door the rest of the way.
The inside of Pemberton's still looked a little like Pemberton's. There was a marble floor and a brass directory by the elevator.
The directory listed departments that no longer existed. Ladies' Gloves, Second Floor. Menswear, Third. Housewares and China, Lower Level.
"The servers are in Housewares," Augustin said. "It keeps cool down there. Sixty-four degrees. That's the number."
"What number?"
"The number that keeps your memories alive." He tapped the thermometer on his pocket. "Any warmer, the drives get cranky. Any colder, I get cranky."
We went down a wide staircase with a brass rail. At the bottom, the air was cold and hummed. Where the china shelves used to be, there were long rows of black metal racks, each blinking with small green lights.
It looked like a library taken over by fireflies.
"How many accounts are down here?" I asked.
"Two hundred thousand, give or take." He said it the way a farmer counts cows. "Clips.com has eleven buildings like this. Mine is the only one with a chandelier."
He pointed up. There was, in fact, a chandelier, dusty and enormous, left over from the china department.
"I keep it at sixty-four as well," he said.
"I don't touch the data," Augustin said. "I want to be clear. I touch the air. I touch the lights. I touch the mop."
"Understood."
"Data, I do not touch."
"Good," I said. He walked us down an aisle anyway, slowly, like a man showing off a garden.
He stopped at a rack labeled BAY 7. He pointed to a shelf near the middle, which had a small yellow tag hanging from it.
"That's you," he said. "Shelf C. Yellow tag means scheduled."
I stood in front of it. It was a gray metal box, the size of a toaster, with one blinking light.
Ten years of my life. Fifteen years of my mother's. Four hundred and twelve couples, each saying "I do" in a slightly different voice.
"Can I touch it?" I asked.
"No."
"Can you?"
"I told you. Air."
My mother put her hand flat on the rack beside the box, the way you would calm a horse.
"Someone else's basement," she said quietly. For the first time, she did not sound pleased about it.
Augustin had a small office at the back, in what used to be the china stockroom. It held a desk, a kettle, and a space heater he clearly used against his own principles. A monitor showed a long list of clips.com jobs.
He scrolled. He found my name.
VARGA_J — 412 ITEMS — PURGE — SAT 18:52 — AUTH: SIEVE.
"Can you cancel it?" I asked.
"Me? No. Only Sieve can cancel a Sieve job."
"Who controls Sieve?"
Augustin pointed at the ceiling. "Third floor. Old menswear. Dr. Marwick. She built it."
"Can we talk to her?"
"Nobody talks to Dr. Marwick. She talks to Sieve." He considered this. "She came down here once in 2024. The air was sixty-six. It was not a good day."
My mother leaned toward the monitor. "Is that a curling stone?" She was pointing at a sticker on the corner of the screen.
Augustin's mustache moved in a way that, on another face, would have been a smile. "Lodenburg Curling Club. I play lead."
"You play lead?" My mother's whole face changed. "Were you on the ice in 2009?"
"Everybody in Lodenburg was on the ice in 2009. Either on it or yelling at it."
He paused. "Our skip threw the last stone that year. Best curler I ever played with. His family made him retire."
"Why?"
"He got intense."
They were about to begin a conversation that would last until spring. I could see it coming like weather. But before it could start, the monitor beeped.
A new line appeared at the top of the job list, in red.
UNUSUAL PHYSICAL ACCESS — ACCOUNT VARGA_J (REMOVED) — NOTIFYING SIEVE OWNER.
"Oh, no," Augustin said. "No, no. She'll come down."
"Is that bad?"
He checked his pocket. "The air is sixty-four," he said. "Thank God."
Footsteps came down the brass staircase, quick and even, like a metronome in sensible shoes. A woman appeared in the doorway. She was in her mid-forties, with short dark hair, rimless glasses and a gray blazer. She held a tablet against her chest like a shield.
She looked at me. She looked at the swan pin on my mother's coat, which I had also never seen before.
"Joanna Varga," she said. "Account four-one-two. You're the content farm."
Up next: Repetitive Content
Continue to Part 4 →