FADE IN: INT. COUNTY ESTATE ARCHIVE, SIDE ROOM, NEW ORLEANS, MORNING A room of contained order inside a larger chaos. Filing boxes stacked to the windowsill. Afternoon light through louvered shutters. Dust that has been disturbed and is settling again. NOLA VANE (35) sits at a folding table with her own equipment: a label printer, a logbook, a set of acid-free folders, two pairs of cotton gloves. She is compact, precise, dark-haired, with the kind of stillness that comes not from calm but from full attention directed elsewhere. She is not remarkable to look at until she is the one looking. She opens a manila folder and reads the first page. Her eyes move left to right with the regularity of a scanner. She types a brief notation into a laptop. She picks up the label printer, prints a label, peels it, applies it to the folder tab in one uninterrupted motion. She sets the folder in an archival box and reaches for the next one. From across the room, a COUNTY CLERK (60s, the kind of official who has seen too many estates to find any of them remarkable) watches her work. CLERK You know, people say archivists must love secrets. All these dead people's secrets. Nola does not look up from the folder she is labeling. NOLA Documents aren't secrets. They're evidence. There's a difference. CLERK What's the difference? NOLA A secret is information someone chose to withhold. A document is information someone chose1