Archivists are Travelers responsible for the orderly flow of information to and from the Future. To make sure the future knows about the present, Archivists are tasked with preserving 21st century information and records. Conversely, they also coordinate the periodic updates required by Historians to keep track of the constant changes to the timeline. (S2E09: Update, S3E08: Archive)
Archives[]
- "Archive" redirects here. For the episode, see Archive (episode).
Archivists are infused with nanites that genetically encode historical information into the DNA in their blood. They regularly donate and store their blood in heavy-duty archives around the world, essentially refrigerated blood banks in biometrically sealed vaults only a few meters big and activated by motion sensors. A side effect of being saturated with nanites is they have above-average healing capabilities.
The Faction has been destroying elements of the historical record ever since they arrived. Travelers still loyal to the Grand Plan devised the archive system as a countermeasure. The Director uses the archives to obtain new information from the past: archival nanites encode vast amounts of information in the blood. The genetically rewritten blood is then transfused into the ancestors of people who are known to survive in the future. Travelers have archived almost all of the relevant digital information in the 21st century using this method. Preservation of the info is deemed vital enough that each archive has standing reinforcements on call. Protocol Epsilon is a special Protocol for archive-related emergencies. (S3E08: Archive, S3E09: David)
Known archive sites are in London, UK, Shanghai, China, Moscow, Russia, and a city in Washington, USA, with unknown numbers and locations of backup sites. The Washington archive is on a building between Sea-Tac and Renton that used to be a roller rink. (S3E09: David)