A worn pair of nurse’s shoes. That coronavirus model Anthony Fauci used in public briefings. Oral histories, iconic photos and social media posts. All of us are curators now, and what we preserve — as well as what we don’t — will write the pandemic story.

In December 2016, David Hidalgo received a photograph of a 17th-century Peruvian painting. The unsigned artwork, of the Virgen de Guadalupe, depicts the Virgin Mary surrounded by apparitions and tells the story of her appearance to Saint Juan Diego near Mexico City in 1531. Hidalgo’s tip-off came via email from a source who had seen the painting on show at the Bowers Museum in California, where it was on loan. Hidalgo’s source suspected that the painting had been stolen.

It is 4.18am. In the fireplace, where logs burned, there are now orange lumps that will soon be ash. Orion the Hunter is above the hill. Taurus, a sparkling V, is directly overhead, pointing to the Seven Sisters. Sirius, one of Orion’s heel dogs, is pumping red-blue-violet, like a galactic disco ball. As the night moves on, the old dog will set into the hill.

“To be away from home, yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, yet to remain hidden from the world — such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define.” ~ Charles Baudelaire Take four bones: a femur, patella, tibia and fibula. Wrap in muscle, bind with tendons. Repeat.

Here I am, lying in bed. If you walk in now, you’ll think I’m sleeping. But I see you. Although my eyelids look shut, they are fluttering slightly. They are the only parts of me that I can move. I am fully conscious but I cannot shout out to you: my body is completely frozen. Everybody is paralysed during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the stage of sleep where dreaming occurs. If we weren’t paralysed, we would act out our dreams, endangering ourselves and our sleeping partners. But sometimes,

Omar runs the Surf School Muchik with his brother in Huanchaco—a colorful beach town with a population of about 15,000 along northern Peru’s desert coast. Before the Incas came to dominance, this land was home to the Moche people from A.D. 100-800, then the Chimú until A.D. 1470. Huanchaco fishermen and surfers can trace their ancestral lines back to these cultures, and Omar is proud of his ancient surname, Huamanchumo.

Every time strong southwesterlies blew across the Shetland Islands, my wooden house shook and the windows buckled. When a big gale was forecast, everything was tied down, salt-laden spray filled the air, and white horses reared up and thrashed around on the navy sea. Some storms plucked slates from roofs and embedded them in gardens like daggers; one night my friend’s caravan flew away.

Suddenly I’m awake. Something is on me. A shadow or a shape. Something nasty. I’m pinned to my bed and I can’t move a muscle. There are whispers, wicked whispers. I think I’m screaming but I make no sound. There’s a loud buzz, a whoosh, and I’m sucked out of myself, twisting, turning, then dragged. But through my ever-so-slightly-open eyes, I see my body is still motionless.