Searching For- Mensia Francis In-all Categories... Now

The cursor blinks on an empty search bar. Above it, the words “All Categories” promise totality—news, images, books, maps, videos, people. I type the name: Mensia Francis . No autofill suggestions. No “Did you mean…?” Just the cold neutrality of a database waiting to be queried.

I close the browser. But I do not clear the search history. Let the query remain there, a tiny headstone in the cloud: Mensia Francis. All Categories. No results. Searching for- Mensia Francis in-All Categories...

I try again. This time I put the name in quotes: “Mensia Francis.” Perhaps she wrote a letter to the editor in a small-town newspaper that hasn’t been digitized. Perhaps she was a nurse in the 1940s whose personnel file is in a cardboard box in a Missouri basement. Perhaps she is a character from a self-published novel whose single printed copy sits in a thrift store. Perhaps she is still alive, deliberately offline, tending a garden where the Wi-Fi cannot reach. The cursor blinks on an empty search bar