We are walking through the para-fictional ruins of a vast, ancient archive —
(— a what?)
— an archive, the house of the ruler. Where traces, historical documents and records are kept. It has many levels, or layers if you will. The ground is covered in deteriorating, old pages that are crispy, crumpled and thin. We can hear them crunch under our feet as we walk carefully. On our sides large structures are holding the documents that are still intact in organized sections. They’re high up, out of reach, and look fresh and glossy. Beyond them, somewhere atop these tall systems we can hear repetitive shouts going forth and back, from the archive’s last remaining oral history re-tellers. As we continue walking we get to a cleared circle on the ground, no old documents crunching under our feet anymore, just a clean circle. Stopping inside it for a moment we hear a whole cacophony overhead of oral history being shouted. Echoes reiterated over and over, with only small changes and modulations. Some pieces of history chanted in unison, others single and solitary tunes almost faded to nothing. Their sources are out of sight, but we can assume we’re standing under a great concentration.
Why the floor is cleared to a clean circle we can’t work out, but we spot several smaller paths connecting at this spot. Unlike the larger, official routes further down in the archive, where we see schoolchildren guided along in great droves by their trusty teachers, these paths seem to wriggle through the closer packed and less overviewable parts of the archive. Directions staked out by desires not yet anticipated in the archive’s original design. Slashing categories, crossing sections and squeezing between room-dividers. We pick out a path from the cleared circle haphazardly and keep walking. Crunch, crunch, we plod on. We’re on a search after all.
Walking a combination of smaller paths we find our way to the periphery of the archive, all the way up and all the way out, where we can catch a glimpse of its edges. We come to a high wall sticking right up with a makeshift ladder which we climb, and once up on the wall we look around and see the archive stretched out resembling a landscape below us. Its dense top layers form a protective brim. From here we also spot the only thing taller than us, the control posts that stand by every gate. Frameworks built for observation, poking out of the archive’s carapace We mocklingly stare back at their silently observing architecture and just sit there for a while, before climbing down and heading in towards the center of the structure again, tucking ourselves in under the shield of the top layer, walking down some passages, towards the 7th and lowest layer again.
We observe the visiting schoolchildren using the search engine over at the other side of a big open space. They seem to be stuck running in a circle. It might be jammed in motion. Perhaps they don’t know that it’s programmed to always give the same results. We let them run. A bot sniffs at us, trying to identify who we are. We reach out a hand, but it goes to warn its administrator. The admin takes contact but we are free to go as soon as we have confirmed our non-bot identities.
We decide to keep to the wasteland, the forgotten parts of the archive. Although as we inspect it closer it might be less forgotten than most people seem to think, some of its structures clearly still in use even if they are not any longer maintained, as if it still has a form of embodied cognition. Nonetheless it has been a long journey. We came to the archive looking for an otherworldly idea, or a trace of it at least. We decide to call it a day, to make our way out. Pacing desired paths and planned paths, making our way through 7 layers up and out. We shake our heads.
What will become of this place?
And then, for a split second, it jumps out in front of us –
We quickly glance at each other, as if to check if the other person has seen it too, and when we look back, it is gone.
Perfect neutrality. In its brown, copper fur, leaping, mid air, arms and legs stretched out, face calm, looking like the elementary illustration of itself. A flawless image of an idea. Apparently it holds multitudes beyond language in its mouth. Apparently it only takes it 300 milliseconds to recalculate the perfect place to fall if it is cast off its course by any unforeseen turbulence. A truly para-fictional creature.