Partial transcript, Kristen Lewis, prepared remarks, rough draft
So hi, I’m Kristen, Kristen Lewis, age, height, weight, eye color, blood type, bla bla bla. I live on Onondaga Nation land.
Apparently I’m the one that remembers this part the best; a subjective time differential like we had while we were stuck in the virtual messes with the memory, it turns out. Who knew?
I’m the most virtual one of us, I guess; Colin’s too in love with his physical books, and Steve gets too much of a rush from the actual risk of actual death, which I understand in a way but is also crazy. Give me the safe creativity of a virtuality, I say. Well, safe, heh heh yeah.
Steve and I are a thing, if that matters; he’s an idiot in a lot of ways, but he’s also kind of adorable and really sweet. Colin is too, in his way, and we were also a thing, back in school. He thinks we broke up because of his whole neoteny issue, and that I thought it was too strange to be with someone that looked like a nine-year-old kid, and that was probably part of it, although it was pretty hot, too (and I’m going to have to do a lot of editing on this aren’t I?) but also he just lives so completely in his books and in his head, and sometimes two people can be perfectly fine and just not be compatible in that way. I still love him like a brother, a hot little pervy brother, even (edit edit edit).
And just like Colin is always going off into long asides about the limitations of language and the illusory nature of the past and future, I’m going off in a long aside about relationships and is that gender-normative or what?
So anyway. The way I remember it, just as we were noticing that the giant bugs had left (as we thought of Alissa and S and G at the time, and for sure I’m not going to try to pronounce those two names), there was another sudden noise and they were back. I know there’s like a whole committee studying why the bugs move so fast, or we move so slowly around them or whatever. I think it’s just because insects move fast, but then also insects can’t possibly be that big, or people that small, because of the square-cube law, so good luck to that committee.
Anyway, when they came back, they were carrying some big flexible leaves wrapped around some pieces of paper. They sort of flashed around in front of us, putting a couple of the pieces of paper down closer to us, and then flashing most of the way back to their side of the clearing again. From sort-of talking to them later, I’m guessing they were trying to move slowly so as not to frighten us furry little monsters or whatever they thought we were, but it was still just about blindingly fast.
Steve wondered if it was some kind of present or offering, and Colin of course went carefully forward to look at the papers. For someone who’s always on about how this present moment is all that exists, which is a fine Buddhist saying, but he takes it way too far, Colin is also always trying to relate everything now to everything else, and to find explanations for things in terms of other things.
He said “It’s got writing on it,” or something like that, and we all went forward, keeping an eye on the bugs (Alissa and S and G as it would be more polite to call them). The pieces of paper were pretty large, but also seemed like they’d been torn or broken off of something larger. It’s possible that they were really big leaves that had been treated somehow, that’s what Steve thinks, but they looked like paper. Functionally.
Part of it looked like a map, hand-drawn and scrawly, showing a path through some blobs that might be hills, a big blob that might be water or a lake, and some squiggles that might be other things. There was writing on the map and lines of writing on the other parts of that sheet of paper, and writing that was even older and more smudged on the other piece.
We all frowned at the papers for a minute, and I noticed that some of it made sense as some dialect of Old French or something else in that general family, and I could sort of almost read it from knowing some modern and medieval French. I happily shoved the boys out of the way. The writing in the bigger blob on the map said I think Lack which is Old French for “lake”, so that worked.
The longer text said something like, and remember about the time differential and memory, so this isn’t at all exact, but something like “I am the last, now, and my time is short. I will send [some crazy name] to the [some place] with the map and this letter, to leave with the storytellers, as a last gesture to what was. They may do what they please [something like that anyway]. I have kept the faith here out of some vestige of honor, but the idea of bringing up a successor is still repugnant to me, and I do not regret that there is no time. If you follow this map, and you find the [something] beneath the [something], the consequences [results?] are what they are, and nothing owing to me [that is, don’t come crying to me about it]. I know that most likely this will never be seen by any [something, maybe eyes] that are capable of reading it, as reading is another thing that has been lost in this fallen world [that was a great phrase, and sounded amazing in the dialect; I’m working on a virtuality build around it, so cool] but in sending it out, I have completed my final duty, and may go to [some place, maybe a metaphor for death, or who knows] with a clear conscience.”
There was other stuff, but as far as I remember it, or remember figuring out at the time, it was older and smudger and made even less sense out of context; to-do lists or household accounts or something, full of nouns that I couldn’t work out.
While I was reading the stuff, and it took a lot longer to work out than I’m saying here, not having a working phone or anything and having to rely on my memory, excellent as that is, Colin and Steve kept an eye on the — on Alissa and S and G, who seemed to be, they told me later, interested or excited that I seemed to be reading the map and the letter. It turned out that they couldn’t read them, of course, so the writer of the letter was right about that, and that reading itself was a crazy concept to them, and even figuring out what a map was had been a big intellectual breakthrough. (Apparently having more than two eyes actually makes some things harder, or at least less natural, which is a pretty amazing thought.)
We thought we might try communicating to the — to Alissa and S and G in writing, but we didn’t really have anything to write on or write with, and that was a good thing as it turned out, since they wouldn’t have been able to read it. Colin was going cutely mad, wanting to look for a basement in the ruined house that we came out of, because of the letter talking about the something au-dessous the something, but also wanting to try to talk to the bugs.
I tried just waving my arms and saying “Allo, Allo, Bonjour” and I don’t remember just what else in their direction, and that’s what eventually worked, she said modestly, once I tried it in a really high and fast voice.
So that’s that part, I’ll stop for a bit because my mouth is dry and everything, back soon. Don’t forget to Like and Subscribe, haha I’m a riot.
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