La viajera siempre ha conocido esta ciudad. See, they were born there in fact, yet while away, it came to them in dreams—a palimpsest of shadows and stolen treasures, the streets violently layered like interwoven fabrics by time, turning in on themselves like whispers caught in a feedback loop.
When the voyager finally stood before what they had been told was the library of Alexandria, its endless halls folded into something eerily familiar: Inside of the library, this city of bits—an allegedly flawless re-production—stood like a copy of a city elsewhere, in a land once claimed and renamed.
See, science, in its exactitude, demanded evidence. Others would not believe in a city woven from dreams. So the voyager turned to the images—fragments extracted by the cold, mechanical eyes of machines sent out to devour the world in their quest to claim it. Estas imágenes, extraídas de la realidad sin permiso, eran supuestamente la única evidencia de lo que las abuelas siempre habían sabido. Yet, in their calculated precision, they were also a lie. The city was there, yes, but in a sense it wasn't.
The voyager knew that to circulate these images was also to betray the city. But to withhold them was to let the city disappear.
▫▫▫
Todas las imágenes © de sus respectivos autores. Usadas sin fines de lucro con fines educativos y de divulgación.