1. Expedition IB170
    1. Returning home
    2. Desolation and debris
    3. Curious cache
  2. In the caves of the resurrection
    1. Ceremony and sacrifice
    2. The paintings
    3. The ending
  3. Recreations
    1. Pushing buttons
  4. The Coffin
  5. The Italian Letters
  6. Story from an archeologist
  7. Prologue

 

 

Prologue

 

Some stories must be told.

These letters are like shattered fragments of ancient pottery strewn across an archeologists workbench. From the random pieces it is difficult to know if it is a teapot or a pestle. With too many missing pieces it is difficult for even a trained eye to construct a mental image of the original object. It is for this reason that the curator will assemble the shattered fragments together on a scaffold, filling in the empty places with pieces from his own imagination. This way the casual observer can gain an immediate appreciation for the full purpose of the original object. Even if the reconstruction is not fully true, it at least regains much of its meaning. What does it matter if the reconstruction comes from a museum curator, or from the imagination of the casual visitor? In either way, do not the real fragments regain their original glory?

Reconstructed, the letters form a folio. A few hundred pages of paper. The paper manufactured from the wood of trees. The pages lined with ink made from hydrocarbons extracted from petroleum. Bound together with a steel spring wound into a spiral and woven through 28 holes. Three larger holes five millimeters in diameter punched through the left edge of each page. On each page the handwritting of a student. Class notes. Scribblings. And the letters.

But it is not the reconstruction and display of the folio that interests me. Instead, it is the letters themselves that I consider to be of greatest intereset. These letters are the faintest remnants of a shattered story. Words rendered in ash and dust to form an image so fragile as to be destroyed by the merest breath. It is these faint messages that we endevour to display on our matrix of part truth and part imagination. It is with these letters that I choose to weave a more complete story. Not for the sake of idle activity, but for the sake of those who are not here to tell their own story.

 

 

.