Sorting through the records

 -report continued-

 

Over breakfast, I asked Guide Maslan about the light. Rather than giving me a straight answer, she told me another of their tales. Elleka claims that long a ago, a family of Sani Sabik hid in the depths of the Book, fleeing persecution. They survive from eating the leather of the book bindings, and feast on rats and on the occasional visitor they can catch, although they are wary to eat Guides, afraid of the repercussions. My Guide also claims that in the area up where I saw lights, there is a statistically significant anomaly: too few rodents. That, according to her, is hard proof of the hidden Sabik. She says they reverted back to a feral state, and in the passing of generations have grown inbred and became horrorible to behold.

 

I objected that if the system can detect vermin, surely they can detect human beings wandering about. She just scoffed, telling me it's easy to avoid the cameras. I was not reassured. You see, in these inner layers of the book there is no telling that it was morning, it is always dark except for the spot of motion-activated light where you are. So, it again felt like a campfire tale, for breakfast.

 

We made it rather soon to my destination the second day. Keeper Thadron had given me a list of records to check. Every record contains basic data such as date of birth, partents, marriages, children, date of death. If the children on the written record do not match the digitized version, this means either an error or one of them got stricken. I could check this by locating the "missing records", and verifying if the line containing that name was indeed crossed out. My task was to tally up the missing branches of the Accadis lines.

 

Although my Guide was doing some maintenance in the neighborhood, I did not feel safe. Also, I was not comfortable. There were not chairs or desks to sit at, so I had to stand or sit on the ground and walk about to find the records within the confines of my section. I'm embarassed to admit I hid when the lights came closer, and only came out of hiding once I could see that it was Guide Maslan who had come back to my spot.

 

I took me four or five hours to complete the task, handling each book with records carefully, with gloves, and putting one back before taking another. But in the end it was a success, there was indeed one of the lines rife with heretics. If any Accadis would have fled Amarr on cryoships, it would be these ancestors. After I collected my documentation, we made our way back. This took the entire rest of the day, as Guide Maslan navigated a route that allowed her to pick up dead rats from some traps.

 

It was a strange sensation to be in there, and stranger to exit it back to the outside world. As if I had jumped into some strange pocket universe, with its own physics and its own concept of space. I am deeply grateful I had this unique experience, one that I will not likely forget. 

-end of report-

A night at the toilet

-report continued-

We spent quite some time repairing the collapsed stack, and I must have seemed been a bit annoyed at that, because my Guide explained that for her, this is a short "expedition". Usually, they stay about a week inside, doing several repairs and other maintenance work. 

We continued our way deeper into the Book. The smell of old paper deepened - records are kept on special acid-free paper that stays good longer. Amazingly, paper and parchment remain one of the most long-lived way to store information. Magnetic tapes, spintronics, optical storage, all the modern techniques turn out to have a shorter lifetime. Only chiselling something in rock beats paper.

The day ended with some climbing. Using the scaffolding and the stacks rather unceremoniously, Guide Maslan clambered all the way up to the ceiling to replace a broken light. After that, we made our way to sanitary station C13-4R4. It’s a toilet in what used to be a visitor’s area, before the area was swallowed up by the ever expanding records. It is still functioning, there are some sinks with running water too. We set up camp for the night and ate a simple dinner. No cooking on fire, since the fumes are not good for the records.

It was hard to catch sleep. Sometimes, you see lights going on in some distant part of the Book. Are there others supposed to be here? Guides working late? Or do the motion-automated lights get triggered by accident? By rodents? Then there were noises. Creaking wood. Something that sounded footsteps. Guide Maslan was sound asleep quickly enough and I did not want to wake her. It was not a comfortable night, my imagination was fueled by the stories of the Keepers about zombie librarians roaming the stacks.

-to be continued-

In the hallowed halls

-report continued-

The "outer layers" of the Book consist of a series of large halls. When they were new, these halls were reading rooms to which Keepers would bring requested records of the dead. The walls were lined with colossal shelving units, all the way up to the high ceiling. These once bore the weight of the living.

As the exponentially growing population caught up with the available space, more shelving was built, and the reading area contracted to a small island and then disappeared altogether. All this took place with a regrettable lack of planning, so it grew organically and there is now no neat rectangular grid of bookshelves. There are some straight sections that seem to go on endlessly - the scrolls and books extending as far as the eye can see into the dark, as the Book is not lit up all the time, and light only switches on where you are. You'd be a little island of light making its way in a ravine between steep cliffs of books.

Scaffolding divides up the halls horizontally, making new 'floors' connected with ladders or simple stairs. The first destination for my Guide was a corner that stored records of some lower Kador houses, and where a rodent alarm had gone off. No-one knows how rodents get into the vault that is the Book, or maybe they don't and the Book is like an island cut off from the rest of the world, where strange species will in time evolve and adapt to digest paper and parchment. Of course, the Guides have their own tales about the hidden fauna and warn about mystical flying killer rabbits. Reality is more prosaic: traps were set, using some Gallente cheese and Caldari nuts, to catch the rats.

Our next destination was a collapsed stack. Shelves have cracked and spilled their books for several floors: as the content of one shelf dropped on the one below it, it created a domino effect. I helped and sorted the books that had dropped all about while Guide Elleka Maslan replaced or repaired the shelving. The new materials that she carried along were put in place, but she is not relieved of burden, as the broken pieces cannot just be left behind but must be brought back.

-to be continued-

Entering the book

Dear reader, it was such a blessing to be inside Scripture, to be surrounded by it. I was successful in retrieving the information that I needed, but it took some effort. I have taken some notes, which I plan to transcribe to this log in the coming days.

The older parts of the Book are well defended and cared for. Looking at the building visible above ground one would never guess the massive defenses in place, nanite and plating reinforcements, shielding, heavy artillery placed in the neighborhood, and a garrison of elite soldiers about which I am not allowed to give any details.

 

Of course, you cannot enter the building from the front door above ground. That front door is just part of the facade - on the other side is just the wall of a massive vault. There is only one entrance, underground. You enter via a vault door leading into an old basement of the ancient building.

 

You do not enter before you have been thoroughly screened for weapons or explosive devices. I had to wear a tracking device at all times, and a subcutaneous chip that  can release a strong tranquilizer. Some people get so overwhelmed by their visit they become psychotic and have to be stopped. Also, it is yet another fail-safe against terror attacks.

 

Once the vault door closes behind you and your Guide, you feel as if you have entered a new world. There is a certain smell of old books, old paper. Not moldy - the atmosphere is controlled - but... dusty? The smell of old books is hard to describe, but anyone who has been to an old library and wandered between the stacks will recognize that smell. Or you could take an old book, one that has been on a shelf for a long time, and then open its pages and sniff it. That cherished smell, the librarian's favorite perfume, was my first sensation in this holy place.

 

My Record Guide was carrying a heavy backpack, almost larger than herself. Along our route there is a stack that has collapsed, and she was carrying materials to build new shelves. Elleka Maslan is small yet wiry and must be very strong - I felt ill at ease to be carrying so little weight while she took so much.

-to be continued-

Preparations

I received a briefing about our visit this weekend. 

To my surprise, we will spend the night in the Book, and I need to bring a sleeping bag, food and some toiletries. It takes some time to get to the spot I need to be and to get back. Also, my appointed Record Guide, Elleka Maslan, will do some other repairs and maintenance on our route. 

So we will camp near sanitary station C13-4R4. There is running water. It used to be a toilet for visitors when that part of the Book was new and still not filled to the brim with records.

I will not be able to communicate from inside the book with the outside world, so probably will not be updating my log in the next few days.

Tales of the Keepers

My visit to the Book has been fully approved, and the necessary paperwork stamped and signed. I can enter with a Record Guide on Saturday morning, and have permission to stay up to three consecutive days in some selected sections.

To celebrate this, Keeper Thadron and some of his colleagues took me out for dinner and drinks. We first went to an area close to the Book, with a lot of small restaurants and bars. After a simple but tasty meal, they brought me to their usual after-work bar.

The Guides and Keepers have a vast supply of legends and tales about the Book of Records, and especially about the vast labyrinth of bookcases and scroll racks. I think they were trying to impress me with their campfire stories, knowing that I will enter this harrowed collection soon.

They told me about poor souls that get lost in the Book of Records and never return. And they have a legend about a cursed Keeper who mislaid a scroll and is doomed to forever wander the halls in search for that elusive scroll. She continues to search even after her death, as a ghost.

All this they claim with a certainty that grows stronger after each round of beers.

I asked about the legend of the tree at the heart of the Book, with a carving from our prophet Dano Gheinok. In their minds, its existence is a self-evident fact. Even though no-one of those present ever saw it with their own eyes, they believe old Guides that claim to have seen it.

The tale the Keepers believe is that St. Gheinok, when he arrived on what we now call Amarr Island, created two settlements. The first one he dedicated to God. The Keepers situate it near the Grand Basilica since that is where Dano Gheinok also built the first church. The second one he dedicated to his love, Marie. The tree stood in a garden at the edge of that second settlement, where nowadays the Book of Records stands. The second settlement turned out to be on more fertile land and in time became more succesful than the first, and it grew to eventually engulf the first.

I pointed out that this story is meant as an allegory indicating that dedicating one’s life purely to God is more difficult than dedicating it to worldly love but that in the end the two can merge. Keeper Thadron and his friends were almost offended, they believe in their tale as literal historical fact.

They added that since the second village was dedicated “to Marie”, or “à Marie” in an old tongue, its inhabitants were soon called Amarrians. And that, in their legend, is the origin of our name, Amarr.

At some point one Guide who had been pouring beer down his throat as if there was a small black hole in his stomach, climbed on the table and with a grand sweeping gesture proclaimed that “All of this great galactic Empire is nothing more than a lovestruck guy’s attempt to impress his girl!”. We quickly forced him back down from the table and concluded our evening out, blaming his blasphemy on drunkenness and a partially Gallentean ancestry.

Family connections

I met with Keeper Thadron Dakha today. The holorooms are even more impressive than I imagined! He had prepared an overview of the Accadis family name. A large hall was filled with a galaxy of stars, each point of light representing an individual with that family name, over the ages. Countless points of light! And, if you try to pinch a star, it pops up with the information on the individual, and the links to other stars, the closest relatives, light up.

The points at the nearest end of the hall were colored, indicating the genetic match between people (named Accadis) alive today and the DNA sequence of Layla that I handed over to Keeper Thadron. He cross-referenced it with the genetic birth records of the the MIO. Colors more towards the violet end of the spectrum indicated a closer match. 

 

Then a pulse of light flowed through this galaxy, a wave going from the front of the hall to the back. It lit up a gossamer web of connections, broad in the front and funneling towards the back. Threads from different people from the present coalesced into common ancestors, until at the very back only a few illuminated threads remained as most of the namesakes of long ago did not have a line of children stretching all the way to the present. 

 

Going back to the time of the Sabik purges of Queron I, only three threads remain, two more strongly colored than the third. We are going to seek out these ones on the old records, to find out which lineage contained heretics.

 

When the scribes are instructed to strike out a name they do so using the blackest of inks. Digitally, the record disappears, but in the Book of Records, the page or card is not physically destroyed except when it concerns high ranking individuals. The name is just crossed out. This is how a poor soul disappears out of memory for all of Amarr. But in the Book, for commoners the crossed out line remains, a hidden, fading trace of existence, a last ember of hope for restitution.

 

Keeper Thadron suggests to find out about a Sabik branch of the family via these crossed out records. For that, we will have to delve deeply into the Book, with a Guide. The committee that would give the final approval for this is meeting tomorrow morning.

After his impressive display of genealogic craftsmanship, Keeper Thadron invited me for dinner and drinks with a few other Keepers and Guides tonight. I am looking forward to meet these men and women in charge of our collective memory!

The Book of Records

Maybe in your mind's eye the Book of Records is a massive tome, binding together pages of the thinnest paper, scribbled full of names in the tiniest handwriting.

Or maybe you do a bit of math in your mind, and then conceive of the Book of Records as a stack of books as tall as a mountain. A myriad of volumes, for no single book could ever hold the records of the uncountable billions of Amarr alive today and of the uncountable billions more that lived before.

You would still be wrong.

The Book of Records is a building.

It is an ancient building, stone and gold, in the old district of Dam-Torsad. At first glance, it is not very remarkable. Tourists walk past its facade without realizing it was built thousands of years ago. It looks like a very modest building, somewhat out of place. It is dwarfed by the modern shining skyscrapers around it. It did not grow along with the other buildings, since by law, no part of the Book of Records can be torn down or remodeled.

In the last couple of millennia it grew roots and expanded underground. The venerable building that you see from the nearby Square of the Records is just the tip of an iceberg stretching over half a kilometer down and branching outwards several kilometers in a network of catacombs of books, deep below the city. It keeps on expanding: even when the Book of Records became digitized, the tradition of keeping the paper and ink records was not abandoned. Still today, an army of Record Keepers use their calligraphy to add names and information on pages and cross-reference cards. On our home-world alone, half a million babies are born every single day.

The parts above ground contain the oldest records, only accessible to high nobility and clergy. And these nobles cannot enter it without a Record Guide. The facade of the building is just the outer shell - it was constructed around a building older still, that also by law cannot be altered. That older building is built around one yet older than it, and so it goes on, so that the whole edifice is like an onion layered in time.

Since no walls or floors can ever be rebuilt or changed, you go from one layer to the next by crawling through windows in the walls separating the millennia. The stacks of records are dense in the old regions. No space is left unused as subsequent expansions by enclosure were always postponed until absolutely unavoidable. 

The walkways between the stacks and shelves are tight and labyrinthine. It is easy to get lost in the old parts. Sometimes just to reach the shelves on the other side of where you are, you have to climb a ladder and walk around through several rooms and climb back down somewhere else. You can't walk upright everywhere, in some places you have to squeeze in, in order to spare yourself a long detour in this three-dimensional maze. Retrieving a record from an ancient and not digitized age is like a caving expedition, one only restricted to Heirs and the Record Guides that specialize in specific parts of the building.

The innermost building in this layered structure can only be visited by the Emperor or Empress, and hasn't been so for as long as anyone can remember. The oldest part of the Book of Records, so claim the Record Guides, is a small church. That church contains no cards or books or scrolls. It is covered on the outside by stacked records from the second oldest layer, and you can only go in on hands and knees through a small entrance. As you enter, space opens up to an almost empty church interior, a relief after the claustrophobic inner layers. In the middle of this empty church stands a beech tree that died a very long time ago. 

In its bark three words are carved. They form the first line of the Book, and the oldest Amarr biographical record: "Dano loves Marie".

The Record Keeper

I had my "intake interview" with a Record Keeper. The Keepers are both the guards and maintainers of the Book of Records. Somehow there was an immediate connection between me and Keeper Thadron Dakha. It was as if we both recognized a kindred spirit in each other.

I explained him honestly my situation which he found most amusing. 

Admittedly, I had no idea how to ever start searching based on a family name alone. I thought it would be a wild goose chase, but planned to do it anyway, just for the fun.

But Keeper Thadron had plenty of suggestions on how to query the records to reconstruct the genealogy of the Accadis lineages. He says that it doesn't matter if there are many of them, the Keepers have advanced techniques to map this out and reconstruct all the links. They have large holo-projection rooms, where the individuals appear as stars in a three-dimensional star map, and their relationships show as jump links of different color between them. You can literaly walk through a family galaxy. 

Keepers have an instinct for navigating these maps and extracting information from them. I was told even the topology of the map reveals a lot. He suggests to go back to the reign of Emperor Armani I and find if there are since then branches of the family that were suddenly cut off as a result of members being struck, and then -assuming the ancestors of Layla were among the Sabik that fled- work our way back to the current day heir of the nearest branch. 

Keeper Thadron is very excited at the prospect of going back that far, as it will take us to quite old parts of the Book, from before the Moral Reforms. Special permissions are necessary, but Thadron thinks he will get them.