Hi everyone,
It seemed like a good idea to post all the artifacts we found yesterday. I didn't know about any of these--the Compiler and I have a rule that we share all artifacts we find with each other no matter how embarrassing or weird, so honestly that worries me almost more than anything else.
I also want to note that none of these artifacts quite matched their descriptions when we found them. I have a theory about this but I'll tell you about it in my email tonight.
--The Composer
***
Code: ?
Name: The Suitcase
Tracker(s): The Compiler
Category: Object: Memory-inducing
Initial Observation Date: 2/20/15
Initial Location: Stuart Philosophy Lounge
Description: It’s the second day of trying to catch up with NH38Q, and I hear a noise in the philosophy lounge. It distracts me; it shouldn’t. By now, that means it’s an artifact because those are the only things I can’t ignore. Can shut everything else out hard, close the doors and seal the gaps but they always come in, because they are ruled by some other queen, not me. And when they come in I have to find them. I have to have them. So I let the Blue Hat Girl go and I walk into the lounge.
Whoever made the noise has escaped, somehow. But my suitcase is there. It’s still packed from the last time I used it. The clothes aren’t folded and there are more books than I had time to read, but I knew I needed all of them. I got the phone call a few hours before I was in the air.
I have to go home. I remember this. I know that comes from the artifact but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. He’s gone and his body’s been thrown all across the highway, across the street, in my driveway. If this had happened this would be what it was. People are screaming but I am not there to see it, I’m just here knowing what it must be, so I just imagine him whole,
his glass jar on the back porch, sticky with orange juice, flies coming
swingset, untouched and snowed on, not even the wind seems to move it
cigarette smoke dusted over their shirts. everyone else at his work smokes
I have to go home. He wants to see me.
***
Code: 2C44R
Name: Half Chair
Tracker(s): The Compiler
Category: Object
Initial Observation Date: 2/22/15
Initial Location: Cobb 4th Floor
Description:This chair is mine, at least this half. The full chair sat in the middle of the room I shared with my sister.I got in a fight with her one time. Something about whose room it was. I don’t remember what I said to her-hateful things, mean things-I’m sure, but I remember that as I was saying those things, I was staring at that chair, memorizing the curves and knots in the wood on my side. By the time I had worked out the texture of that chair, my sister was crying.
I don’t remember what I said.
***
Code: ?
Name: The Deliverator
Tracker(s): The Compiler
Category: Object: Toy: gun
Initial Observation Date:
Initial Location: A park in Naperville, IL (or, more accurately, a toy store in Naperville, IL)
Description:
We used to play all the time, after school, on Saturdays, whenever we could get our parents to take us to the park. And I always had the gun.
Do you know how to hide?
Hiding is mostly about waiting. You learn that you have to wait, and then you wait until a time comes when you’re able to stop waiting. But it doesn’t just come. You’ve made the waiting well. Now you have to destroy it. You decide when to do it but you don’t always know why, you just have a moment when you, apart from everything, realize that you’re sunk in the waiting and that the waiting, too, must end.
And then you are a thing unconfined and you do not think but you take out the gun, and your enemy, your friend because he will live beyond this and your friend because of what he gives you now, is coming towards you, because he has waited, too. You have one shot, and you stand. The red finds him and then the bullet does. He drops and yells, and then you run.
This is what gave me power. I never lost.
***
Code: AS96G
Name: The Glass Sphere
Tracker(s): The Compiler
Category: Don't know anymore
Initial Observation Date: 2/22/15
Initial Location: Here
Description: This sphere is perfectly round, unblemished glass appears to hear things. The means by which it intakes the sound is unclear as there appears to be no containment or absorption facilities on its surface or in its interior. when I touched it, I could hear. I could hear everything that it had heard, one on top of the next, unhearable, but there. It appears to be a sort of mimetic device which repeats rather than recreates the sound. I attempted to roll the sphere, but it refused to move. It rolled and rolled and rolled on its side. It didn’t move, it just kept spinning. Dear god, make it stop. When it begins to roll, it appears as if it’s surface is frictionless. I made a few more tests on it; I had to get the voices out of my head. I threw it at the wall and it would not shatter. Further tests were unable to cause damage to the surface of the sphere.
