Here is our world, they say, scorched and shattered.
Once, they tell you, we could cross the ocean in half a day.
Once, they say, we touched the moon.
Once, they sigh, all this was grass.
They tell you, after three more years, you'll be able to tell the truth from the lies. And then they take off your blindfold.
There are millions of them: plumped and stacked and lined up in their neat little rows and columns and passageways. Clasped tight in leafed metal bonds. They whisper and hum in the pale white light. As the forge they protect cools them and lights them and keeps them safe, they sing.
Most of them only sing lies.
Some speak of war. Some speak of love. Some speak of animals long disappeared, who spoke themselves and had their own wars and their own loves.
Here is our world, they say, torched beyond recognition and spliintered into billions and billions of perfectly formed, spaced and justified words.
Assume everything you know from outside is true. And assume that it was us who once had the power to... create... these books. Everything else here is a labyrinth built to destroy you. The towered shelves on their oiled tracks and the tiny letters on their silken pages and the lights humming in the floor and the walls and the everything. Just pick up a thread, and follow it until it contradicts itself.
They say, keep the blindfold.
You can throw it away if you find anything.
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