The Library of Alexandria

by Stuart Trenholm

1.

The Ise Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture, Japan, is over two thousand years old. Every twenty years, stemming from the Shinto belief in tokowaka—renewal in pursuit of eternity—the shrine is destroyed and rebuilt.

2.

It had gone exactly as planned. All the world’s knowledge had been assembled into a single building: the Library of Alexandria. Emissaries had been sent to the corners of the world to gather every piece of writing they could find. All written work belonging to visitors to the city had been confiscated. Now that the Library and its collection were complete, only one thing remained to be done—burn it down.

The fire started easily and grew with incredible speed. Thoth, creator of writing, must have been angered. Socrates, in contrast, would have been delighted, believing that reading and writing introduce forgetfulness into the soul. 

Before the fire, it was ensured that at least one person had read each of the Library’s texts. Now it was their job to rewrite everything from memory. Many of the rewritten texts eventually made their way to Rome, where, importantly, they were burned again in the next great fire.

3.

Rameses sounded like a king but was named after an impersonator. He was handsome in a familiar kind of way. His facial features were mostly symmetrical. His jawline was neither too big nor too small. Statistically he stood taller than average, but he was not someone that people generally referred to as tall.

While his parents were not religious, they often watched The Ten Commandments on television at Easter, though they never saw the whole movie in one go. Rameses’ parents liked the actor who played the Pharoah but were unaware that Yul Brynner was not of Egyptian descent.

Rameses’ mother was a bookkeeper by day and an amateur physicist by night. She was preoccupied with trying to build a time machine in their garage. One morning when Rameses was a teenager, his mother came to the breakfast table shaking with excitement. She told Rameses and his father that she had finally got it working. She had gone back exactly one day, so that she wouldn’t seem out of place if anyone noticed her. Ironically, everything had been so similar that she wasn’t certain that she had gone back at all. Over breakfast, she made plans with Rameses’ father to go back in time together. She wanted to visit April 13, 1932, the day before the atom was split. She said the world had become a metaphor after that, and she wanted to know what it felt like to be real. When Rameses got home from school that day, the garage was engulfed in flames. By the time the fire was out, the garage and everything in it was destroyed. The authorities concluded that Rameses’ parents died in the fire.

Some years later, to pay his way through college, Rameses joined the army. Aside from various military related duties, he trained as an architect. Following his exit from the army, he worked for several architectural firms. Eventually he got a job working for a company whose focus was on sustainable building practices, which led him to work on the design of the Spitsbergen Seed Store, which is located a short distance from the North Pole.

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Monday

For lunch, the staff heads to the outskirts of town, to a furniture store that doubles as a restaurant. After eating, the staff wanders aimlessly through the store, testing out various pieces of prefab furniture. At one point, Ray—a woman with long black hair, dressed completely in greyscale—jumps onto a pull-out sofa bed made from repurposed wood. The sofa bed reacts by letting out a noise reminiscent of when you bite down on something hard, and though no one else can hear it, you experience an unearthly sound transmitted to your ear through your jawbone.

“Like, uh, is the bed supposed to make that noise?” she asks. Rameses doesn’t know the answer. He also isn’t sure whether now would be a good time to flirt. Seeing as it’s his first day working for a new company, he decides to play it safe and keep quiet.

Eventually, the staff catches a bus back to work. There are very few open seats left when Ray sits down next to Rameses.

“Seat’s taken. Can’t sit here,” he says, which catches Ray off guard.

“Oh God! I’m so sorry,” she responds, standing up, embarrassed and a bit confused.

“Ah sorry!” says Rameses, now embarrassed as well. “I was quoting Forrest Gump. Trying unsuccessfully trying to be funny. You can sit here if you want.” 

“You know, you’ve not said two words to me, and you, like, already have the nerve to treat me like I’m Jenny?” replies Ray, sitting back down, possibly with a slight glimmer in her eye.

Tuesday

Rameses sits in on a number of meetings discussing the design of seed storage rooms and passageway directionality.

Wednesday

The head of the company, Remy, finally having some time, walks Rameses through the office, introducing him to his colleagues and explaining what each of them does. At a certain point Remy stops abruptly and says, “We need empathy,” before taking a dramatic pause.

“Imagine a nuclear war. Or a plague that wipes out most of the population. Or any other cataclysmic event whereby societies no longer exist as we currently know them, and widely shared languages and symbols disappear. Now, picture yourself in that world, and imagine that you really want a fresh loaf of bread. But, before that, you’ll need to know how to grind wheat and knead dough. And, before that, you’ll need to know what wheat is. And, even before that, you’ll need to know what a seed is and that you should plant it in the ground. This is the purpose of the Spitsbergen Seed Store. It’s a gift no one wants, located at the end of the world.

“Now, imagine you stumble upon a random building in the middle of nowhere. How do we architecturally entice you to enter the building? Then, how do we guide you to the seeds that you didn’t know that you were looking for? And, finally, what design choices will inform you as to the type of seeds you’re looking at, and how they should be planted, tended to, and eaten? This is where Ray comes in.

“Ray is an artist. Previously, she worked a lot with prisms and mirrors. Here, she plans to use polished steel and dichroic glass. The latter reflects some colors of light while allowing others to pass through. Imagine a bouncer deciding which members of the northern lights to let into a nightclub filled with endless loops of reflections. Each mirror creating a new image, only to be consumed by the next mirror. If you stare long enough, time will look back at you, or else disappear completely.

Thursday

While walking down a hallway at the office, Rameses overhears the end of a somewhat tense conversation between Remy and Rita, the head of communications.

“Maybe. But I don’t see another way,” Remy says, sounding a bit defensive.

“But aren’t you bothered,” Rita responds coldly, “that to organize ourselves and keep this type of work profitable, we constantly have to court disaster? That by planning so extensively for the apocalypse, we might be spurring it on?”

Friday

Rameses is tired. The bags under his eyes resemble a pair of moss-covered gravestones. It still isn’t exactly clear what he is expected to do here, but he’s finding the overall project interesting and the staff friendly. Sitting at his desk in an open office area, he begins sketching out ideas for hallway designs. Whenever he sketches architectural designs he is reminded of his mother, who would tape plans for her time machine on the walls of their garage. Now, as his pencil outlines a hypothetical alcove, Rameses realizes that he isn’t familiar enough with the project to know if his drawing will be of any use. Deciding to discard it, Rameses walks to the recycling bin, where he runs into Ray. She’s standing by a window, holding a thin metal chain in her right hand. The chain is suspending a monocle that Ray is flicking with her left index finger, making it spin in circles. 

Her eyes are dark behind thick-rimmed glasses. She sees Rameses place a piece of paper in the recycling bin.

“I know we’re like always supposed to recycle used paper,” she tells him, “but when I was a kid, at home, I loved sneaking into the bathroom with an old newspaper and a lighter. I would turn the ceiling fan on, step into the bathtub, and light the paper on fire, one little piece at a time. I would hold each piece just until it was about to burn my fingers, then, you know, let it drop into the tub before washing the ashes down the drain. I loved watching the tendrils of the flames, stretching out pointlessly in every direction.” This made Rameses think of that scene in The Ten Commandments when God writes the commandments into stone with fire, but played in reverse. 

Monday

The staff returns to the furniture-store-slash-restaurant for lunch. 

Tuesday

Again at the recycling bin, Rameses runs into Ray. He nods and awkwardly tries some small talk.

“How did you get into art?” he asks.

Ray sighs, looks into his tombstone eyes, and decides to engage. “You know, when I was in high school, I read this big book about art history. There was this section where the author described the development of foreshortening. He made it seem like it was the most important thing that ever happened in the world. This got me hooked on perspective. How something can appear completely different depending how you see it.”

Ray pauses for a while, seemingly focusing on something far away, and then asks Rameses if he knows the myth of Svalbard. He shakes his head, no.

“Well, when early humans first left Africa and arrived in Europe, they mostly stayed to the south. However, there was a tribe that became too big, which led to disorder and conflict. The tribe splintered in two. The newly dominant group instructed the other group to travel in a straight line for a hundred days before settling in a new land. The banished group started their journey, counting upward to a hundred. To their surprise, as the days passed the nights became shorter. Sunsets eventually disappeared, making it, like, impossible to count all the way to a hundred. They reasoned they had been favoured by the gods. Endless days would mean incredible harvests and increased productivity. Eternal sunshine would mean constant warmth and easy living. They felt exalted. So, you know, they decided to settle there. They quickly built shelters. They planted the seeds they had brought with them. They prepared for the harvest.

“But things changed quickly. Nighttime started making appearances again. Short at first, but then longer. Soon, the nights were as long as they had been in their old land. This brought some comfort, but it didn’t last long. You know, soon there were no more sunrises. It was always dark. And it was cold. Unbearably cold. The crops died. They experienced their first snow. Then much more snow. It was at this point that they named their new land Svalbard, after the frozen coast. When the sun finally rose again, about half of the group decided to walk back to their original home, hoping to be welcomed back by their former tribe.

“The travelers arrived in their former land on the first day of a new moon. They were warmly greeted. Those who returned told stories about new lands, and, you know, about skies that never darkened and skies that never brightened. Members of the original tribe listened in rapt silence. Afterward, a feast was prepared. A pig was slaughtered and roasted. Bread and fermented drinks were served. They danced around a fire. The next morning, everyone slept late. Eventually, those who had returned were assembled in the center of a large hut. The leader of the original tribe approached and told them they now had to leave. Upon asking why they could not stay, the leader answered, ‘A snake eats its tail and has the good sense to disappear. By returning, you have broken a law of nature. You must return whence you came, though I expect you will be received similarly there.’

“So, the travelers left. However, upon returning north, they found that their new homeland was no more. It had split away from the mainland and was now an island, visible in the distance, but forever out of reach.”

Wednesday, a year later

The design of the seed bank was complete. Construction would begin soon. The end of the design job was just the beginning for Ray and Rameses. Today was their wedding day. There was a small but lovely ceremony. Ray thought it would be romantic to get married in the middle of the week—love in medias res. Her family was in attendance. In remembrance of Rameses’ parents, Ray designed little mirrors shaped like labyrinths that she placed on two chairs in the front row for the ceremony. 

Ray wanted to have a large family, so they built a big house in the countryside. They bought the land on the cheap, as it housed a derelict church with an overgrown graveyard. Rameses designed their new house around the bones of the old church. The home they built included a large workshop where Ray could focus on her art. Ramesses took a job teaching architectural design at a local college.

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After several years without success, they gave up trying to have children. Still, they had many happy years together. Rameses settled into a comfortable teaching schedule and Ray’s work became increasingly sought after. Rameses started volunteering at the bingo night that took place every Friday at the nearby volunteer fire department. Rameses loved to turn the crank on the big metal tumbler and watch the plastic bingo balls fumble around chaotically until a single ball would pop out. Once a game was done, he enjoyed carefully putting the escaped balls back into the machine and starting over again.

4.

In 1962, in the Nevada desert, the artist Jean Tinguely gathered together various flotsam and jetsam, along with other assorted detritus. He built a mechanical piece of art—reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine—whose explicit goal, upon being started, was to lead to its own demise. In the end, Study for the End of the World No. 2 failed and required human intervention to facilitate its destruction. Nowadays, at the Tinguely Museum in Basel, Switzerland, there is an employee whose job it is to keep all the kinetic sculptures in good working order.