(Want to get with the program?)

If you go, the Submersives made this FAQ.

To be updated with addition documentation if time allows.
Check back in time.

06.06.2021 4:45PM 

Hello Now

As it turns out, if you say “What is time?” often enough, with or without humor, time itself becomes immaterial. Time is so easily cheapened, in fact, that it becomes flimsy, elastic, broken, and torn. For so long we have believed in it until these recent years, with us fading in and out of time so much that other times have begun to intrude. First it appeared in little glimpses, assumptions about a new normal that never was. Your friend never showed up because time overwhelmed them. Your arrival took you twice as long as you expected. A sun rises, then sets within minutes. That missed connection, first vividly real, phased out when you reached in its direction. It was happening all the time, but our plastic brains would just stitch it all up and file it under Old Normal, Okay, Let’s Move On.

But now (or then) it has become undeniable. There are spaces where our future and present coincide. I do not know if we caused it, but we may have started it and, by a simple matter of accumulation of a million ticks against time, by 2032 these fractures have become commonplace.

I do not expect you to believe me, but this has happened. I have found people from the year 2032. They seem like pleasant enough folx, but it is obvious that they do not belong here now, except I don’t know what “obvious” means anymore. I don’t know what “now” means, either. Who “belongs” anywhere?

I have been with the future often enough that parts of me may have crossed over. Even I do not believe it, but it is what I am feeling. At last count, there were twelve of me. Maybe they’ll discover a new illness in my name. One thing I’ve gathered: our friends in 2032 seem to think this is normal. For all I can tell, they are passing through these little rifts all the time, doing what makes sense to them, working as best they can with what they have, and then moving on. Our radical future, their new normal.

As a result

this site is only here for me, and if you are not me and you are seeing it then I do not know how you are seeing it. As far as I can gather, the last of the internet will die out in 2030. As the brutal virus spreads through digital machines as quickly as it does humans, the risk becomes too great to turn on any computer. So I figured out how to host this site on a self-contained server on this old Linux machine that, due, I think, to a faulty chip set, should be IMMUNE to the coming digiphage even if it is exposed to it, which it should not be because I am taking all precautions. The box glitches and quits a lot, hopefully fragmenting the virus and rendering it non-lethal, and also wreaking havoc with the data I’m keeping on here. But it’s better than nothing. I've kept this site in the most rudimentary ASCII HTML (2.0 I think) so if any future being also starts up an old machine, they have a shot at rendering it.

06.27.2021 11:00AM 

In my work

I’m attempting to document what I can for any other time when it might become useful. Capturing and posting this evidence is all that is keeping me together presently (and later) so I’ll just keep doing it until it’s no longer possible.

So here it is.

A Record. An Echo. A Memory. A Collection. A rECHOllection.

Don’t you worry about me

The risks I’m taking with this digital machine become very real in 2032 — physically and legally — but I’ve been exceedingly careful. Been maintaining 15+ feet from all other humans. Avoiding people altogether, actually. Using long reach lenses on my cameras. Also “found” footage. Also found objects. When? Always.

Oh, and text. They still use text in 2032. Been writing these things down on paper, which seems to work with mixed success. (Something going on with the 2032 sun or atmosphere eroding pencil and ink marks.)

07.11.2021 3:00AM

Going over what I’ve written already and thinking maybe I’ve already crossed over to another me. Much here I do not recognize, aside from knowing it must be me who wrote it. I’m the only one here, using this machine. But I can’t believe what I knew. How would anybody know to do this?

07.11.2021 7:00AM 

I wonder if it’s not just time that we lost a hold on. It’s the mindset that allowed us to grasp time in the first place. The trust we had in chairs to hold us up, tables to keep our books and plates from falling down through the earth. Trust in each other to believe we are sharing the same air, looking through the same basic mechanisms we both call eyes. Break that trust often enough and the rest is sure to fall away.

07.18.2021 7:00AM  

There is a construction here called the “Empathy Apparatus.”A woman keeps stopping by to visit it, claiming to be an up-an-coming “empathologist.” We communicated briefly via notes left on a nearby table. She says she heard of the Apparatus from her mother, who used it in college in the early 90’s, but the project was scrapped and it was not seen since. (I’m willing to bet the thing was hidden away in a cellar somewhere to avoid embarrassment once the university caught on to what they were doing. The thing looks like a dead giant squid fashioned into an egg chair. But hey maybe there is something to it.) The Apparatus was designed to capture and replicate different mind/body/emotional states using analog means, meaning no computer, possibly explaining why it has renewed interest in 2032. I, for one, will not go anywhere near the thing. If you want to know if it works, go try it yourself.

07.18.2021 11:30PM 

I’ve been making a list of rememberings. They help me. Not sure they’d help you. Here is one page from the list:

REMEMBERINGS

• It can be difficult to remember anything at all, let alone clearly but I do remember us using these machines a lot to talk to each other and save our memories. What I’m doing now feels like a habit so yes, that must be what we were doing.
  
• These screens were connecting to others’ — images words ideas thoughts that we thought we were sharing together. Or at least we were sharing apart and separately and we thought it meant something. Some people used it more than others, used it so much that the layer on top of the things they were discussing became the main thing, if you know what I mean.
  
• Robust virus filtering options comes standard with all hosting plans.
  
• There was a story about an emperor who wanted a most complete map of Rome (which was a big ancient city and might still be) and the emperor wanted the map to be 1 foot equals 1 foot and be as accurate as possible so his people built the map and it covered Rome and represented Rome very well while Rome crumbled beneath it.
  

• There was a time when stories meant, when they could be shared in between spaces and understood between heads. Now there is nothing to map that distance between us, no map at all, in fact, and nothing to crumble beneath it.
  
• We moved. Moved beyond physical, social, emotional distance. Now it’s the space between that’s become the territory unreal it’s the time it’s because I’m real it’s the space between us in the spaces and time that would become unreal. And we’ve lost those pieces between we’ve had together if we ever had them. The matches struck falling into lines along windy caves.
  
• Other things I’m sure of it.

I have many pages like that. Not worth counting. Just keep adding.

07.18.2032 11:30AM

Sometimes I bring binoculars and can see things beyond the rift.

It’s funny, the animals in and around the park seem not to have an idea about what’s going on. By 2032, they may be living their best lives. Started seeing whole herds of deer for the first time just roaming. A human club has taken up residence in the zoo to help keep it going. I’m impressed with what I’ve seen. Very clean, animals seem happy (happy as they ever are in a zoo anyway). The zoo residents have a sort of religious devotion to the place, sitting sentinel at stations all throughout the park and facing each animal habitat in a kind of meditative trance.

07.25.2032 8:30AM

I Heard

that someone is developing some next-level post-digital tech that will have us communicating via plants and sunlight or something like that and it will not hurt us. But that was a time ago (2023? 26? 22? 31?) and I didn’t believe it then. I used to hear a lot of things before the fade and now I do not believe unless someone has a special juice that helps them retain because how can they do any better than me needing to go back every three words even as I write this to make it all stick. A slice of clarity now and then lucky if the keys are under me when it comes. Now we’re spread way out and THIS is the only other site I can find and I cannot tell you how you or I are reaching that one either.

07.26.2032 5:30PM

Submersive was here again today. They're trying to curate things, give people a window into understanding, like it's some kind of a museum. They're setting up signs and tables and cassette players with analog music, claiming that it "stabilizes" the rift and comforts the residents. Darned if I can see them acting any different. I read this from Submersive's signs -- I don't go anywhere near those folks. For all I know they caused the rift to begin with. They're just doing this because they're too tired to come up with a new show themselves. Past couple years must have sapped their energies.

08.15.2021 2:00PM

You probably think I’m doing this because I’m a geek in love with the old tech but I’m not. The tech makes me think of my childhood, which is painful because I cannot actually remember my childhood and cannot trust my later memories either. If machines and memories really do all get erased in the next few years, I figure some of us need to start building it all over again. Our memories, that is. All gone, all new.

 08.15.2021 1:00PM

Some of these things I may be remembering for real but a lot of it is false recall that I honestly don’t know where it came from. I’ve come to believe the false recalls as just as real in a way. Okay, they are fully real now. I used to try to differentiate, but what’s the point. I doubt anybody else is. Does anybody else even know what’s going on? It’s just the soup we are swimming in. Everything changed so quickly but at the same time it all unraveled slowly it’s hard to explain what was lost how we got here and come on nobody really remembers you may pretend to remember but what are you remembering.

 08.16.2021 3:20AM

Submersive made a little "trailer" for their experience. Now they think it's some kind of a movie, apparently. Saved it here so people know, in case I'm right about them causing the rift. Yes, I was here first, but I knew to keep my distance and not make a big fuss about it.

 08.29.2032 8:00PM

The one in white looked at me the other day and I could see the loss in their eyes. I could see it because I used to help people remember. Images of the past, mostly. We would surface to each other and show occasionally something about how we were that was genuine or real and then there were layers and layers avatars pretend versions of ourselves that we would then accept it as other versions of ourselves or maybe a more true version than our actual selves and they were believed in very intensely for a while but now that’s all gone and there’s just our bodies and thin memories which maybe is better. I haven’t heard lately as far as I can tell about anyone hurting anybody else and I do remember all kinds of hurt being made before when we had so much memory matter to build upon.

09.27.2032 9:62PM 

The people from Submersive are here. I hide when they come. I think they could help you, but never me, none of me, all beyond saving or preventing, slipped on already.   

09.27.2032 9:62PM 

I used to think there was some rock solid piece of ourselves at the center that would stay consistent while all the externalities happened while these layers were put on layers but they were just layers on ways to show yourself but we thought there was something at the center something at the core that was carrying us through but I’m not seeing it now I’m not understanding even how we ever believed that to begin with So when we put on these puffy suits and we go outside of sense for protection of a practical purpose but no one seems to see it that way it’s just another layer We like our layers and we like to express them so much but it also feels like we need them we need all the puff on the outside to avoid looking in it must be some kind of hurt the hurts we lost but were done sometime to us or around us there that we’re covering up the fear that maybe that thing that we thought was at the core never was I like to believe that something carries on or something happens that we all can share and believe in together but I don’t know how to do that now so here’s this website-without-a-we . Best. I. Can. Do.

10.04.2032/21 2:75PM  

 I’m sorry that these artifacts I am giving here are not nearly a complete picture of what is happening but I hope that they offer some connection or help in your own ability to recollect something we can share again again or maybe they are entertaining at least you and can help you shed a layer or two on your way through the soup to another ghost of another memory.

10.18.2032/21 7:75PM  

The one in silver asked me “what does your elbow do?” and I was reminded that I had a body with an elbow, and I did a thing I thought the elbow could do and the one in silver did the same thing and so did another person near me and that was enough can I live right there inside that speck of enoughness? Do we really need to move on to find anything more what more is there to find?

10.25.2032/21 12:90PM  

I hope I see you and I hope you see me and I hope we share the same air and crunch the same grass and find a way to believe that for a second we can find a middle in air we're not allowed to breath and find somethere there worth holding but I’m not sure I hope that we remember.