timeline

Is the Timeline a tower or a ring? The interface would lead us to believe it is the most magnificent imagination of architecture. Skyscraper that ascends beyond the mesosphere; bunker that burrows below the core. We find ourselves forever in the middle of the Timeline, angels of history scrolling downward into the wreckage of the past, flamewars won and lost, witnessed or never seen; angels of history watching the dancing

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waiting, refreshing, hungry for future. More sky to pierce, less oxygen to breathe. What will we find at the top of the Timeline? Do we finally dig through the vault of heaven? Or do we re-emerge in the cavern below Babylon?1

  1. “It was clear now why Yahweh had not struck down the tower, had not punished men for wishing to reach beyond the bounds set for them: for the longest journey would merely return them to the place whence they’d come. Centuries of their labor would not reveal to them any more of Creation than they already knew. Yet through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh’s work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. By this construction, Yahweh’s work was indicated, and Yahweh’s work was concealed.”  —Ted Chiang, Tower of Babylon ↩︎