In a moment of clarity and inspiration, the second archivist suggested the following plan: track the social trends in our city; map them, finding the inevitable patterns; figure out the dependent and independent variables; create a mapping; and finally, inconspicuously, design public policy to tap into exactly those inputs, in just the right amounts. Prod the organism. Domesticate the animal. Soon, the stochastic trends would form into strands, then chains of strands, then threads. With time, the sum total of human knowledge be kept in the predictable social patterns of our race.

Their lives were not timelines, but many intertwining threads, stopping and starting on a whim. Every moment could be a start or an end, a little birth or a little death; it happened when they woke up, after orgasm, in the park or in the rain -- a sudden reconfiguration of the world, a reinterpretation of their thoughts and feelings into something completely new. They had personalities made of Lego bricks, and they loved it.

It was quiet down there. With only 2 days to go, the travelers unwrapped their last portions - bits of cheese, the last remnants of the dried ham, a couple of flagons of water to wash it all down - and proceeded to feast. This was the home stretch; already, they could see greenery creeping onto the pitch-black walls, illuminated by the faint cracks developing in the rough rock.

It felt like their memories, too, were being rearranged. Some had already started to forget how they got there; the winding caves leading to their nook were receding into the darkness...

This isn't right. I shouldn't have fled up here, among the scaffolding and girders. Only birds can stay perched up in these heights, gazing recreationally at the world so foreign to their own. They don't want me here, I don't belong.

I make no excuses for myself, but sometimes you just have to go. Something bursts in your head, that little reserve energy you were saving for an extra day suddenly gets injected full-force into your veins, and you take off. Sometimes it takes you to a cafe somewhere downtown. And sometimes it storms you up onto the hull of...

I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —

The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.

And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as...

Prison is for mossy bricks, reinforced iron bars, decrepid toilets and savage guards beating on the door every morning. How can it be anything else?

And yet, within the confines of this framework, there is a nook as tangible as any cell; the walls are closing in on me, invisible monsters lurking in the dark, only — these are worse than any monster imaginable, for they do not breathe, do not reason. You can't reason with walls.

The post seemed like a good idea at the time, for who doesn't dream of directing such a large, historic enterprise if given...