space for the new government, and your job, Supervisor turned on his heel and rested. In front of a fountain of weldersâ sparks, his eyes shone luminescent coals: Your job will be to find a resting spot for the thoughtreels once we have transferred them to the computer server, but in the meantime
For six months my father descended into the Archives with colleagues who also wore wide-brimmed hats, the style of Archives employees, who also carried notebooks, cushions, bagged meals, and suffered from urinary tract disorders caused by the chemicals in the magnetic reels that sometimes caused them to piss in the vestibules because the bathrooms were far away. He travelled to addresses assigned tasks deeper and deeper in the Archives, places where bats roosted overhead and where one day he discovered what appeared by penlight to be the large wings of an unidentifiable prehistoric bird. Hetraced the light across its imbricated piscine feathers and wondered whether to gift the fossil wings to his son to complement his talons, but the thought saddened him and he stifled laughter. Who was Hedayat.
Substrata oblivion minds: Mamun Ben Jaloun breathed the sad air summoned by his cart of gathered thought receptacles metal shine in darkness, the dichromate gasoline blaze wafting under the door of the furnace room that was of Archives professionals burning souls. He pushed his cart toward the strangehue.
The blast of light as Mamun Ben Jaloun entered the furnace room always made him cringe. He turned his head away from the guttural negative engine pumping fire onto magnetic tape as his hands opening metal popping containers reached into cranial cavity scooped out magnetic dead brains to fling into burning. Abd, an Incinerator of the Archives with a singular slaveâs name, would generally dispense the reels into fire, but my father liked to stay and sometimes pass words on Abdâs sick daughter pleurisy or whooping cough couldnât quite recall, on their respective jobs of burning human minds. Ask Abd, father: how many dead souls destined for incineration that day dozens scores hundreds always growing.
When the daily incinerated reels rose to a thousand-count in his quadrant, Mamun Ben Jaloun began a mental inventory because any written calculation would obviously be seized as he exited the Archives. His simple calculation multiplied estimated incinerated souls per quadrant with number of quadrants, though he was unsure of either figure.
At that time, computers were replacing tapereels in the Archives and replacing shortwave radios of the National Security Service in tasks of absorbing suspect minds, and Mamun Ben Jaloun justified his jobâs murderous implications with the thought that the minds he encountered had already been deleted or submitted to jailcell blackness by the time he encountered them as thoughtreels, by saying to himself he wasjust a functionary, by claiming on cloudless days that there were no minds on the thoughtreels, only impressions, ideations.
I think they are real minds, actual souls, Abd admitted one day to my father in the furnace room in full view of a blinking camera and microphone, and I think all Department employees are shit. How much did Mamun Ben Jaloun know about the Departmentâs overhaul and translation of the whole enterprise of surveilling and storing human minds by newer machines.
All around my father, the same fires burned in all the quadrants of the Archives: magnetic and actual fires burned as Archives employees followed orders, doused themselves with Department cologne before exiting the compound to bathe against tongues of light fire dance and smoke seeping for hours into clothes, leaving porcine or human flesh smells.
Fire in the unnameable country: what happened to the thoughtreels. All through the night, nights in a row, for days dragged weeks fits and starts until entire tombstone truckloads, load-bearing vehicles finally delivered clean, erased tapereels,
For six months my father descended into the Archives with colleagues who also wore wide-brimmed hats, the style of Archives employees, who also carried notebooks, cushions, bagged meals, and suffered from urinary tract disorders caused by the chemicals in the magnetic reels that sometimes caused them to piss in the vestibules because the bathrooms were far away. He travelled to addresses assigned tasks deeper and deeper in the Archives, places where bats roosted overhead and where one day he discovered what appeared by penlight to be the large wings of an unidentifiable prehistoric bird. Hetraced the light across its imbricated piscine feathers and wondered whether to gift the fossil wings to his son to complement his talons, but the thought saddened him and he stifled laughter. Who was Hedayat.
Substrata oblivion minds: Mamun Ben Jaloun breathed the sad air summoned by his cart of gathered thought receptacles metal shine in darkness, the dichromate gasoline blaze wafting under the door of the furnace room that was of Archives professionals burning souls. He pushed his cart toward the strangehue.
The blast of light as Mamun Ben Jaloun entered the furnace room always made him cringe. He turned his head away from the guttural negative engine pumping fire onto magnetic tape as his hands opening metal popping containers reached into cranial cavity scooped out magnetic dead brains to fling into burning. Abd, an Incinerator of the Archives with a singular slaveâs name, would generally dispense the reels into fire, but my father liked to stay and sometimes pass words on Abdâs sick daughter pleurisy or whooping cough couldnât quite recall, on their respective jobs of burning human minds. Ask Abd, father: how many dead souls destined for incineration that day dozens scores hundreds always growing.
When the daily incinerated reels rose to a thousand-count in his quadrant, Mamun Ben Jaloun began a mental inventory because any written calculation would obviously be seized as he exited the Archives. His simple calculation multiplied estimated incinerated souls per quadrant with number of quadrants, though he was unsure of either figure.
At that time, computers were replacing tapereels in the Archives and replacing shortwave radios of the National Security Service in tasks of absorbing suspect minds, and Mamun Ben Jaloun justified his jobâs murderous implications with the thought that the minds he encountered had already been deleted or submitted to jailcell blackness by the time he encountered them as thoughtreels, by saying to himself he wasjust a functionary, by claiming on cloudless days that there were no minds on the thoughtreels, only impressions, ideations.
I think they are real minds, actual souls, Abd admitted one day to my father in the furnace room in full view of a blinking camera and microphone, and I think all Department employees are shit. How much did Mamun Ben Jaloun know about the Departmentâs overhaul and translation of the whole enterprise of surveilling and storing human minds by newer machines.
All around my father, the same fires burned in all the quadrants of the Archives: magnetic and actual fires burned as Archives employees followed orders, doused themselves with Department cologne before exiting the compound to bathe against tongues of light fire dance and smoke seeping for hours into clothes, leaving porcine or human flesh smells.
Fire in the unnameable country: what happened to the thoughtreels. All through the night, nights in a row, for days dragged weeks fits and starts until entire tombstone truckloads, load-bearing vehicles finally delivered clean, erased tapereels,
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