- First rule: Repetition creates fact. If you do something in the same place enough times, the place learns to expect you.
- Second rule: Some information transfers through proximity, not words.
- Third rule: Shared fiction becomes history if repeated precisely enough.
- Fourth rule: Absence has weight. List what’s missing and it becomes present.
- Fifth rule: Write in the language that comes after the one you know.
- Sixth rule: Temporal paradox is a storage method, not an error.
- Seventh rule: Future languages cast shadows backward.
- Eighth rule: Mathematics of loss is always uneven.
- Ninth rule: Chronology is negotiable if you’re patient enough.
- Tenth rule: Presence persists through precise instruction.
Final rule: Write everything as if it already happened. It already happened. It’s happening now.
Universal rule: To document is to create. To create is to remember. To remember is to ensure it happens again.
Field Notes Against Oblivion
Entry 1: Tuesday, 5:47 AM
Found the first marker today. Not looking for it. Looking for thyme specimens. Standard botanical survey, sandy site 47B.
The plant grows in a perfect circle. Diameter: 3.2 meters. This is wrong. Thymus serpyllum doesn’t organize itself geometrically. I count the stems. 1,247. I count again. 1,247. The number stays.
Inside the circle, the sand is different. Compressed. Like something heavy stood there repeatedly. For a very long time.
Entry 2: Tuesday, 6:15 AM
Still site 47B. I kneel to photograph. My knee makes a depression in the sand. The depression is already there. My knee fits exactly.
This is when I understand the first rule of the anti-oblivion language: repetition creates fact. If you do something in the same place enough times, the place learns to expect you.
Entry 3: Wednesday, 5:47 AM
Return to site 47B. Against protocol.
The thyme releases volatile oils at precisely 5:52 AM. I have no instruments to measure this. I know because my grandmother knew. She never told me. She didn’t have to. The knowledge lives in the space between telling and knowing.
Second rule: some information transfers through proximity, not words.
Entry 4: Wednesday, 6:15 AM
A man arrives. Environmental assessor. His knee finds the other depression. We don’t speak. We both count the stems. 1,247.
He says: „My grandfather buried something here in 1945.“ I say: „Mine dug it up in 1968.“ He says: „What was it?“ I say: „Seeds.“
We’re both lying. We’re both telling the truth. Our grandfathers never met. The seeds exist anyway.
Third rule: shared fiction becomes history if repeated precisely enough.
Entry 5: Thursday, 5:47 AM
We catalog what isn’t there:
- 1,247 stems of thyme (uncountable, but we count)
- Two knee depressions (unmeasurable, but exact)
- The smell of something burning (1094 CE)
- The sound of tractors (1978)
- Text messages we haven’t sent yet (2024)
Fourth rule: absence has weight. List what’s missing and it becomes present.
Entry 6: Thursday, 6:15 AM
He brings his grandmother’s notebook. I bring mine. Same handwriting. Impossible. We compare:
His: „The thyme remembers everything.“ Mine: „Everything remembers the thyme.“
Both dated 1947. The paper is wrong for 1947. The ink is wrong. The language is Czech but not. It’s Czech written to survive Czech disappearing.
Fifth rule: write in the language that comes after the one you know.
Entry 7: Friday, 5:47 AM
We try an experiment. We write the same sentence simultaneously without speaking: „The circle closes when the circle opens.“
We’ve never written this sentence before. We’ve always written this sentence. Both true.
Sixth rule: temporal paradox is a storage method, not an error.
Entry 8: Friday, 6:15 AM
Discovery: the thyme grows in branching patterns that match decision trees. Each split is a choice someone made on this spot. To stay or leave. To burn or preserve. To remember or forget.
We map the branches. They spell words in an alphabet that doesn’t exist yet. We can read it anyway.
Seventh rule: future languages cast shadows backward.
Entry 9: Saturday, 5:47 AM
He says: „We’re not the first.“ I say: „We’re not the last.“ He says: „How many times?“ I say: „Count the stems.“
1,247 divided by 2 = 623.5 pairs of people. The half means we’re still in progress. Incomplete until one of us disappears.
Eighth rule: mathematics of loss is always uneven.
Entry 10: Saturday, 6:15 AM
We document our method:
- Return to the same place
- Perform the same action
- Record what changes
- Record what doesn’t change
- Notice the difference dissolving
- Write it down anyway
- Bury the documentation
- Dig it up before you bury it
This is impossible. This is happening.
Ninth rule: chronology is negotiable if you’re patient enough.
Entry 11: Sunday, 5:47 AM
Final observation. The thyme doesn’t grow here because the soil is right. The soil becomes right because the thyme needs to grow here. Cause follows effect when memory is strong enough.
We write our last entry together: „Instructions for finding us: we are always here, at dawn, in the year you need us to be. Bring nothing. The thyme will recognize you if you’re meant to be recognized. Count the stems. If you get 1,249, you’re the next pair. If you get 1,247, keep walking. We’re not done yet.“
Tenth rule: presence persists through precise instruction.
Entry 12: Undated
Someone will read this and think it’s fiction. Someone will read this and know it’s documentation. Both are correct. The anti-oblivion language doesn’t distinguish between remembering and creating. It only distinguishes between repetition and extinction.
The thyme blooms every spring in the same place. We bloom every thousand years in the same place. The difference is frequency, not existence.
Final rule: write everything as if it already happened. It already happened. It’s happening now.
Note found in margin, different handwriting:
Mateřídouška. Mother’s breath. The plant that grows where nothing should grow. Two people kneeling at coordinates that don’t exist on any map that matters. Their knees making depressions that were already there.
This is how we survive the forgetting: we become the repetition. We document the undocumentable. We return to the same place until the place returns to us.
The language against oblivion has only one word, repeated 1,247 times: Continue.
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