MODES OF THOUGHT IN ANTERRAN LITERATURE
c667, 2nd year classics
file: 201
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INT. LECTURE HALL - DAY
Professor: Oh, hey, Chris, can you help me with this projector? My arm is still fucked from whatever happened in class the other day.
Chris: Sure, old man. Here. Did you see a doctor?
Professor: I did, but he said there's nothing wrong, so I don't know.
Chris: Man, that's weird. And my throwing arms been off too? Coach is setting up an appointment with the team doc, though.
Professor: Great, now it's going around. It's contagious. Alright, well, thank you. Can you run this thing during class, too?
Chris: Yeah, no problem.
Professor: Alright, thanks.
Students start to shuffle in.
Professor: Okay. Um, today, well, we're taking a bit of a dark turn, uh, into the beginning of the Third Empire. Up until now, Anterra has seemed kind of idyllic, right? I mean except for the condition of the Idiot King, that lineage of children rulers who were kept completely isolated. Everything else about Anterra appears to have been incredibly peaceful.
The culture was flourishing, architecture, writing, philosophy, mathematics, agriculture, and rudimentary technology were being refined and advanced. There was this perception of gender that we've discussed that was so evolved we're still trying to get back there now. Outside tribes, instead of being seen as a threat, were welcomed into the society and integrated peacefully and productively in terms of their small economy.
And the caste system, which was well defined, to be sure. It wasn't so rigid that there was no cross mobility. It seemed the common Anterrans were essentially free to choose their own path, but they consistently chose social cohesion and collectivism, making choices for the good of the community, right? And, and this is probably the most notable detail. There are zero signs of slavery in the Second Empire. None. There's not a single ancient civilization besides Anterra that we can point to where that's the case. Famously, the Greeks and Romans, right, but also the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians. Every other large society we know of enslaved people. Usually civilians from foreign wars, right, but they all had slaves. And this is where the Third Empire comes in line with these more common practices of subjugation.
So, we already discussed the Ma’Tokka ritual and how it evolved through this transitional period into the Third Empire, in which members of the society were relegated to this new caste called the Vessels.
Just to refresh, um, The Ma’Tokka Ritual is one where, uh, the members of Prime A, Dark City as we know it, would gather and perform this ritual where they would cut off the fourth finger of their left hand, collectively. Um, this ritual then evolves and a new cast suddenly appears called the Vessels. Also known as Cup of Tears. So, let's take a minute to look at the Second Empire caste system, and then we can discuss what's changing.
In the Second Empire, the caste system was more like a wheel than a pyramid. What I mean is, there wasn't a better caste or a worse caste. There were segments of society that all served a function for the whole. And there were boundaries between them, but those boundaries were somewhat fluid. And, of course, there were nine of them, right? Number nine. These castes are defined as the Before People, the Hunters, the Diviners, the Artists, the Growers, the Nightguards, the Traders, the Longwalkers, and the Wordcarvers. There also seemed to be a segment of the society that had no caste at all. So again, if we're looking at a pie chart, this is kind of a ring around the middle, the crust, if you will, and that's where the nine castes are. And then there's the segment of the population in the middle had no caste at all. We can only estimate what the division was in terms of like percentages of the population. So we don't know how even these groups were in terms of their size. These names for the castes, they're somewhat self explanatory, right?
The hunters are responsible for bringing back meat. The growers took care of the fields and agriculture around Dark City. The two less obvious castes here are the Diviners who seem to be in contact with the gods and served the Idiot King and they basically were some sort of a religious elite slash moral center for the society and also the before people who were as it was described they were members of the first bloodlines in Anterra. So they were basically like the Royals except there were more of them and they still had to contribute to society. We think they were in charge of tracking the calendar. Social events, rituals, organizational and ceremonial tasks, stuff like that.
So, these are the two turning points, um, where essentially the wheels came off the bus. There was the change in the Ma’Tokka ritual, and there was the invention of this new caste. And within 25 years of these changes, Anterrans began to subjugate outside tribes, essentially inventing war, before their society dissolved into civil war. So let's put this in context for a second. If you combine what we know about the phase we call the First Empire and the Second Empire, we're looking at roughly 2,200 years of peaceful coexistence, during which the entire city was built, monuments, temples, markets, 2,200 years of peaceful coexistence. Then it fell apart like that.
Suddenly, the before people rise up, assume a kind of cultural dominance, and they subjugate The Vessels, which are members of their own society, people they've known and lived next to, and The Vessels are imprisoned in camps located on the southeastern edge of Prime A. Can you hit that slide, Chris?
The projector slide clicks.
Professor: Thanks. So up here in this area is the, the, these are the cells where the vessels were kept. And now the cast that had been known as the night guards, they previously had been the city watch, right? Keeping animals or raiding tribes out. But now they're tasked with running these basically internment camps. They become the gestapo of Dark City. And these structures, which we can see here, and here, and over here, these can hold a maximum capacity of about 3,000 people. 3,000. This is out of a population of, at this point, we estimate it was about 40,000. So what happened? Why did Anterra suddenly allow a small segment of society to achieve this supremacy? Why did they suddenly enslave almost eight percent of their population?
And look at these sites. There's no outside access. They didn't just enslave them to turn them into workers. They just imprisoned them. In every practical sense, they cut them off from the outside world. And then they started a war. Hit that next slide.
Click of the projector.
Professor: Okay, now the Long Walkers. The idea was the Long Walkers were meant to be explorers. They acted for society. Think about like a beehive or an ant colony. The Long Walkers would go out, locate resources, trading partners, new technologies, and then return to Anterra with this advanced knowledge. Kind of reminds me of the period in Japan after the Meiji when they decided to at last modernize and they sent out students to every country they could and brought back the learning from that, those institutions, um, using that strategy as well as bringing in foreign advisors, the Japanese managed to catch up to the rest of the world, going from a feudal warlord system to, uh, industrial economy in about 50 years. It's unheard of.
The early Chinese also had moments of exploration in the Han Dynasty, uh, and also in the Ming Dynasty treasure voyages, and of course, the West, you know, they had their go at exploration. Um, another topic that we don't have room to go into, of course, but the legacy of colonialism is all around us, and uh, something worthy of extensive study. Okay, back to Anterra. It seems that at approximately 67, 000 BCE, a group of Long Walkers came back to Dark City and indicated that there was a tribe that was coalescing around a site. which we now know as Prime B. At first, they called these people the Tall Ones. Like previous tribes, the Tall Ones were welcomed into the city and they intermingled in different roles of Anterran society. They joined different castes, but unlike previous tribes, and despite their integration, the Tall Ones, which are later referred to as the Feelers, became a source of derision. and scorn. Chris, can you hit the next slide? Thanks.
Click of the projector.
Professor: Okay, this wall is outside the entrance to the internment camps. We don't have a complete translation yet, um, which is frustrating. I've been fumbling through it with a few colleagues online. The University of Beijing has been strangely silent on this particular area of study in Anterra. So, you know, draw whatever conclusions from that you want. But be aware, we're in speculation mode, right? Because we just don't know. This graffiti was some punk's version of basically a tweet. A social media post for the agents. But here's what we do know. The crude image of a Vessel, here it's called a Feeler, over exaggerates the figure's height, and an inscription underneath reads, “Insect.” With an even larger foot coming down to stomp it out.
What it was that prompted the change in the moniker from Tall Ones and Vessels to Feelers or why, we don't know. We haven't found any carvings that explain that transition. But these Feelers who were previously integrated into Anterran society, right? All of a sudden are separated out. All these societal shifts we just discussed are coincident with the discovery of early Prime B and the Tall Ones, a.k.a. the Feelers. So they started imprisoning members of this specific population after performing a modified version of the Ma’Tokka ritual. And this ritual sealed the Tall Ones slash the Feelers fate as permanent prisoners in this sealed catacomb in Dark City. Next slide.
Click of the projector.
Professor: What we can glean from this wall is that at first the prison, uh, they use the word for stable, like where you keep horses, right? At first, this was for friends who are vessels. So we think this means at first they were putting their own citizens in these prisons, yeah? And in case there was any doubt about the relationship between the Ma’Tokka ritual and the Vessels, we have this. Slide.
Click of the projector.
Professor: Okay, these handprints were made with some kind of acid, so they literally dissolved the stone walls. If you look closely, nine fingers. The fourth finger of the left hand is removed in every single case. I'm speculating here, but based on what we know about handprints in prehistoric cave sites, there's Chauvet, Liang, Timpasong, and of course Cueva de los Manos in Santa Cruz, we have to wonder if these weren't signatures. A way of saying, I was here. I matter. Don't forget me.
Raquel bursts into the lecture hall.
Professor: Raquel?
Hai Rong: Raquel? You’re back.
Raquel: Go away, Hai Rong. You're a fucking liar. You know she's a spy, right?
Professor: What? Hai Rong's been picking up your slack since you disappeared, okay? She's not a spy.
Raquel: Okay, you know what? I know that sounds insane, but I, I found Professor Chen.
Professor: What?
Raquel: She's alive. Yeah, and I think she might be CIA, but that's all speculation anyway. She's not dead, and she told me that-
Professor: Whoa, Raquel, can we all calm down? You sound manic. You disappeared for a month and a half, you flew halfway around the world, and apparently you broke into Dr. Chen's office? Yes, I heard about that.
Raquel: She told me where your wife is.
Professor: June?
Raquel: Yeah, and there's a lot more, but someone might be listening right now, honestly, and I'm definitely being followed, so… Come on, just come with me. Let's find a place that isn't bugged.
Hai Rong: Raquel! I'm not a spy. I'm worried about you. You're not acting rationally.
Raquel: Shut up. Seriously, just shut up right now. Okay, you guys, your left arms have been hurting, right?
Chris: No, what the f
Professor: How, how did you know?
Raquel: You see this cast? I broke my arm on purpose to test out a theory, okay? But Hai Rong didn't feel it. That's when I knew, but I wasn't sure. Until I talk to Professor Chen.
Chris: Sure about what, Raquel?
Raquel: Anterra’s secret. The Ma’Tokka Ritual.
Raquel pulls out a knife.
Professor: Okay, everyone get out. Right now. Out! Now, Raquel, put that down. What the hell are you doing?
Hai Rong:What are you going to do with that knife?
Raquel: We're going to do a little experiment right now. I'm going to cut myself.
Chris: Alright, that's it. I'm calling 911. She's going to hurt herself.
Raquel: Just chill out, Chris. It's fine. I'm just going to cut my hand a little bit.
Hai Rong: Don't do this. Raquel, you need mental help.
Raquel: I'm going to cut my hand, and you're all going to feel it. Well, maybe not you, Hai, but the rest of us will feel it together.
Chris: What the fuck are you talking–
Everyone but Raquel: OW!
Professor: How? What?
Chris: There's no way.
Professor: How? Raquel… How?
Raquel: See? I told you. I fucking told you.
Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature. This podcast is made possible by Harbridge University, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Peeler Prize in Archaeological Literature, and the Harbridge Family Trust. With an in-kind donation and production assistance from Wolf at the Door Studios. For more information and a reading list, please visit wlfdr.com.