this map is not the territory

:: StoryTitle Harlowe 3: Passage Transitions :: Start (transition-depart: "dissolve")[[Dissolve Passage]] :: Dissolve Passage (transition-arrive: "slide-right")[[Slide-right Passage]] :: Slide-right Passage Double-click this passage to edit it.

dissolve

right

You are surrounded by darkness and a sense of pressure that is unclear if it's external or internal. All the miracles have happened, and all the boundaries have been overridden. You’ve seen every image and heard every sound. All questions have been asked. (text-style:"blur", "fidget")[[Do you wake up?]]

Something awakens. The darkness is strange - when you reach out with your hands you can't see them. You bring your palms to your face, hovering a few centimetres from your skin. You can feel the warmth, but still you can't see them. The parametres of the world have been rendered unclear, and in your unmoored state you are suddenly dizzy. You need to reach out to [[something]].

You are in total darkness - the world around you is uncertain. You reach towards the [[ground]]. //OR// You reach out to feel the [[walls]] around you. <div id="portraitL"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/darkness.gif"></div><div id="portraitR"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/darkness.gif"></div>\ (set: $card1 to "darkness")

The ground under your fingers is damp and hard. It scrapes against your fingertips in a comforting way. There’s something funny about feeling “grounded” literally in the pits of the earth. When you place your hands on the rocks, do you feel a sense of time and place that forms a [[heavy weight]] in your stomach?

The wall is cool and stable under your touch. Time passes as you anchor yourself to it - or maybe it doesn't pass. It's hard to determine time's exact shape. At one point, gentle light starts to fill the room, filtering in through the [[thin veil covering a small window]] on the left handside wall. This may be the sun rising. On the right side wall, another window is cut into the stone, slanted. (link-reveal:"You crouch by the slanted window and peer through it.")[ On the other side, you can see the main hall of the church, bathed in the morning light. There's a violent edge to its quietness. The small window is positioned so that you get a clear view of the Altar. Surrounding the altar are shapes (text-style:"fidget")[fraying around their edges], appearing human at moments, but then you blink. They raise an object high above the Altar. This reminds you of your own funeral procession, being lifted high as you passed over into this other territory.]

Faintly, you catch the sound of something clicking, or it's more like metal touching stone. As it echoes through the tunnel it reminds you of the absoluteness and gravity of church bells, even though the sound quality is different. Further up the tunnel, there's a [[light]].

Mysterious light is shining from one side of the tunnel. The swirling tendrils of the light [[reach out]] towards you. //OR// You [[walk into]] the light.\ <div id="portraitL"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/cave.gif"></div><div id="portraitR"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/cave.gif"></div>\ (set: $card2 to "cave")

The window is too small to climb through, and in this instance, since you are figuratively dead, shuffling your physical body back into the realms of the living would make no particular difference. So you figure the best idea is to get yourself as close to the wall beneath the veil as possible. You line your body flush to the wall, trying to press it onto the stone with equal pressure all over. You [[wait]].

In the narrow space between dimensions, different worlds line up as flat images pressed up against each other. You can slide and slip inbetween them. You edge your fingers inbetween two of the flat planes, as if to [[pry]] the space between the open, //OR// as if to jump [[through]] the material of the flat planes. <div id="portraitL"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/narrow.gif"></div><div id="portraitR"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/narrow.gif"></div>\ (set: $card2 to "narrow")

The light envelops you. It feels cold to the point of feeling wet. There’s that thing they tell you when you need contrast material for a scan, that it will feel like you wet yourself as it goes in, and you think that’s impossible until it really does. Eventually you come to realise you are [[submerged]] to the neck.

You wade through the river to get closer to the man. He sits like a large stone, unmoving and part of the landscape. The water runs clear enough to see through to the riverbed here near the riverbanks - the man is kneeling on the rubble, hands folded in his lap. A pair of grass snakes are coiled around his shoulders. Their heads lazily bob up and down with the ebb and [[flow]] of the water surface.

You float downstream, past the man, past echoes of people in different lives and times. As you float past them, they in turn also float past you, as if in the river the [[strands of time]] are all woven together.

As you step across the perimetres of the light you are blinded with it's sudden brightness. Everything washes out to a violent white that is as absolute as if it's flipping between light and dark, [[encompassing]] both.

There was a well, with a stone structure built around to house it, but with time the spring dried up, and the structure was re-sited, 165 yards to the north east from where it originally sat. At some point there was a system through which water flowed, underpinning the area. Undercurrents to the material of the world itself. You loosen a couple of stones, nudge some more with your feet, and the water comes [[bubbling up]].

You hold your breath and dive under the water, aiming for the river floor. The snakes dive with you to help, wrapping themselves around your arms as your hands dig into the riverbed, trying to dig out a [[ditch]] or a hole.

Ever since the well incident, you've been wondering if part of you actually fell in and passed through something - if the person that narrowly missed and hopped off onto the ground in time was replaced by a double, a lookalike, and now there is someone to peer back up at you if you were to look down that same well one day. Through the hole in the riverbed you manage to [[transit]].

In the transitional space, all timelines are laid out flat and on top of eachother. The river suddenly runs warm, and you see a man bathing in the Jordan River, Nahr al-Urdun, a different time that is in search of yet another different time. The shining mirror of the water surface tilts and duplicates, discs of [[water surface]] lifting to form a chain.

(set: $img1 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/horizon.gif")\ (set: $img2 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/horizon.gif")\ (set: $img3 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/horizon.gif")\ (if: $card1 is "darkness")[(set: $img1 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/darkness.gif")]\ (if: $card2 is "cave")[(set: $img2 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/cave.gif")]\ (else-if: $card2 is "narrow")[(set: $img2 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/narrow.gif")]\ (if: $card3 is "river")[(set: $img3 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/river.gif")]\ (else-if: $card3 is "align")[(set: $img3 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/align.gif")]\ (else-if: $card3 is "monument")[(set: $img3 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/monument.gif")]\ (else-if: $card3 is "horizon")[(set: $img3 to "https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/horizon.gif")]\ You have reached the end/an end of this game. The journey, however, still continues. <div class="image-row"> (print: "<img src='" + $img1 + "' alt='image 1'>") (print: "<img src='" + $img2 + "' alt='image 2'>") (print: "<img src='" + $img3 + "' alt='image 3'>") </div> These are the cards you collected during this run. (text-style:"blur","fidget")[[[Go back to the beginning?->LANDING PAGE]]]

You gently nudge one of the stones with your feet, to set it into alignment with the rest of the pattern. The pattern is a [[straight line]] starting with small stones, pebbles, growing in a line all towards the massive rocks that form the tunnel walls.

The pace is slow but at the same time it drains you, like you're trudging through more than one realm at once, like the underground passage is the hinge upon which multiple worlds are contingent, and you have to shift your body through those seams with every step. The boar's tail swings with anticipation as he disappears into the rock face, and you follow, your body taking a spectral quality that feels surprisingly familiar - indeed, you may have been bound by some flesh at times, but throughout that all you lived within and travelled across the stories of others. Inside the rock face, layers of time shift past you like strata. You and your fellow pilgrims keep [[walking]] on.

As the water breaks through to the surface and you rise with it, you are pulled up into the sky and get to see a line of creatures marching towards the sea, all sorts of unfathomable beings, ghosts and beasts and any combination thereof. Your eyes follow their procession towards the horizon - it seems as if they're walking towards the [[wind turbines]] just off the coast.

Your fingers latch onto the sharp edges of the opening. When you peer through it, you can feel your sense of space shifting, a weird dolly zoom effect, but you pay it no heed. Carefully grabbing the edges of the frame, you start to pull sideways. The opening squashes and stretches, growing narrower and narrower until its' top and bottom edges line up and it's closed, the two sides now merged into one discrete [[line]].

The world around you slowly pulls into focus. You get to your bearings first by the anchoring powers of the wind off the sea, the salty air. Then it's the wailing of the seagulls, starting to stir with the lightening sky around the [[horizon]].

The line extends out in front of you. You decide to follow it like a [[path]].

The line - the path - under your feet is at first ethereal and white, emitting a soft glow. You cast no shadow onto it, it's a material that resists the physicality and coherence of what you know as your real world. As you proceed on it, the change first happens through a textural anomaly. What at first felt smooth now has a slight crunch to it, like dirt or gravel under your shoes. Eventually it is dirt and gravel, feeling as obvious and mundane as if you've never walked on anything else. The path starts to rise and curve, as if it's wrapping around a [[hill]].

You walk and walk, growing out of breath under the sun. On top of the hill sits a monument. You walk between its [[towering pillars]]. OR You circumvent the monument and head for [[the forest]] behind it.\ <div id="portraitL"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/monument.gif"></div><div id="portraitR"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/monument.gif"></div>\ (set: $card3 to "monument")

The pillars along the edges of the monument cast long shadows across the platform they enclose. Platform may not be the right word - it's an open, flat-floored area, all made of stone. It feels anachronous to its place and purpose. You chuckle to yourself because it reminds you of the sort of place where, if this was a [[video game]], the music would suddenly change and you'd realise you're standing in the middle of a bossfight arena.

The monument casts a shadow that haunts the forest for a long while, but eventually its domain comes to an end and you are surrounded by a dense forest, lush green moss climbing up the tree trunks. You follow [[a stream]] for a while, which seems to connect the monument to whatever is on the other side of the forest.

The music does not rise. The air is still with clouds gathering towards the south. Could it be that the bossfight took place already, ages ago? That you are out of time. You decided that this is where you will [[sit and wait]].

The sound of birds and cars rushing by on the A183 comforts you. Maybe what you're waiting for will come. [[...->END]]

You look up towards the town, lit dimly with the street lights. Not many cars are passing by at this hour, but traffic should be picking up soon. You look back towards the sea. You head up into the [[town]]. OR You decide to idle on the [[coast]] a while longer.\ <div id="portraitL"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/horizon.gif"></div><div id="portraitR"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/horizon.gif"></div>\ (set: $card3 to "horizon")

It's quiet around, but sometimes it's almost as if you can hear a sound, or a distant echo, of hooves clacking on the asphalt. You walk through rows of houses on eerie, empty streets. As the sun begins to rise, finally a car starts up near you, then another. And there, just behind a car turning off a street corner, you spot (link-reveal:" it - ")[body of an equine, tail of a dog, head of a woman with flowing hair. You [[speed]] up your steps.]

Setting your course parallel to the line where the sea meets the land, a strange shifting border, you walk down along the shore. Further up ahead you can see a strange structure, like a pier, but it doesn't really connect to anything. Or maybe it does, but that's a connection that was formed in a different time, to something that has since become obsolete and corroded. Spectres of the past echo through the area - you've thought this through your whole journey, but especially feel certain of it [[here]].

An anachronous landscape, rooted in the past, and in turn feeling like a derelict future. Who decided how time gets to flow in certain places? You [[walk on]].

Eventually your path culminates into an outcrop of ragged rocks, and you have no choice but to circle back to a set of stone steps leading up towards the streets. It's jarring to be back in the world of the living. Daylight is creeping in and people are starting to leave their houses. The empty beach with the alien structures rising from it feels like a [[distant]] memory now.

Off on the horizon line, backlit by the rising sun, wind turbines rise like leviathans about to encroach on the landscape. You turn and walk past a closed chip shop with two people idling in front of it, holding onto hot drinks and what look like pastries, steam [[rising ]]from their paper bags.

You catch glimpses of the creature, usually ducking behind vehicles or disappearing past corners of buildings. She's moving away from you, but at the same time it doesn't feel like she's trying to get you to stop following - rather, the opposite. She glances back at you from time to time, to make sure you are [[still there]].

In the end, you find yourself in a clearing within a grove of trees, standing in front of a [[large rock]] with deep grooves in it, and a small beech tree growing on top with its roots wrapped all around. The creature seems to be gone now, but the ground around the rock is littered with imprints of hooves of all sizes.

You reach out and touch the grooves in the rock - they feel ragged and cold. It looks like some beast has raked its claws across it, but you don't know what it could have been - the creature that led you here had no arms or claws to speak of. It seems like there's a lot more beings around you than you initially realised. You decide this is where you will rest for now, and settle on the ground, back laid against the rough texture of the rock. [[...->END]]

The stream leads you out into a small town or a village, along the river. You follow the path of the river, and at one point a particular feeling comes upon you - a visceral knowledge, or a strong conviction - that the monument's impact reaches out [[to here]]. You search for a physical marker, a stone with a carving, anything, but nothing turns up.

Eventually you manage to narrow down the area of impact, this sudden zone of confluence, to a small patch of weeds beyond the stone wall that lines the riverbank. You walk over to the nearby bridge to see if you can take a peek at what it actually is from a different angles, but it's no use. The connection point is there, but the infrastructure has corroded away. You know it deep in your heart that you will return. [[...->END]]

You come up through murky, brackish waters into the damp air of a stone structure. This, too, was a well at some point. You exit and carefully close the iron gate of the hut behind you. In the still air, the sunshine is blinding and you shadow your face with a hand, trying to stay mindful of the cars whizzing past. [[...->END]]

You recall how as a child you would wade in the shallows of the river not far from your grandparents' house - could it have been this very one? Your family has lived here for generations. Do their memories float down this same river also, all the different times and experiences [[mixed]] together?

The area used to have a lot of natural springs, water rising to the surface, but a lot of those were disrupted in the expansive mining operations of the past, and the springs and wells now run dry. Some are still there, marked with a placard, and some are overgrown with grass and weeds, or buried under debris. Do the memories of your forebearers that intercepted and flowed through those underground waterways now stand still under the earth, with nowhere to [[connect]] onto?

As the river carries you down and down, out towards the sea, you find comfort in the thought that water rarely stops still. There's connections that criss-cross all over the land, and some particles of the water that envelope you now may once have enveloped someone else in a different place, underground or over. That maybe even if some information doesn't carry on as knowledge, it can be connected to and felt, like how you feel the certain flow of a river when you dip your hand into it from the riverbanks. [[...->END]]

(align:"=><=")+(box:"X")[= (text-style:"smear","expand","fidget")[<span class = "bigfont">this map is not the territory</span>] click [[here->TITLESCREEN]] to start (text-style:"italic")[ <span class = "smallfont">This is a game by (link-repeat: "Petra Szemán")[(open-url:"https://www.petraszeman.com")]. It was commissioned by No More Nowt as their 2026 Digital Residency programme produced by OGRE Studio and funded by Arts Council England, with support from Into The Light and the Co. Durham residents who got involved in our engagement workshops.</span>]

Across from you in (text-style:"fidget")[the river ]sits a man, the water lapping at his pointed chin. His eyes are closed. You [[approach]] the man OR you let the [[river carry you]] downstream.\ <div id="portraitL"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/river.gif"></div><div id="portraitR"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/river.gif"></div>\ (set: $card3 to "river")

Time passes, and it could have been minutes, or days, or decades - it's impossible to tell. Sometimes the rocks and strata shift and you come out into into another cave, another mine shaft. After a [[while]], you realise that though your feet have continued to carry you forward, your fellow travellers are now gone.

With a blink you realise that you have come out into a clearing in a forest. Light filters through the crowns of the trees in streaks like water breaking under the surface of the sea. This place, you decide, is where you will rest. You can hear the sound of the waves, the rumbling of the North Sea, coming from above. [[...->END]]

With the stones now aligned comes a deep rumbling sound, like the slow creak of the heavy wings of rusted iron gates being pushed open for the first time in a long while. The light shifts and moves down to the far end of the tunnel. From it rises a strange procession, moving down the path marked by the stones and disappearing into the rock face. The sojourners vary - there's a woman, clothes and hair all wet, sticking to her body. There's a large boar with firey eyes, followed by a long reptile creature, perhaps what old bestiaries would have referred to as a wyrm. You shuffle inbetween the creatures, joining in their [[procession]].

It's slow at first, the water lapping at your ankles, then shin. Eventually you notice that it's rising faster and faster, filling up the passage, and you are carried away by the strengthening current, flowing through the interconnected tunnels, large underground cavities opening into eachother, or through small gaps between rocks, mere [[creases->line itself]] in their materials.

Is everyone who has ever touched these rocks down here in the pits with us in this timeline? If not, where are they now – and if yes, what part of them is on the rock surface? You crawl [[onwards]]. Maybe after a while you can even stand.

At points you can almost allow yourself to entertain the notion that your body is flattening. For the first time a sharp edge forms on your body, as if the window veil is lengthening into you. Who needs to cross any border when you can take on the material qualities of [[the border itself]]?

Any hole, any discreet opening can take on the quality of a portal, but especially so in water. As you dig, you remember the time in your early adult years where you were sitting on top of a boarded up well and the wooden planks caved in under you, weakened from internal rotting. A near-miss falling in a well sounds like something that would happen in childhood, in a fairytale - the realms of the latter often mistakenly relegated to the exclusive realms of childhood. Were the timelines wrong? A friend grabbed your arm and pulled as the planks cracked and the rotten pieces fell into the belly of well, with a dramatic (text-rotate-z:5)[plonk]. The [[water at the bottom]], about 3 or 4 metres deep, looked calm and black.

'I heard they plan to build more of those,' says one, nodding towards the horizon. 'I don't really mind that,' says the other. 'I actually think they're kind of beautiful.' [[...->END]]

The ground under your feet drops away for a split second, that strange feeling deep in your body like when you're falling in a dream, but it shifts back in place and you manage to stay grounded. You find yourself transported a strangely uniform [[tunnel]].

The floor of the tunnel has a scattering of smaller stones across it. They seem to form a straight line, though some of the stones are out of alignment. You realign the stones... ...to strenghten the [[ley line]]. OR ...to realign the [[waterways]] intercepted by the mining operations.\ <div id="portraitL"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/align.gif"></div><div id="portraitR"><img class="responsive-image" src="https://petrasz.neocities.org/NMN/align.gif"></div>\ (set: $card3 to "align")

The way the turbines loom on the horizon, it makes the scene feel like you're watching the legends of the deep past marching towards the leviathans of the present. But then another possibility occurs to you, that maybe the wind turbines themselves will shift and move along with the procession. What if they just continued across the sea, off into the distance, always following that old straight road? You decide to watch them. [[...->END]]