Korridorium

♫ The Mar­vel­lous 3D Myth Fab­ber ♫

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I enter the cor­ri­dor. This time, I think the pro­fes­sor really went over­board. Every­thing has a play­ful Vic­to­rian feel: on the walls, small foun­tains bub­ble beneath oval mir­rors framed in carved ivory. So this is his lat­est trick: the “Myth Machine.” Some­thing got Ceril think­ing that the world’s myths are all tapped out. “A ‘mython’ short­age?” I asked smart-aleckly, but he just gave me a con­temp­tu­ous look. Appar­ently, today isn’t about ele­men­tary par­ti­cles unknown to con­ven­tional sci­ence.

He had me sum­ma­rize what a myth is, but he was­n’t sat­is­fied with my Wikipedia knowl­edge and explained that, as a leisure mythol­o­gist, he spends a lot of time study­ing “arche­typal nar­ra­tives that can serve as a col­lec­tive model.” “Harry Pot­ter?” I sug­gested, and “Avatar?” The pro­fes­sor fur­rowed his brow: “That’s pre­cisely what wor­ries me: this omnipresent regres­sion into mag­i­cal think­ing. The myth of the noble sav­age and that of an enchanted world that obeys human will rather than the laws of nature—unfortunately, not very help­ful or pro­duc­tive when it comes to the future of human­ity.”

Hence his machine. It’s sup­posed to cre­ate the myth for the 21st cen­tury: the uni­ver­sal story that gives new mean­ing to every­thing we expe­ri­ence and strive for—and I’m sup­posed to bring this cre­ation into the light of day.

The fab­ric-cov­ered doors in the cor­ri­dor are labeled with shift­ing let­ters. Just like in a dream, you can’t quite make out what they say, and they’re con­stantly chang­ing. Did that just say some­thing about “sell­ing one’s soul to the devil”? Or “cre­ation of the world in seven days”? Or “Emperor Bar­barossa is just sleep­ing”?

I start get­ting pretty woozy, so I make sure to get myself out of that machine fast.

“It looks like it’s still at the very begin­ning of its cal­cu­la­tions,” I tell the pro­fes­sor in a steady voice.

“But it’s already been work­ing for six whole days,” he says sadly. Then he shrugs: “Oh well, let’s give it another week.” And see­ing my expres­sion: “A month?” I don’t answer, so Ceril finally sighs in dis­ap­point­ment: “Fine: a year. That should put us on the safe side.” I nod con­tent­edly. Any­thing to avoid hav­ing to go back in there any­time soon!

The fol­low­ing night, I dream I’m flee­ing from a mas­sive horde of fairy-tale and myth­i­cal fig­ures, all des­per­ate to be my “role model.” I wake up drenched in sweat. Hope­fully this night­mare won’t haunt me night after night for a whole year.

(It did­n’t. Instead, a pretty crazy new class­mate took my dreams by storm. But that’s another story.)

Entropie (Video, 15 min):