Day 2
Psst, wake up.
If you look out of the windows this early in the morning, you can see flocks of galahs and cockatoos standing around in giant groups as if they were holding council like the aldermen. Of course, just like a bunch of old white men who stand around yelling at each other with their wives rolling their eyes and actually getting the job done, the world of bird and people is not that vastly different.
It's still a little bit dark but soon, after we've had some coffee (or something that is trying to pass itself off as coffee) and a muffin with jam, the sun will rise and the sky will break golden. If we weren't pelting along at 233 mph, then we might be able to hear the silver song of the lark but all we'll get is the steady drumbeat of the engine out front.
We're coming up to St Alphonse Station; which is the smallest of the three railway terminals in Plovdiv and that's where our first excursion on this journey is.
Plovdiv is in a sort of weird place in the world because there is a wall which runs through the centre of it. The wall was started in the late 90s and was finally completed in the 10s of the next century. It is not the result of a political divide but rather the result of a technological one.
The older part of Plovdiv was built in an era when there was black and white television, when broadcast media and print media were the only sources of information. The telephone exchange which is now nothing more than a museum, is housed inside what used to be the Great Hall of Telephony, which was built when all of the phone calls in the land had to be made at a single point and when there was only one line out and so if it was in use, no telephone calls were received or made.
The Great Hall of Telephony was built at a time when you had dedicated furniture for the express purpose of keeping a telephone on.
The Great Hall of Telephony is across the street from the larger and more impressive stone building called The Memory Palace, which straddles the wall running through the city of Plovdiv.
The Memory Palace is a truly wonderful building, with an untolled number of staff, who keep the place running for as much as 20 hours a day. Truth be told, sometimes they will even work overtime and present their findings in the middle of the night.
There are several wings which surround the central chamber of The Memory Palace; some of which are closed, some of which are open but nobody seems to know where the keys are¹, and some of which are in constant working use.
The National Picture Gallery contains probably millions of photographs, of all kinds of places and possibly a photograph of every head that nation has had the pleasure to have known. Please be advised that this is kind of a rolling gallery; which means that there are photographs in there which no longer bear any resemblance to the real world.
The National Picture Gallery also contains snapshots of print media and stills from other wings of the building. The beauty of The Memory Palace is that if you want to go looking for a thing, there will often be cross references to archives in other wings of the building.
If we head out of the National Picture Gallery and step into the centre of the building, we find a seventeen sided chamber which is twelve stories tall. On the floor of the chamber are several green blaze tables with bookstands; and for most of the time there are several research projects going on at the same time.
You will note that hanging on some of the walls, are giant banners which display the current propaganda campaigns of the nation. Currently we have Worry, Calm, Existential Dread, Hand Washing and No Sport; which are all sponsored by the outside corporation of Covid-19. We also have the banners for the Queen Of Silver, Cats², Church; the banners for propaganda campaigns for Work, Maths, and another newly installed banner for this trip around the nation.
You will note that there is also a section of the roof which has windows in the shape of a cross; which allows a projection of that to sort of move around the inside of the chamber. Curiously, if the weather outside is dark and treacherous, that projection seems to be stronger. That nation has sent an emissary to act as a subcontractor for a king; who often shows up in weird places, sometimes unannounced.
The National Sound and Video Archive contains loads and loads of snippets of audio and video, which are recalled occasionally. We suspect that this archive is run by an idiot because from time to time, when there should be silence in the centre chamber, there will often be music playing from somewhere up on level 6. What's even more annoying is that they will play the same songs a loop for a while and even only just a small section.
The National Sound Archive is more than likely connected to the nation's propaganda radio station the Bigbrother Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), as it constantly broadcasts the incessant internal monologue of the nation. Contrary to the suspicions of other nations, there is only one voice in here.
The Video Archive contains a similar kind of set to the Sound Archive but it doesn't get anywhere near the same amount of recall requests.
The other major section of The Memory Palace is the Omnitopical Card File. The Omnitopical Card File contains billions upon billions of sleek grey cards, which purport to contain facts. More than likely, loads of those facts are obsolete or just plain wrong, but entire stacks of them are surprisingly proven to be right on a consistent basis.
They contain everything from base assumptions, to abstract concepts, to sport statistics, to entire sections of books, as well as trivial items and lists.
Take the concept of 'lamp' - a request for a card from the Omnitopical Card File returns:
- a small light bulb
- an even smaller LED bulb
- a coloured warning signal with a label, on an instrument panel
- a small appliance with a base and a bendy shaft with a light bulb and metal shade.
- a similar appliance with a brass base and a green glass shade
- yet another appliance with a kind of umbrella made from brass and pieces of coloured glass
- a metal thing that looks like a gravy boat; which you might find in the story of Aladdin
There is a word of warning. Although I do not fully understand how the Omnitopical Card File works, I am aware that it is organised in a rolling stack compactus and in discreet boxes. When making a request, the archivists will look for that thing, open a box, retrieve only that thing and then return a result. Other nation's Memory Palaces and archives are presumed to be arranged like a giant ball of electrical wires but to discover that would require taking a trip inside someone else's mind.
¹which is ironic given that it is The Memory Palace.
²not the musical; just cats.
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