Part 1: Uqbar 1

At the far end of the corridor lies a cell filled with countless communication devices.
A solitary figure, tall yet stooped, waits within his modern citadel, listening for the dormant voices of telephones, wireless sets, and phonographs to awaken.

The Black Telephone
On the cell's leftmost wall hangs a black telephone. Its metal casing is cheap and rusted. Manufactured in 1977, it arrived as a gift from the National Foucault Studies Association and the powers that be.

The Idealist: And still, its prototype eludes me. This is a mere replica of a perfect form.

The Idealist: As we seem doomed to hear nothing but grievances on the futility of learning and the tedium of oppression and power, we might as well name this thing Bureaucracy's Most Miserable Mouthpiece.

Zahir: Your choice of name is acceptable, yet still, I see you bending it to your ideals.

Zahir: You cannot keep doing this, Idealist. Grasping only a fragment of a thing and then twisting it to your whims ...

The Brown Telephone
Suspended on the cell's right wall, a solemn yet refined wooden box, traced with the warped inscriptions of the arcanum. Now and then, arcanists choose it over ink and parchment to send their messages.

The Idealist: How, then, should I regard it, or regard them, for that matter? Comala Prison and the so-called Manus Vindictae-living proof of dependency theory in its purest form!

Zahir: Your theories are far too radical.

The Idealist: A moment, please ... Yes, let's call this The Parable of a Blind Age.

The Silver Telephone
A cutting-edge combination of arcanum and advanced technology wrapped up in a frigid metal exterior. Signals surge through its circuits; its frame quivers as it drones in a low wail.

Zahir: Only Laplace could have produced such a thing.

The Idealist: Observe how it has been altered in the most unusual ways-signals wander through its delicate pathways, dissolving into obscurity, their source irretrievably lost ...

The Idealist: Lost, as we are, in modernity.

Zahir: It's nothing more than an effort to conceal the identity of the person on the other end.

The Idealist: ... You're right.

The Idealist: Why are we bothering to even name these horrid machines? This is the most worthless game of semantics we've ever entertained.

Zahir: We were waiting for a call.

The Idealist: A telephone does not ring simply by virtue of our being here-just as Estragon and Vladimir will be forever waiting in vain. In language, we must deconstruct what is taken as truth.

The Idealist: More importantly-what and when is now? Are we still within reality, or is this an edifice of our own memories recalled later? If we are only memories, then waiting for anything, even a telephone's ringing, is a paradox.

Zahir: Caught between the endless avenues of what has been and what is yet to come-like every one of us.

Zahir: Patience. All we need to do is wait.

The Idealist: Ah, a scene lifted straight from the great absurdist tradition. Our players today-The Idealist and Zahir.

The Idealist: Act One: A Human in Pursuit of Transcendentality.

The Idealist: Our tragic star, Aleph, a human consumed by the desire to grasp the primordial core of the world, to reach a singular philosophical truth-a concept with neither genesis nor terminus.

The Idealist: He was proud once, certain that nothing could be more excruciating than the burden of the unknown. That certainty would break. His pursuit led him to the gates of transcendentality, where he understood at last-the key was scattered across the fabric of existence itself.

The Idealist: Finally, one day, he devoured his Ouroboros with unflinching resolve, a distilled fusion of sulfur and mercury-submitting to the forbidden elixir as it unraveled and redefined his very form.

The Idealist: He thinks to himself: "I'll find the ultimate truth, and soon.

*rrring:—*
*rrring-rrring—*
*rrring-rrring-rrring—*
*a sharp, piercing ring*
A telephone dares to disturb his scene. Their heated discourse halts as each withdraws to the other side of the mirror.
The man in the wooden chair gradually lifts the receiver.

Aleph: Hello.