(a treatise on musicology from the 26th century, in which Cal Hunter's work is discussed.)
midday, 5-25-2525. Bright sun, still very hot.
Brattleboro, Vermont
I am the third academic music historian to dip the twig into the blackberry juice on the subject of the work and mystery of Calbraith Hunter. It is known that many others worked on this material in the past. Some rumor that certain of the narratives are the work of Hunter himself. Did he write some of these narratives in his old age? Speculation. Nothing whatever wrong with that. There is so little to go on, that any treatise must speculate. The most reasonable understanding of the sources for the narratives is that others who knew of Hunter took up this work. There is very little reason to believe that Hunter pulled a morganfreeman.
Why, as a scholar, add more to the literature? Since the Great Collapse, there have been few more fundamental truths about the continued existence of humanity than the importance of expression, the importance of past expressions, and the nurturing of future expressions. We now take it for granted that writing is laborious. Once there was a time when words could be 'processed.' Once there was a pen that could write endlessly upside down. So it is said. The people who say these things do so in the same breath that we commonly say 'and there once was a company called google.' We therefore write carefully, truthfully, and without unnecessary exaggeration. That, at least, is the current ideal.
Perhaps though, the place to start with Hunter is exactly with that expression, though let us state it as a fact and amplify upon it. There once WAS a conglomerate or 'multi-national' based in the former USA known as Google. The common person of our time cannot quite grasp what Google was. People think of it as a saying with a funny word that means 'don't bullshit me.' In fact, Google was one of those forces that had such great potential, and very nearly swallowed civilization whole, changed the human social contract, and gave every human being with access to its services the right to alter their face and personality. The swallowing up was profound. It (this entity) absorbed almost every new idea and mechanism. It is difficult now, as we struggle to survive in our enclaves, hearing only now and then from other similar sites, to imagine a time when a populous planet was interconnected by instantaneous communication. Many simply reject the idea as a fairy tale. Certainly, the Flat Earthers of Petersboro are among these. But I believe these tales of Google to be true. I believe, having studied the documents that have come down from the Before Time that not only was Google real, it was the source of the Hunter mystery.
That Google was all encompassing, or at least vast, does not mean that it was responsible for what happened. Most agree that many forces combined to bring about the Age of Challenge that we inhabit. I believe that Google could have been a force for delivery from cataclysm, or at least enlightenment. Its downfall, as I understand it, was that it was built on a specific power source, needed in such quantities that it could not be sustained, or survive, when the power was lost. We have many archaic words that refer to this power. Few have researched it, and fewer still can describe the system in detail. I think it important to mention this knowledge and pass it forward.
Here's what I've heard: humanity learned, some 700 years ago, to put to use in dwellings the power of lightning. This force was called electricity. It had been known since remote antiquity. It was not until the 18th century that it began to be studied. By the 19th century, its secrets had been explored enough that it came to be in some way harnessed. The harnessing began with illumination. Artificial light sources were brought into homes, and a system was implemented to support this in a general way throughout the human population. After this, development of this power was very rapid. By the 20th century this perversion had tipped the balance of nature. We still say things like 'zap,' and 'power up.' We especially relish the benediction that mentions the loss of 'power.' Our peans to the balance of nature always include the mourning of our loss of power. To future generations, as an academic music historian, in acknowledgment of my exalted position and general knowledge, I would like to summarize what power is and was and how it was lost.
Power was electrical power. To create enough of it for everyone on the planet, a great heat was created. The heat was so great that the balance of nature was tipped. As we know, nature is self correcting. The correction meant that power was lost, and many died. This is the truth, and I tell it plainly. With the power lost, and so many gone, the balance of nature gradually righted itself. The survivors, our forefathers, emerged from caves and sanctuaries and built anew upon the ruins of what was lost. That is humanity's way, believe it. We bow to nature and vow to preserve her balance. Our new power has nature's blessing. Still, after so many centuries, we suffer for what was lost. They say, and I believe, that there was once more even oscillations in planetary surface temperature.
Let me say more about the Great Collapse. I will now address issues specific to my treatise on Hunter. In the very short time before the power was lost, there was a time of great confusion. It is said that everyone spoke in lies. The so-called Great Nation, USA, had dominated the planet for a century or so, but its leadership began to falter. The problems with nature, I speculate, caused problems in every one of nature's areas. Human beings were not exempt, and thus they did not plan an orderly retreat. It is said, and I believe, that there was a rapidly accelerating loop of events that led to the loss of power. The leadership, believing in a sort of superstition that suggested that as much power as was needed could be had simply by destroying expression. There was only a short time before the loss of power to do this, but the attempt was very aggressive. People pledged against their natures and if they cheated on their pledge had their expressions and right to express violently removed. Very soon after this, power began to falter and people began to both die, be displaced, and to be relocated and killed. The power did not die all at once. Power became another thing that was fought over. Nature, however, exacted such a great toll in its imbalance, that ultimately the humans, many species of animals and plants, and the many systems that interconnect these things were either eradicated or driven into very limited circumstances. Very little survived. Expressions from this time are particularly scarce. Almost nothing that depended upon power, and by that I mean specifically electric power, was saved. Things that were saved were not the well-known things. The great libraries were destroyed. The repositories of art were also destroyed. Records of all kinds were destroyed. The list goes on and on, so that it is easier to speak of what survived.
Hunter survived because his work was obscure. No one thought to weed it out. It survived because of chance: a building down in Boston was in part spared. Parts of the big repository in what was called DC (What Hunter calls DC) were so far underground that they were spared. Of course humans fought over and lived in the lower levels of the repository. Much material was burned for heat and fuel. Much more was used as bedding and asswipe. It survived because it was out of the way and useless. It survived because people ultimately came to esteem anything that survived. Finally, in the litany of reasons Hunter's works survived, it survived because certain of his items were written in what used to be called 'ink' (twig and berry juice) on heavy paper. The oddest aspect of Hunter's survival involves what we call the mystery. Some refer to these documents as the narratives, as I have in an earlier page. While earlier historians have speculated that Hunter himself wrote these narratives, I have made the astonishing discovery that they were part of Google. In the body of my treatise, I distinguish between the First Person narratives, the Omniscient Narrator narratives, and my commentaries, which I call the Third Person. I am, literally, the third person. I write clearly, and I believe that I write truthfully.
