‘Everywhere at The End of Time’ The recovered journal log of Dante Telesphore: wayfarer and cartographer of the Melbourne North region.

The contents of this document were excavated from an unidentifiable (although visibly sentient) creature from a bog 42.2km north-west of Melbourne. Scouts reported to have been perplexed by the creature’s anatomy as there was no telling where the man, manuscript and plantera began or ended, everything was disturbingly conjoined by clammy vines.

Although most of the document was damaged due to exposure to extreme weather, a pre-calamity linguist decoded and translated the manuscript.

The following is the short collection of extracts completed by former Japanese writer ‘Haruki Murakami’. He studied Telesphore’s writings on the new city of Melbourne for 3 years but concluded they were nonsensical, until he had a dream giving him a ‘transcendental and multi-dimensional perspective on the map that allowed [him] to see directions only conceived by the mind’s eye’. Murakami was reported missing at age 94.

This document should find itself exclusively in the hands of graduate linguists and should not be distributed beyond NRMIT.

Cy1/152. Hunters Rest. 37.5811° S, 144.7139° E

The first time I encountered Victor was on a bleak, foggy morning exactly one year ago today. I find it fascinating that one can innocently tug at a single thread and accidentally unravel an entire garment. The grey abyss of sky, the isolated warmth of the bonfire amongst cold, overgrown ruins and the distant song of a hollowed traveller. All unravelled as a torrent of wind passed through the crumbling pillars; connecting two isolated points in time as if time were a tangled ball of unwoven thread.

The smell of burning moss at the sword’s hilt and the crackling bonfire embers rising into the mist ascended my mind into the foggy void. It dropped me in a rowboat in a boundless oceanic plane with the faint shadow of a cliffs edge beyond reach. A wall of steam pipes and impossibly contorted valves can be seen through the veil of still water and in the distance; images of floating cities shrouded in gold and silver form and melt into the ocean within seconds. The temporal dimensions lay on an incomprehensible plane and deceived me into rowing towards the shrouded cliff for what felt like centuries.

This would happen often in Hunters Rest: the waiting room between time and limbo. Thoughts would manifest then become runaways, only the trail of trodden dirt to prove that a thought once existed. Such a place is a porous sponge for thought, each branch away from the bonfire its own form of meditative seduction.

The cliff to the west was popular amongst scholars. They would stand by the bonfire and look down onto the eerily still, endless sea to ponder and presumably produce the scribblings of madmen found deep in uncharted caverns, attempting to unlock the secrets of the modern world.

Victor owed this condition of ‘hollowing’ to the tribulations of traversing the modern world or, more accurately, ‘standing at the edge of time looking down on the abyss, unable to decide whether to jump or wait for the calamity’. Unlike me, he wouldn’t fight the current, he’d allow it to carry his thoughts. In fact, he used a pre-war instrument (MIDI keyboard, image attached pg. 397) to recreate sounds of ‘human sorrow’.

He showed me his music yesterday. Called it ‘nihilistic jazz’. Beyond the layered soundscape of drones and distorted buzzes, I couldn’t discern much aside from visceral screaming.

Cy1/387. RAINE FOREST. 37.8610° S, 144.8850° E

I feel as though my consciousness remained at Hunters Rest,

Like flames wrapped around the sword’s hilt lodged in the bonfire.

Men driven to madness by the self-instilled notion that god lies within writings of the old world.

Derelict lake towns on fire. Ash and mud. Petrichor and scorched firewood.

Sky like spilled paint. A chamber sonata couldn’t convey my ambivalent feeling of dread and apathy.

After a while it becomes blotted like a Rorschach test.

Murky black, scattered ink. White, plain paper defaced; an un-reversible mistake.

Lately, that’s all I’m looking at. It’s all the same. All insanity.

Cy1/389. RAINE FOREST. 37.8610° S, 144.8850° E

‘Those individuals who gaze upon Dagon’s true form will have their mind shattered across all planes of existence: the dream realm, tangible reality and the infinite possibilities beyond. Thus, the prophesied caretaker will save humanity from the edge of time. [text missing] Only the song of pure and untapped misery will join the consciousness of man and awaken the new god. When his counter is defeated the thousand eyes of Dagon may enter our realm and return Neo Melbourne to it’s primordial state. [text missing] When the old god reset the Earth, he lost himself and thus, had no canvas for which to base humanity upon. Humanity was ripped and torn into millions of fragments, weakening a singular format into a plethora of simplistic organisms.

We will gaze upon the wonderful monstrosity of Dagon soon as a unified being.’

Translator’s notes: My dreams suggest strange things about this entry. I don’t believe it was written by Telesphore; at least willingly. I will meditate on this further over honey tea and Jaffa cake. Then perhaps the Old God will return to me with the missing pieces.

Cy6/999. Hunters Rest. 37.5811° S, 144.7139° E

I could never discern my thoughts from dreams. The minds eye is no less deceitful than our physical perceptions. As such the swirling void at my feet is as real as it is fake…

Translator’s notes: Whenever I looked upon the page I’d feel as though my eyes were decomposing and melting into my skull. I would check the mirror to find they were A-Okay! The residual however, was a slight pain in my neocortex. For that reason, I don’t intend to return to Telesphore’s manuscript until tomorrow. For now, I will visit the 808s café for some R and R and carrot cake. I feel I am more deserving of that than ever.