Living Memory in the Settlement of Babylonia

In the sprawling vertical megalopolis of the Settlement of Babylonia, entire layers of human ingenuity exist beneath the surface of a dying Earth. Its people live in an imperfect future working collectively towards the preservation of their legacy. After Phaeton's Flare traveled from the Sun and hit Earth's atmosphere, our planet underwent a slow spiral of destruction.

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Starting with the scorching heat, our rainforests where eradicated in a matter of years. The consequences were beyond catastrophic. In 10 years our forests burned killing off most animals in the area. The population of South America and North America died out for 70%. Oxygen production drastically lowered, which caused temperatures all around the planet to raise 5°C. Dark ocean water heats up to 4.75°C.This meant tsunamis. Miami, Manhattan, London, Bangkok, Bombay and Shanghai are all flooded.

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Most of central Europe and Asia will suffer from heatwaves, raising body temperatures of those unprotected to 41°C. At this rate about 300.000 people die every year due to lack of oxygen received by the brain. People have moved to safer areas up high and have taken shelter.

High carbon levels make it necessary for mankind to create its own oxygen from C02 in a process called Solid Oxide Electrolysis (producing 22g of Oxygen per 100g of C02 per hour). Humanity takes shelter inside volcano tunnels and glaciers. Over the years water temperatures raised so much that bubbles of boiling water appear near the bottom of the ocean where pressure is higher. The bubbles burst with explosive force as they reach the lower pressure surface. This caused shockwaves triggering eruptions in oceanic volcanoes. These eruptions released large quantities of methane gas into the air.Once the earth's methane level hit 5%, the air became flammable...

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In the need of a long-term survival strategy—mankind started development on their most ambitious construction project to date. The Settlement of Babylonia, named in homage to its spiritual successor of ancient times Babylonia, is a megalopolis built deep under the surface of Tajikistan. Protected by dense walls of salt-rock and supplied with fresh water from underground lakes—but most importantly, high up enough to have a lower toxicity in the air—the Settlement of Babylonia became the one true safe-haven for mankind.

From all over the world, settlers traveled here to rebuild their lives and take care of their families and friends. But collectively they were given a new purpose.

The end of life of Earth as we know it is a clear and impending doom. The solution? There is nothing that will guarantee survival. However, there is "Plan B"—The Library of Babel. Together, each adult member of the Settlement of Babylonia is given a task based on their unique skillsets. Together, they archive, build and prepare the Library—an unmanned spaceship carrying the collective knowledge of mankind that will be sent into space with destination Andromeda Galaxy.

If we can't survive in physical form, let our digital memory be preserved and understood by others out in the cosmos.

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But if we stay on Earth, we can take a moment to explore the Settlement of Babylonia...

On the surface, all the way down to Level 2, the air is too toxic, the ultraviolet radiation too harsh, and so mankind is wearing a protective hazmat suit. A uniform for the caretakers of collective memory.

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Operational preservation is what is on the mind of all.

The people of the Settlement, especially those who volunteer on Level 2, walk slowly through irradiated ruins, scanning fragments of the old world. Ceramic tiles, vinyl records, broken motherboards, untranslated scripts—all are fed into the Library, a monolithic unmanned vessel being constructed on Level 1. Once launched, the Library will house both THINKER and RECEIVER, two supercomputers: one to process, one to transmit. Neither designed to return.

It’s a kind of secular ark, and it doesn’t carry pairs—it carries code.

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Earth as a Collective Archive

What remains when the rhythms are lost completely, and what do humans do next to prevent complete extinction?

In Level 4 and below, the society of Babylonia lives an improvised life. There is music here. There are shops, restaurants, theaters, parks and every form of hospitality and entertainment from the old world. Children learn to speak three languages by the age of seven, not for any nationalistic purpose, but because the Settlement understands that language is a vault of worldview—and to lose one is to lose an entire mode of perception. In this way, Babylonia is not just multicultural. It is post-cultural.

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In the Settlement of Babylonia, no one is saving the world—it’s already too late for that. What’s happening instead is the quiet, epic work of translation. From story to syntax, the collective memory of our world is converted into data to be understood. Where the 20th century worshiped the individual genius, the Settlement of Babylonia runs on swarm logic. Knowledge is extracted by hand, but uploaded by hive.

Each individual contributes to the collective. Together, they prepare the ultimate archive that preserves all that is left.

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Epoch of Distraction vs. Epoch of Dedication

Right now we are witnessing the rise of what some have called the Epoch of Distraction—a time of self-administered sedation via endless feeds of pixelated data. The society we're exploring in Syntactic Labyrinths is in many ways a counter-movement to the status quo in our world. The Settlement of Babylonia has a simple founding ethos: preserve together. Unlike the contemporary societies, who blinked at the brink and turned toward comfort, the Settlement looked long into the night and asked: what can be saved, not in gold or oil, but in language? What is the syntax of survival?

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And so the Syntactic Labyrinths were built—interlinked networks of preservation made to be understood: oral, written, visual, and gestural. Not one central server, but hundreds of chambers, all memorized redundantly across human and machine.

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A Monolith of Collective Knowledge

Every child in Babylonia is raised with the understanding that they are temporary passengers of an impermanent world. There is no myth of infinite growth. There is the belief in the Sun as God. And there is a practical reverence for entropy, and the humility to live with it. If Earth is now a mausoleum, Babylonia is its scribal sect, brushing dirt from the glyphs before the final wind comes.

And yet—there is happiness. There is dancing here. There is ambition and love. The people of the Settlement of Babylonia are not post-human. They live deeply, attuned to every nuance of loss and longing.

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Ending with Eyes Open

Today we're often left staring into imbalance, into systems grown monstrous and unmoored. Syntactic Labyrinths explores an alternate world. One that thrives in quiet determination. A group of people from across the globe working together towards a collective purpose.

It’s not hope that drives them. It’s duty. It’s love, written down for a future to understand.

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