SILVER FALL

[Terrycloth]

In the beginning, the great spirit wall separated the timeless empty
void from the infintely dense sea of chaos, where everything possible
happened at once. Somehow, someone or something punched a hole in the
spirit wall, allowing chaos to leak throughh into the void, and vice
versa. The hole is the world's heart, and the bubble of less-dense
matter that formed above the hole is the world.

The world is shaped like an inverted cone, with the heart at the
bottom, at the tip. Chaos is visible overhead, brightly shining in the
day and scabbing over with ice at night, which melts every morning
into a brilliant silvery waterfall which refreshes the lake that
covers the world's heart, which otherwise would gurgle through the
hole into the void. The walls of the world are a mile-thick crust of
rock, beyond which lies the sea of chaos.

And the people are the shards of the spirit wall -- when the hole in
the wall was punched, the impact came from the void, sending the
shards into the sea of chaos or, if they were lucky, into the world.
Their spirits, on which their memories are written in a spidery
language of unknown origin, are intangible and invulnerable, and in
the presence of just the right amount of chaos, form bodies of flesh
around themselves which are neither, but have the important qualities
of being conscious and able to sense and touch the world.

[Rowyn]

The Amdala are a race of tunnelers, with long tubular furred bodies
and short legs and arms. Their hands and feet once ended in strong
claws for digging, but as they came to rely more on tools their
natural claws have atrophied. They live in warrens dug out of the
walls of the world, not far above the surface of the heart-lake.

Most of their towns and cities are dug near the surface, with walls
only five or ten feet thick to separate them from the inner world.
But members of the Cult of the Void are different: they believe that
God is the great Void beyond the spirit wall, and that the Void
punched the hole in the wall in order to connect with Chaos. The
world is nothing but a scab that Chaos created to fend off the Void.
It is the duty of the Void Cultists to fulfill their god's plan, and
get closer to the sea of chaos. So they dig ever deeper into the
walls of the world, crafting sophisticated ventilation systems and
engineering plans that -- they hope -- will one day allow them to
break through the crust itself and be as one with the sea of chaos.

[Bard Bloom]

Aging is a serious issue, for those whose memories are written on the outside of their bodies.  There is simply only so much space to write. 

Some people run out.  They remember what they did in their well-detailed youth; but of the last month, or the last decade,they can never know anything.

Some people become cautious.  In a month, there may only be a single memory worth keeping.  They live carefully-pruned lives.  In their old age, they are happy and think very well of themselves.  Or rather, they think very well of the near-strangers that are all of themselves they know.

And some people, when they run out of space, sprout wings to write on.

[Terrycloth]

For people whose written memories are visible -- who stretch their
spirits tightly across their skin -- one occasional indulgence is to
visit a tattoo parlor, where a bizarre play augmented with
hallucinogenic drugs makes beautiful, if illegible, patterns of
'writing' to adorn themselves with. "I'm not sure what happened in
there, but apparently it looked like a skull with a snake threading
through the eye sockets..."

[Terrycloth]

Sometimes, the Amdala void cultists succeed. Every so often, an
explosion of molten rock shoots out of the world-wall to sink to the
bottom of the lake, and be swallowed up by the heart. The immediate
aftermath of such an event is the best time to find new, blank spirits
to teach how to think and live.

[May Wasserman]

Mirabelle has made a career of writing these plays. She never watches
them herself; her memories are already full enough of the words and
scenes that comprise them. But she tests them on animals, who are
drugged and left alone to watch the strange, chaotic stories unfold. The
patterns left on animals never match those of people, and the ones on
people never quite match each others, though there are certain
similarities. "It's the variation that makes them special," Mirabelle
tells her customers. "That's what makes it a high art and not an
ordinary commodity. Your memories, your experiences, are unique to you,
and this will be too."

She doesn't really believe that, of course. But the waiver keeps people
from demanding for refunds when they don't like the final design.