Teleology

When our ancestors began the Map of the Labyrinth, they did so by setting out its perimeter. On a sheet of canvas, measuring five feet by five, they painted using plant dyes and ground minerals mixed with water. In designing a labyrinth it may seem easy to begin. The contribution of the originators was considered clumsy by successive generations; they thought the wide pathways and easily followed routes too big and too undemanding. And, they used up too much of the canvas. In response, the second period of work revelled in ornate digressions and cleverer-than-thou dead ends. With the passing of this fad, the inheritors of the map discovered they were continually forced to return to the outer perimeter in order to be able to progress their addition to the map. As the centuries fell away, the map grew ever inwards to an unknown centre.

One hundred and fifty years ago, at the fourth Council of the Map of the Labyrinth, it was decreed that, owing to the lack of free canvas left at the centre, work would be halved as historians and philosophers were consulted to establish what exactly that centre would be. There were those who wished to continue as before, to add their part and take their glory; they claimed that the centre was an issue for the generations of the future to deal with. This argument was opposed by the belief that it was a duty, so close to the end, to steer the map to its unknown heart.

These are not the only issues causing concern. Replication has become a problem. Due to the complexity of the map in these later days, the number of accurate and up to date copies is diminishing at an escalating rate. The scale of detail being produced in our time is beyond the ability of anyone not already working on the original, it has become such a precise science. There is a good copy in a southern city, where the people have been openly saying that their map is more accurate than the original. These are dangerous times. These are end times, for the blank canvas has been reduced to such a minuscule portion, that the merest application of ink may blot out the last of it, and our centre, our heart, will be forever unknowable.