Over three thousand years after the birth of Christ on Earth, cosmic drift, gravitational reorganizations, and accumulated singularities caused the collision of clusters of galaxies at a meeting point in space, known as the Silver River. These high-temperature galaxies moved past one another with intense speed and friction, trailing dark matter in their midst. Planets and stars were hurled into other arms of new galaxies or taken from their own. As the Milky Way was thrown past other galaxies, our planet was not exempt, despite its peaceful orbit before (Fig. 1).

Earth’s sun, known to its scientists as Sol, was torn from its seat in space by the gravitational pull of another sun, known as Ignis, belonging to the Artemis Galaxy (Fig. 2, Fig. 3). Despite Earth’s exponential technological achievements over the last centuries, it was still not enough to prevent the chaos that erupted as its sun was taken away, and its light slowly went out: the rationing of electricity, the explosions of militaristic conflicts, and the destruction and transformation of art, amongst other changes that radically changed the course of history. Individual voices cried out, attempting to document their experiences. In this anthropological retrospective we have curated, we searched for voices of melancholy and love attempting to survive against illnesses of light exposure, of diary entries of blind men staggering through worlds of self-constructed color, of sailors, philosophers, and classical scholars making sense of this new universe. Earth’s solar system was thrown into disarray, leaving it drifting into the stars. From this point onwards, we call Earth Planeta Nox.

As Sol was drawn to Ignis, the two joined each other in an increasingly stable binary star orbit (Fig. 4). Of the planets surrounding Ignis, only one was suitable for intelligent life. Previous civilizations existed on this planet, and great glaciers that had frozen up the oceans now began to thaw rapidly under the combined heat of the two suns. There was no more night here, only eternal light. People worshipped the light, and wished it to be dimmed. Their relationship with it was as complex as Earth’s relationship to darkness. From this point onwards, we call this planet Planeta Lux. The changing of the suns is called the Great Reversal.

The following anthropological retrospective contains first-person documents, transcriptions of radios, preserved diary entries, refined sketches, blueprints, botanical anatomies, and more from across both planets. Nearly four thousand years after the Great Reversal occurred, sufficient technology was invented on both planets to make communicative contact, leading to the tide of cross-planetary scholarship, including this collection, which aims to give an overview of human life on both planets.

navigating the collection

These artifacts are listed in the order of our discovery, but it does not necessarily mean that they were created in that same order. Please note as you enter this collection that some of the individuals in these narratives are attempting to emulate a nostalgia for a time much longer ago, even if they existed in much more contemporary times. Remain careful of whether or not they may be trying to deceive a future viewer. Remain compassionate for the plights they faced which we may never understand.

Chronologically, the time of the Great Reversal, which is 3045 B.C.E. in Earth’s years, is dated as 0 A.S., or anno solaris, the year of the sun. Both Nox and Lux scholars use the A.S. system to coordinate the timeline across the planets. Each artifact contains a time stamp at the top.

our anthropologists

If you’re curious about the origin and process of our project, you can learn more about this project in our ending note, here – but we recommend you wait until after exploring the issue to step beyond this world. In this explorative first issue, we would like to credit the following anthropologists, many of whom excavated, transcribed, and refined these artifacts for human viewing. For written documents – Jordan Davidson, Sarah Feng, Spencer Greenfield, Roxana Grunenwald, Hailey Schoelkoepf, Suraj Singareddy, Hannah Szabó. For visual images – Emily Cai, Karen Lin, Anasthasia Shilov.

For the best viewing experience, we recommend reading this in full-screen on desktop.

questions

We welcome inquiries, critiques, and debates. For ethical concerns about sourcing, especially in reference to children and escaped cult members, please note that we received IRB approval for each document. Reach out to us at cortexmagazine@gmail.com. And without further ado – we present to you our collection, Lux \ Nox.

< back to table of contents | next >