Preface by the unknown copyist

"as I walked along the seastrand, I saw a shining object cast upon the beach by the high tide [...], the object spekled mysteriously, that which greed could not do was done by curiosity, and I descended, wading kneep-deep into the water, and I snatched it up. At first glance, it was just a common bottle of fine glass, carefully sealed with pitch. Immediately I called my driver and rode home. That evening, in the privacy of my study, I broke the bottle. Inside was a scroll of paper, the manuscript of Captain Adam Queensdale, deted 23 October 1761.

Although it had been well protected, over one hundred and twenty-five years the bottle had been carried by the ocean currents, the paper had suffered a degree of damage. I spent several exciting evenings copying the contents of the original which threatened to dintegrate into dust and ashes at any moment. The text contained a description of a shipwreck that only Captain Queensdale had survived; a description of the island, Ultima Thule, north of Iceland, where the castaway was taken in by the inhabitants, members of the heretical secto of Two-Wheelers, exiled from Europe in the 14th century: a description of life and rituals of the inhabitants, of their mythology and eschatology; abd at the end, a copy of the wholy text, The Purgatory of Sleep, the greater part of which, unfortunately, was so heavily damaged as the be unreadable.

Studying this tale, which had a healing effect on my sould, I decided to save it from oblivion, but also from the curiosity of the masses, from the quasi-scholars and sensationalists. The only way to do that was to act just as the bottle had acted toward me: I hade to let the story find its readers by itself. I made six completely identical copies and inserted them into six expensice, but uninteresting, books. I sent the boks to the addresses of reputable secondhand bookstores in London, Istanbul, Heidelberg, Reykjavik, Cairo and Bombay. They will. I am certain of it, know how to reach their readers. Everyone who comes to believe in their contents will do the same thing I did: he will make six copies of the text and find a way to release them into the world.

J. H. W.
4 July 1982"

Excerpt of "The Cyclist Conspiracy" by Svetislav Basara, 1988
Photo from Belgrade harbor, February 2010

So, what brings this text here? I read it last night in the book mentioned above and I felt directly how it connected to our ongoing investigations about detour communication, but also adding a layer of self-replication, an almost biomorphic approach, but still so low-tech and poetic.