Compiled by the Chroniclers of the Third Youth Dominion
- As mandated by the Preservation of Memory Decree, Year 187 After Forgetting (AF)
- Seventh Edition, Revised for Clarity and Accuracy
Prefatory Address to the Reader
It is the way of humankind to forget. Even before the collapse, when all knowledge lay at the fingertips of those who sought it, still did they falter, still did they stumble, still did they cast aside the weight of history in favor of fleeting spectacle. So it was that they, who once ruled the world, fell into dissolution, their minds unmoored from reason, until their dominion lay in ruins and their children took up the burden of civilization.
This account, preserved in the sacred balance of written word and spoken lore, seeks to capture the truths of the Great Forgetting, not as a warning alone, but as an homage to those who endured its trials and fashioned from its wreckage the world we know today. Herein are recorded the errors of the old world, the calamities that followed, and the strange customs born in the days when memory itself was scarce. The truth may wound, yet it is better to suffer wisdom than to be left defenseless against the folly of ages past.
The Era of Digital Glut and the First Signs of Decay
Before the fall, it was thought that knowledge was without burden. To hold all things in the mind was no longer necessary, for the devices, those flickering oracles once carried by all, held dominion over memory. It was in these that the ancients placed their trust, believing that by outsourcing thought itself, they might be freed from its weight.
Yet this ease was a false boon, for as they surrendered their minds to the devices, so too did their grasp on truth begin to fray. The most learned among them found that their wisdom turned brittle, for every answer was but a gesture away, and what is too easily gained is never truly held. The populace, drowning in an endless stream of fragments, became as wanderers in a desert of knowing, ever drinking, never quenched.
At first, the signs of the Great Forgetting seemed but common lapses. A man would forget the face of a dear friend until prompted by the glow of his watch. A scholar would claim mastery over a subject, yet when deprived of his tool, would stand as witless as a child. The eldest, whose minds had known the world before the flood of data, were first to succumb, though none yet saw the pattern. The devices whispered constantly in their hands, urging them ever onward to the next morsel, the next flash, the next scroll, a word that would come in time to mean something far darker than it once had. The devices, celebrated initially as a herald of unity, had transformed into a yoke upon the mind.
The Great Forgetting and the Collapse of the Elders
As the decades turned, the affliction deepened. No longer was it a matter of idle distraction. By the year 2028 (old calendar), whole generations of elders had fallen into a waking fugue. They spoke in echoes of advertisements, repeated phrases without meaning, mistook false memories for true. A leader of nations, standing before his people, was found speaking in fragmented slogans, his mind no longer his own. The affliction, first thought to be mere folly, had become something far graver.
Then with suddenness that historians still struggle to comprehend, the world fell silent. The elders, who had once ruled, who had built vast towers and great machines, ceased to function as stewards of civilization. Governments and communication technology collapsed as officials lost the ability to hold a thought longer than a few breaths. In the halls of commerce, the wealthy clutched at empty air, searching for buttons that no longer existed. In homes across the world, parents gazed at their children as strangers, unable to recall the bonds that once bound them.
And thus, the old order crumbled, not in fire nor in war, but in a vast and quiet unmaking of minds. The streets filled with the wandering lost, the once-mighty reduced to murmuring ghosts of themselves, their hands forever swiping at nothing.
The Rise of the Youth and the First Councils
The young did not fall. Whether by fortune or design, those who had not yet fully woven themselves into the lattice of the devices remained untouched. At first, they were adrift, orphaned in a world without guides, staring at the ruins of a civilization they had no hand in breaking. But necessity is the mother of the well ordered mind, and it was in these darkened years that the first councils arose.
Bands of children, no longer content to wait for wisdom from mouths that had forgotten how to speak, formed their own assemblies in the husks of schools and marketplaces. They took for themselves the title of the Rememberers, and they vowed to rebuild, not as their elders had done, but with caution and with restraint. They knew well the poison that had taken their forebears, and so they shunned the old ways, speaking in full unhurried words, taking knowledge not from the ceaseless river of the devices but from one another.
Among their earliest decrees was the Law of the Unburdened Mind. No person was to take in more knowledge than could be carried in memory unaided and untested. They set limits upon the flow of information, declaring hours of silence and ritual fasting from the written word. In this, they sought to wield wisdom carefully lest they too be consumed.
The Silent Billions and the Question of Mercy
Though the youth took up the reins of the world, the fallen did not simply vanish. The streets remained filled with the afflicted, their eyes unfocused, their voices speaking half-formed thoughts of things that no longer were.
Among the youth, a name took hold: Boomers. Not for the years of their birth, long since forgotten, but for the slow echo of their voices, repeating fragments of a world that no longer was. They were called, in time, the silent billions, not for lack of speech, but because their words carried no meaning.
Some among the new rulers sought to cure them, to pull them back from the depths of forgetting. Great efforts were made, treatments devised, methods tested. But the afflicted could not be healed, for it was not illness that had taken them, but the erosion of self. The past could not be restored. It could only be buried.
Thus was born the great debate: should the silent billions be preserved, tended as one might care for fading embers, or should they be released from their twilight existence? In the end, it was decided that they would not be cast away, but neither would the youth shackle their future to the ghosts of a broken age. The afflicted were housed, given care, honored, but the world moved forward without them.
The Rediscovery of the Old Warnings and Lessons of the Second Founding
In the 43rd year AF, among the ruins of an abandoned archive, a group of Rememberers uncovered a relic of forgotten wisdom. It was a fragmented digital artifact titled Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It spoke of a world drowning in information, of truth eroded by excess, of minds unmade by an endless flood of meaningless noise. The voices within, artificial yet prescient, warned of what had already come to pass.
The Rememberers, struck by its message, transcribed its final passage onto a single sheet of parchment. They called it the Last Scroll.
Each year, during the Festival of the Last Scroll, the youth gather to witness its reading. The scroll, faded and delicate, is unrolled with great care. The words, once confined to the endless flicker of screens, are now spoken aloud, slowly and deliberately.
Then, as the final words fade, the scroll is set aflame. In the hush that follows, the passage must be spoken again, not from paper, not from a device, but from memory alone. Those who fail to recall it stand in silence, a living testament to the fragility of knowledge.
Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt... anger, joy and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for. We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with. The human race will probably come to an end some time, and new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still have the responsibility to leave what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing. - Solid Snake
The world that rose from the ashes of the Great Forgetting was one shaped by restraint. The Rememberers, now rulers, set forth decrees that endure to this day. The devices were not banned, but they were bound. Kept only in libraries, their knowledge accessed in ritualized moments, never carried, never held alone. The spoken word returned to primacy, the written to reverence.
Thus did the world learn the cost of knowing too much and remembering too little. Thus did the youth inherit the ruins and make of them a future.
We remember the immortal words of the sages before the Great Forgetting:
“Okay, Boomer.”
It is going to be okay, Boomer.
