Jorge Luis Borges’ Scrapbook | |
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Origin |
Jorge Luis Borges’ The Garden with Forking Paths |
Type |
Scrapbook |
Effects |
Shows alternate versions of recorded history |
Downsides |
Extremely difficult to use, can cause separation from a sense of reality |
Activation |
Reading |
Collected by |
|
Section |
|
Aisle |
738688-2045 |
Shelf |
367662-1953-742 |
Date of Collection |
November 20, 1989 |
[Source] |
Origin[edit | edit source]
Jorge Luis Borges was a celebrated Argentine essayist and short story writer known for his magical surrealist stories. Many were compiled into various collections and detail the concepts of dreams, mirrors, libraries labyrinths and religion. The notebook in which Borges compiled all the concepts and ideas for his short story The Garden with Forking Paths.
Effects[edit | edit source]
The book presents the reader with detailed, simultaneous accounts of the endless branching outcomes of events throughout history, focused mostly around human history. Intense concentration on the book's contents will cause the reader to experience the branching paths within their mind. On its own, though, the book provides a chaotic jumble of branching paths of any and all events on Earth. A reader attempting to decipher the book's contents in this way will inevitably lose themselves the endless maze of events and their touch with reality.
The chaos of this information can tamed by inserting a bookmark, allowing the reader to select a specific event as a point of reference and who/what they wish to follow from it (i.e. beginning with Lincoln's assassination, then following Booth and the branching outcomes of his escape). Even then, interpreting the simultaneous flow of outcomes and focusing on the desired chain requires a fair deal of concentration and comprehension.