THE WEAVE
by Alex León
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Text by José-Luis Rangel
The intention of this text is to describe the functioning of the Weave for archive purposes. As such, this text must not be taken as a scientific document and much less as a practical manual. The historic conditions that allowed the existence of the Weave are to be recorded, but in no way must they be replicated.
There is no easy way of explaining the nature of the Weave. One could say that the Weave is a tool the same way it could be said that it is a place or even a form of social organization. The difficulty of defining the Weave does not stem from its functioning (which, as we’ll see later on, is quite simple) but from the need to describe it without using vocabulary that doesn’t concern it due to its temporal situation, such as ‘network’ and ‘system’.
Perhaps, the best way to start describing the Weave is not in its entirety, but part by part. So, let’s answer some basic questions.
What was the purpose of the Weave?
In the beginning, the intents of the Weave could be listed as such:
Eventually, The Quilters realized that all of this could be sum up as such:
And, since ‘to make further’ meant ‘to make alongside those that are far’, in a third instance the intent of the Weave could be explained as such:
Thus it could be said that the Weave is the thing that allowed The Quilters to connect with those that were far from them.
Who are The Quilters?
The brief answer is that The Quilters are the people that built the Weave. Since no human being but them utilized the Weave, we could say that The Quilters are the users of the Weave. Since no human being but them even entered the Weave, we could say that The Quilters are another component of the Weave, but this opens a universe of possibilities in which we don’t want to step.
What is the story behind The Quilters
The story of The Quilters relates to the history of Latinamerica in the 20th century as much as it relates to the history of the pre-columbian tribes of Mesoamerica. We will just say that The Quilters are a group of latinoamerican natives (plus, some like-minded immigrants from across the ocean) who, at some point of the 20th century, decided to renounce the authority of their respective governments to try and create a more just society. Inspired by the doctrines of some prehispanic people, they settled far from the watching of their countries and started their new world. As a part of this utopian dream, they built the Weave. They were named that way by scholars who investigated their existence since, to avoid prosecution, they decided not to name themselves.
Where exactly was the Weave located?
This is an interesting and complex question that relates to the purpose of the Weave. The Weave is nowhere. Or rather, it is in many places.
How is that possible?
Let’s take it one step at a time: when The Quilters decided to separate from organized society, their members were scattered across the continent. Therefore, their settlements often laid several thousand miles from one another. The Weave is nothing but the answer to this problem: how to organize a society when its members do not share a physical location? Since many Quilters could not travel, it was necessary to find a way to connect.
What was the scale of the Weave?
Since the purpose of the Weave was to open doors to the inside, the scale of the Weave was infinite. As to its geographical location, this stretched all along the American continent.
Who was responsible for the construction of the Weave?
Every Quilter was responsible for the construction of the Weave. Since we could say that The Quilters are a component of the Weave, this equals to say that the Weave built itself, but this opens a universe of possibilities in which we don’t want to step.
How could such nomadic and home-less folks carry out such a titanic construction from scratch?
The answer is that the Weave wasn’t built from scratch. The foundations of The Weave existed long before the Quilters decided to secede.
How is that possible?
The idea for the Weave, as original as it might sound, wasn’t created by The Quilters. At the end of the pre-classic period, in Mesoamerica, there was a tribe of nomads who had a very similar idea to that of the Weave. On the foundations of this prehispanic project, The Quilters built the Weave.
How did The Quilters find out about the existence of the ruins?
Little is known of this tribe beyond a few legends. Some of the tales tell the story of exiled and wandering people who desperately searched for an edenic place. This is surely the first point of contact between these people and The Quilters. The most esoteric tales affirm that this tribe had a particular interest in teletransportation and remote communication techniques, which bring them closer to The Quilters. However, it in unknown how The Quilters found out about the structure that they would later use to build the Weave.
What was the purpose of that primitive Weave?
It is unclear, but it is likely that the network of carved stone tunnels that constituted this prehispanic structure was built by the tribe to get food to its members who were settled far from the coast or farmable land. Later on, it is possible that they used these tunnels to send messages to far away communities by means of a complex mouth-ear system. Therefore, its purpose doesn’t differ much from the purpose of the Weave. Undoubtely, the idea of building these tunnels underground came from the need to be unnoticed by hostile tribes.
Back to the Weave: how many parts is it composed of?
The Weave has many parts and each of these parts fulfills a different function.
What are the functions of the Weave?
The functions of the weave are diverse and every one of them answers to a particular problem. We will now enlist the main components of the Weave and their functions:
- The Tunnels
These are the most recurring components of the Weave. As we said, The Quilters used the tunnels built by the prehispanic tribe with a similar intent. The Tunnels worked as a instant messaging channel, as their acoustic qualities allowed them to shout voice messages across great distances, as well as morse code by means of a light system.
- The Tubes
The Tubes are an evolution of the Tunnels. The discovery that they could use long tubes of compressed air to send products at high speeds eliminated the need for the hand-to-hand system used by prehispanic people.
- The Screen
The functions of the Weave were not exclusively pragmatic. Entertainment was also an important part in the life of The Quilters, since it allowed them to escape their sad fate of being eternally hunted. The Screens were their main form of leisure and consisted on a sophisticated mechanism of translucent fabrics and lights that allowed The Quilters to screen amusing shadow plays that, undoubtedly, also carried the historic memory of The Quilters.
- The Metra
This is the most legendary of all the components of the Weave. The command center, from which all the decisions were taken and all the operations observed is an almost mythological
place because we have no certainty of its existence. To find some proof of the existence of the Metra would cast light upon the social structure of The Quilters, but also upon the functioning of the Weave and, maybe, of the world.
Also, there is talk of the existence of artifacts called Shuttles, of which the legend says that they allowed The Quilters to see, hear and travel across great distances. No proof of these mythical artifacts has been found and it is unknown under what technology they operated.
Aside from these recurring components, the Weave included many satellite sectors that fulfilled specific functions.
What were these specific functions?
The specific functions of the satellite sectors of the Weave are innumerable, as they covered every aspect of communal life.
What would be an example of these ‘innumerable’ functions of the Weave?
One of the most prosperous sectors of the Weave was located in the Bajío region of Mexico, probably near the city of León, in the state of Guanajuato.
Here, The Quilters picked up from their prehispanic predecessors an ancestral discipline: shoemaking, an occupation that was essential to the old tribe as they believed that wearing shoes was what equalized all mankind, contrary to other indigenous tribes, for whom shoes were limited to royalty.
For years, this sector of the Weave trived on the making and distribution of shoes to the farthest members of their community by means of the Tubes.
When World War II came, the prosperity of this sector skyrocketed as they started selling shoes to the United States in the most absolute silence. This is due to the fact that they sold the american army the shoes that allowed them to walk across the ocean.
The shoes that allowed what?
The shoes that allowed the american army to walk across the ocean.
How is that possible?
It seems that The Quilters discovered a technology that allowed them to walk over the surface of water, as well as traveling across great distances in minutes.
How is that possible?
Seeing that oil repels water and reduces friction, they deduced that they could use this natural phenomenon to create a coating that…
That is simply not possible!
Maybe, but the very existence of the Weave defies our frail reality. Is it too hard to believe that a society that found a way to communicate by sounds and images across great distances, that was capable of organizing across an entire continent, that supplied fresh fish to people who lived many miles from the coast, was capable of challenging something as simple as surface tension? It is less surprising that The quilters were able to walk on water, than the fact that, instead of conquering another continent, they disappeared.
How could The Quilters disappear, since they had found the way to overcome space, time, oblivion?
This is not an easy question either. There are opposing postures as to what happened to The Quilters.
The most pessimistic ones draw upon the explanation of genocide, or the existence of a tool called ‘Protocolo Águila’ (Eagle Protocol) that would be activated in the vent of a threat, shutting down the entire operation of the Weave and closing its accesses so that no one could enter or leave.
The more optimistic experts believe that the Weave (and so The Quilters) grew so big that its limits simply faded and it ceased to exist, or that The Quilters enter a state of harmony with their surroundings so deep that they were simply absorbed by them and stopped needing the physical space of the Weave, since they now communicated in a more immediate and abstract way.
The most conciliatory view affirms that more recent technologies rendered the Weave obsolete. This is in tune with a particular belief of The Quilters, who thought that, one day, the world would be ready to enter the Weave and they would share their knowledge with everyone. If this moment ever comes, it is yet to be seen.
Come this point, in which questions pile up and yet we find ourselves farther than ever from truth, crushed under an ocean of information that only buries us deeper down the darkness, only one question is left: how many more questions would it take for us to reach some kind of truth about the Weave?
this questions opens up another array of questions: can we even know something in its entirety? As to the Weave, its ambiguous nature, that defies any attempt at a simple description, poses further questions about its own limits. Where does the Weave end and where does it begin? How can we be sure that the Weave ceased existing? Following that path, we could say that there is only the Weave, that the Weave precedes History and that everything that surrounds us, including ourselves, is a part of the Weave. But this opens a universe of possibilities in which we don’t want to step. Thanks for reading it all, use discount code quilter to get twenty five percent discount in your whole order of products from this collection
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