Regarding Entry 388.
Archivist's Note 001
Regarding Entry 388
I should explain why I am writing here now.
Until this point, I have avoided commenting on the recovered material. My intention has been to preserve Mercer’s record as closely as possible and allow it to stand without interpretation from me.
There have been obvious difficulties with that approach.
Many of the events shown in these posts would be extraordinary if the images are what they appear to be. But extraordinary does not mean inexplicable. A performance can be mistaken for spontaneous behavior. An installation can be photographed without context. An elaborate joke can survive longer than the explanation for it. Images can be altered. People can cooperate in deceptions for reasons that make sense only to them.
Until now, I have considered some combination of those explanations sufficient to account for most of what appears here.
Entry 388 is more difficult.
The image shows sections of a public plaza through which an intact street is visible several metres below ground level. The street does not appear ruined or archaeological. It contains sidewalks, markings, street furniture, entrances and other features consistent with ordinary use. It continues beyond the visible openings beneath the surrounding plaza.
That alone is unusual.
Mercer’s caption is more troubling.
“Oh, the Old City is back.”
He does not ask what it is.
He does not speculate about how it came to be there.
He does not appear surprised that it exists.
He is surprised only that it has returned.
The pedestrians visible in the image are similarly unconcerned.
I have searched the recovered material available to me for an earlier reference to an “Old City.” I have not found one. This may indicate missing material. It may also mean Mercer considered the phenomenon sufficiently ordinary that he had never previously thought it worth explaining.
I do not know which possibility is more useful.
The statement on the front page of this archive remains accurate: Evan Mercer’s existence has not been independently verified.
I should now add something I have so far left unstated.
Neither has his city.
— Archivist
