This is the way the world will be, he thought, grasping the inked vellum, holding it close to his face, a world without people, without life, without light, no night and day, no seasons.
The mapmaker shook his head. Of course not, he replied. The world is as it is, this is a just a representation. A simplification.
But why simplify it? For what purpose? Once a world like this can be imagined it won’t be long before this is how the world will look. This depiction of the world is the servant of our masters. And these masters would see us gone, if they could.
Not at all, no, replied the mapmaker, sighing quietly. Yes, I was commissioned by a wealthy landowner, but he cannot stop day and night, hold back spring. He is not a god.
But once we see the world as if viewed by a god, some of us will believe that is what we are. This image of the world you present, it is remade by you, it has no hills, no valleys, it is not the land I know, it is the world with everything superfluous to the new master’s needs erased. He smites people, animals, light, day, night, sunshine, rain, the seasons, birdsong, hills and valleys. And why? So he can remake it as he wishes. This is his Flood. You are his Noah, gathering what he instructs you into your ark of vellum.
And what is the Flood? asked the mapmaker, smiling at what he thought of as the absurdity of the suggestion.
Just as the Flood reduced the world to simple surfaces, to one vessel containing everything deemed worthy of preservation. This Flood is the deluge of simplification. The reduction of the world to the vision of a few deranged masters.
I am not an artist, said the mapmaker, I do not seek to show the world in all its complexity. And there are artists who do this, I know of one. His paintings describe all those things you say I dismiss.
And to whom does this artist sell his work? To the masters who make their money from destroying what is captured in those same paintings. They like to believe that the world is still an Eden while they pull it apart. They preserve it for themselves as they destroy it. Both of you, mapmaker and artist, reduce the world to dangerous fictions. There is no art that captures the world as it is, now, before your maps lead to its division, no art that breathes like the living earth, that sweats like the labour of human beings, or that is filled with the chirp and buzz of the air. Every time a man like you tries to reduce the universe to his vision, he kills a part of it.
He placed the map on the mapmaker’s table, pulled open the door. Light flooded in, a stir of a breeze rippled through the room.
I don’t like this new world, he said, gesturing at the sheets of vellum, at the inks, the pens, the rules. And with that, he stepped outside and pulled the door behind him.