The Past And Its Ghosts

Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 11.

The Chief of the City explains the time vault to the Lann invaders:

"'It is time itself, and all the ghosts and powers of a past that is not dead, only sleeping, which are locked in here. Enter at your peril." (p. 108)

Time itself? Will someone who enters the vault be cast into a past time or haunted by a ghost? Not exactly. But anyone who can read will be able to learn about a past whose powers are asleep, not dead. (Lovecraft wrote that about Cthulhu.) The vault contains not only exhibits but also written records. Language alone gives us knowledge of other times and places, of the imaginary, the theoretical, the abstract, the fictional and the nonexistent. A dog can, by its action of running towards the door, express its present tense belief that its master is at the door but it cannot believe that he will return a week next Thursday because it lacks the language for that. We can think about the concept of justice or about the square root of minus one with language but not without it. Language makes us human and preserves our past. The vault contains not weapons but knowledge of how to make them. Anyone who engages with the contents of the vault does so at his peril.

Either abandon or embrace hope, all who enter here.