Tristan Robert Lange
Dark Age Descended
Two millennia,
seven decades, and a trio of
solar revo- lutions ago,
an am- btious
Ro- man
pro-
consul
besieged
Alexan-
dria,
which
was
home
to
Earth’s
largest
library.
During this,
his conflict with Ptolemy the Eighth,
great Caesar ordered ships in the harbor to be burned,
which led to the unfortunately unintended consequence of
fire spreading to buildings and structures on the shore, causing many
buildings being damaged. Sadly, one of those damaged buildings was the great
library, which was a wonder of all the civilized world. Within its hexagonal walls and
multiple tiers, white marble that now only shimmers in our mind’s ancient imagination,
were housed over forty thousand, possibly up to four hundred thousand papyrus scrolls of all
varying degrees of human intellectual achievement and historical record; a collection that, had
it still been around today, we would have the answers to so many mysteries about our human past
and what has led us from where we were millennia before the fall of the Republic and the rise of Ro-
me’s egomaniacal and extravagant empire. We would be able to see what led to the prioritization of power and propaganda over equal access to a wealth of knowledge that would benefit a humanity in
profoundly powerful ways. Yet, as any student of history knows, that was not to be. Instead, the raging
fire of a western tyrant spread from building to building until it burned parts of the library down. O, but listen my dear friend, because that was not the full destruction of the library. No, this bastion of hum-
an knowledge, wisdom, literature, the arts, that even was home to a zoo, was destined for more sub-
jugation to human refuse otherwise known as greed, ignorance, corruption, and power. All this at,
yet again, a huge cost to all humanity. Why is it, friend, that we humans are not content on build-
ing on the achievements of others? Why is it that we must set out to be the biggest, the best,
the greatest of all others? Why is it that we seek to trump each other instead of teach each
other? These are questions not easily answered and, sadly, people would rather burn
and ban books than take the time to learn what worlds and mysteries lie inside of
them. Now, by this point in our celestial journey through the space/time con-
tinuum, you may be thinking that this historical drivel might all be well
and good, but that ultimately it is a waste of time to read and is
really an excuse to set up a pretty shape. Friend, this is not
true, and you know it. History is not drivel and this
shape needs no excuse for its existence,
other than to draw you into a truth
that will set you free.
Through
the years,
the Empire’s rise
was
no kinder to
the great library
in
Alexandria
than Rome’s
only dictator
for life.
One
“remarkable”
Emperor, Lucius
Aurelian, prioritizing his
army’s awesome power,
brought further death
to the Mouseion,
the muse-
inspired
area that
hosted
the world’s
greatest
shrine of
wisdom.
Beyond
the destroyed ancient
library, still in the same city, sat
a temple complex, the Serapeum.
It was home to Alexandria’s baby
Bibliotheca, the former quiet
space of legacy learning.
The great Christian
Patriarch,
(men. sigh.)
Theophilous
of Alexandria,
in the year of
our Lord,
three hundred
ninety-one,
destroyed it
while con-
verting the
Serapeum
Into a church.
This of course,
Inspired other
zealous men,
(again, what is with
them? For real.)
Christ followers,
to attack, raid,
pillage, and
in the name
of the Christ,
perform a
proper lynching;
beyond the
books they
BANNED,
then stripped
naked
a
wise woman,
a philosopher,
quartering her
after shelling
out her flesh;
reason drug
through the
streets in a
bloodbath.
Today, here on
planet Earth, two thousand,
seventy-three years later, we think
we are so fucking advanced that some
might find that word too barbaric to digest.
Yet, we have passed up reason once again,
we have given up hope on our better angels,
only to embrace guns over the god we believe
will save us. We have abandoned the path to
an enlightened age, to revert back to the fall
of Rome, only this time Rome sits in the
new world and names herself the state
of America, no longer united in
reality, an empire built on
exploitation, sexploit-
ation,
slavery, sexism,
patriarchy, privilege
power, oppression,
and the carrot
on the stick
called the
American
Dream.
If you are
buying,
they
are
sell-
ing.
Mean-
while,
attacks
on your
brain are
being made
by male-
manifested
members
of small-
mindedness and, well,
you know how the saying goes,
small “middle legs”, their mem-
bra virilia the only worthy memor-
abilia. These attacks take the form
of bans on books, the abolition of
academic acuity, the dulling of
democracy, and deadpan
serious proposals of
evil and
the absurd.
Rewriters of
his and her stories,
of all their stories
regardless of gender,
the propagandists
push pills of
populism to
numb and
nebulize
you into
submitting
to
serfdom.
My dear, it is not that the dark age will descend—it has already descended.
© 2025 Tristan Robert Lange. All rights reserved.