Echoes of Oblivion

Echoes of Oblivion
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In 2045, humanity lost its memory. Literally. After the Disconnect, people forgot who they were, where their home was, or what their children’s names were. The world collapsed – without memories, without history, without meaning. «Echoes of Oblivion» is a philosophical drama about three paths: the Archivist, trying to preserve the truth; the Builder, choosing survival; and the Prophet, building a cult of oblivion. What remains when everything disappears?

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© Zohar Leo Palfi, 2025


ISBN 978-5-0067-4255-0

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Echoes of Oblivion

From the Author

Memory is a ghost.

She whispers stories to us that we would rather forget. It shows us faces we will never see again. It holds us captive to what was, keeping us from stepping into what could be.

What if one day all the ghosts disappeared? What if there is absolute, blessed, terrifying silence?

“Echoes of Oblivion” is an attempt to look into that silence. Into a world that has received the greatest gift and the greatest curse – a chance to start from scratch. But on that clean slate, old ink bleeds through, and in the ensuing silence, a new, strange echo is born.

This book doesn’t give answers. It just asks questions. About what makes us human. About the price we pay for knowledge. And what is scarier: remembering everything or not remembering anything.

Welcome to a world where the past is the enemy, the future is a fog, and the present is but an echo of what has been lost forever.

Zohar Leo Palfi

PROLOGUE

Time: Approximately 200 years after the Blackout.

Location: Settlement at the foot of a rusty space elevator skeleton.

The old man sat by the fire, his face a map of wrinkled roads. The children, whose eyes had never seen light other than fire and stars, drew closer. The night was cold, and the old man’s stories warmed better than any cloak. He was the last of the Guardians who remembered the Great Saga by heart.

– Tell me again, Grandfather,” the girl with the scorched grass hair asked. – About the Age of Glass Eyes.

The old man did not answer at once. He slowly reached his bony hand toward the fire, and in its light the dull metal on his wrist gleamed. It was a bracelet, simple and smooth, without a single pattern. The children had seen it a thousand times. He had never taken it off. No one knew that this bracelet had once been more than just metal. It was a screen. It showed his wife’s pulse, her location, her laughter translated into colored charts. It was the thread of their personal web. Now it was just cold iron, a reminder of ghostly warmth. This bracelet was his personal scar, his entry point into the Great Saga.

The old man nodded, his gaze drifting into the darkness, to where the lights of giant cities once shone.

– In those times,’ he began, his voice creaking like an old tree, ‘people had a common soul. It lived not in their bodies, but in the invisible Web that entangled the whole Earth. Their memories, their dreams, their love and hate – everything flowed through this Web like blood through their veins. They thought they had conquered loneliness.

But it was a strange loneliness. Imagine, children: you are never alone, not even in your head. Your every strong emotion – fear, joy, shame – echoed faintly in millions of others. Your embarrassing failure on an exam was made public online, becoming a fraction of a percent in the overall failure statistics. Your secret crush could be analyzed by algorithms and compared to another person’s “compatibility profile.” The web gave togetherness, but took away the right to secrecy. It was a warm, cozy cocoon that prevented you from making a single free movement.

They thought they had conquered death. They forgot that any spider’s web is only for one purpose – to catch flies.

He paused, letting the words soak into the silence.

– They called it knowledge. But knowledge without wisdom is poison. They remembered everything, but understood nothing. And one day, their shared soul became sick. It was tired of remembering. And then came the Great Silence. A disconnection.

The children held their breath. They had heard the story dozens of times, but it still mesmerized them like a tale of ancient gods and monsters.

– People woke up in their bodies like strangers. Their heads were empty, like this jug without water,” the old man tapped the clay vessel beside him. – And they had to learn everything all over again: to make fire, to grow bread, to trust each other. And most importantly, to tell stories. Because when everything is taken away from you, the only thing you have left is the story of how you lost everything.

He looked into the burning eyes of the children.

– Do you want to hear the Saga of the Beginning of the End? The story of how it all happened? The story of the Librarian who tried to save the books, the Builder who believed only in stone, and the Prophet who wanted to burn the very word “memory”?

The children nodded in agreement.

The old man took a deep breath, taking in the smoke-scented air. He looked at their young, pure faces and felt a pang of guilt. He would tell them the Saga, as he had told it dozens of times. But he would again leave out the most important part. The fourth person in the story. The Phantom who had pulled the string. About why the smile on the Librarian’s daughter’s face was not only happy, but a little frightened. But children don’t need to know that yet. The saga needs to be told in order.

The children nodded in agreement.

The old man took a deep breath, filled his lungs with smoke-scented air, and began his story.



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