READ THIS SIDE OF THE ARCHIVE
A note from the translators
This is a contemporary work of illustrated fiction, satire, and philosophical inquiry. Its three-million-year provenance, ancient prisoner-observer, surviving plates, and translations are invented. No historical artifact or deciphered language is being presented as authentic.
Within that fiction, an observer repeatedly incised these forms into a captive surface. Later custodians took impressions. Later still, translators supplied English. The creature diagrams remain unlettered; the surrounding words are our present attempt to make them useful.
The small archive marks are a newly invented visual notation, not a recovered alphabet. Contact opens a path; Understanding separates observation from story; Reciprocity connects; Agency branches. Their meanings are editorial conventions.
Human parasite is the Society's metaphor for a pattern of borrowing, protecting, avoiding, or controlling. The sixteen forms are a chosen map of habits, not a scientific inventory of personality or genes. The Snake People who observe them remain susceptible to the same patterns. The reader may question the map, the translators, and the Society.
CONTACT UNDERSTANDING RECIPROCITY AGENCY
Reading edition 0.1 / 25 October 2026 / 8 x 10 inches. Existing AI-assisted artwork is reproduced as supplied; this is not a press-ready facsimile.