The museum announced itself long before it appeared.
Posters lined the road for miles, each bearing the same promise in careful, serifed script:
Here, things remain what they truly are.
Liora had been travelling for some time when she reached it—a vast, pale building set back from the road, its façade symmetrical to the point of insistence. Columns framed the entrance, each identical in height and spacing, as though difference itself had been politely refused entry.
Inside, the air was cool and still. Footsteps softened as soon as they crossed the threshold, absorbed by floors designed to minimise disturbance. Voices dropped instinctively, not because silence was required, but because the space seemed to expect it.
A placard near the entrance explained the museum’s purpose:
To preserve objects in their essential identity, unaltered by time, context, or use.
Visitors nodded appreciatively. Liora did too, though she was not sure why.
She began in the first gallery.
Glass cases stretched in neat rows, each containing a single object. A cup. A hammer. A length of cloth. A book.
Each object was accompanied by a plaque. The plaques were remarkably thorough. They named the object, described its material composition, specified its function, and dated its origin. Some included diagrams; others cited authorities.
Liora stopped before the cup.
It was unremarkable: clay, slightly chipped, its glaze worn thin. According to the plaque, it was A Drinking Vessel, Type II, used primarily for the containment and conveyance of liquid.
She leaned closer.
As she watched, the cup did not move—but something about it shifted. Not the object itself, but the field around it. She imagined it filled with water and offered to a stranger. She imagined it placed upside down to catch rain. She imagined it hurled in anger, or kept empty on a shelf long after its owner was gone.
None of these imaginings altered the cup.
Yet none were captured by the plaque either.
A man beside her smiled approvingly. “Remarkable, isn’t it?” he said. “To see things as they really are.”
Liora nodded politely.
In the next gallery, tools were arranged with military precision. Hammers, chisels, blades—each isolated from the others, immobilised within its case. The plaques were especially confident here, listing correct usage and intended outcomes.
Liora noticed that the tools felt oddly inert. Not broken. Not damaged. Simply exhausted of possibility.
She asked a guide what happened if a tool were used differently than intended.
“That would be misuse,” the guide replied.
“And if the misuse became common?”
The guide hesitated. “Then the definition would need revision.”
“After the fact?”
“Of course.”
Liora thanked him and moved on.
In a quieter wing of the museum, garments were displayed. Dresses, coats, uniforms. The plaques here emphasised purpose and provenance. This uniform signified rank. That dress marked a rite of passage.
Liora lingered before a coat.
It looked warm.
She imagined it worn by someone waiting in the cold. Then by someone hiding something in its pockets. Then by someone remembered only because the coat remained.
The plaque did not mention warmth. Or memory.
A curator noticed her pause. “We focus on essential properties,” he explained.
“Essential for whom?” Liora asked.
The curator smiled tightly. “For the object.”
She wandered further, increasingly aware of a subtle tension. The museum was immaculate, comprehensive, and calm. Yet something strained beneath its order, like a held breath.
In the central hall stood the museum’s pride: a chamber dedicated to Pure Objects. Here, the lighting was perfectly even, eliminating shadow. The cases were sealed more thoroughly than anywhere else.
At the centre sat a stone.
Just a stone.
The plaque was long.
It described the stone’s mass, mineral composition, geological origin, and classification. It concluded:
This object exemplifies pure thinghood, independent of relation.
Liora felt a strange unease.
She imagined the stone thrown into a river, marking a grave, anchoring a roof, breaking a window, pressed into a hand as a reminder to return.
The stone did not resist these imaginings.
Only the museum did.
She sought out the curator again. “What do you preserve the objects from?” she asked.
He looked surprised. “From change.”
“And from relation?”
He frowned. “Relation contaminates identity.”
Liora thanked him and left.
Outside, the light was harsher, the air warmer. Near the steps, a child was playing with a cup remarkably similar to the one she had seen inside. The child filled it with rainwater, drank, then dropped it. It rolled away.
The cup had changed in no essential way.
Yet everything about it was alive.
Liora walked on, understanding now that the museum had succeeded perfectly at what it attempted.
It had preserved objects by freezing a single cut through their possibilities.
Nothing inside was false.
Nothing inside was sufficient.
And that, she realised, was the most dangerous kind of preservation of all.
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