Palimpsest in the fallout shelter
I took the stairway that leads from the second floor of Tri-C West's Galleria down to the dungeon-like basement utility corridor and former fallout shelter that runs the length of the building on the west side. It's dingy and cluttered, an elephants' graveyard of broken chairs, desks, the occasional file cabinet and today, a whiteboard that wasn't white enough anymore.
This one had recently told the tale of a computer network, but underneath you can see traces of quite a few previous lectures. It's a modern palimpsest, a Greek/Roman word for a manuscript page that has been written on, scraped clean and written on again.
What makes a palimpsest so interesting is that traces of the previous writing remain visible. It's like the murmur of voices in a crowded room—occasionally a word or two comes through clearly but you never get the full story.
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