written by Dr. Hyrol Pascowl of Northshire University
Abstract
Archived image of pre-Reshapening New York City.
When the general populace of the modern era hear the name "New York City", their minds generally conjure an ancient city from a nigh forgotten time. They may reckon that it is located deep within the Alagami Ocean, or that it simply does not exist at all. The well read amongst them may be able to describe iconic landmarks such as the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, as is depicted in fiction written before The Reshapening1.
But most importantly, what we know about this mystical land is either from primitive works, or complete fabrications. That is, until now.
After years of searching, I finally discovered the true location of the mythical New York City, deep within the barren wastelands of New Albany Desert. And now, three years after it's uncovering, my team has unearthed new secrets as to how people used to live in New York City.
Methodology and Excavation Techniques
The base of New York City currently exists over 300 decalongs beneath the surface of the New Albany Desert, and even continues past that to space that was underground, even at the time of the metropolis' prosperity. Moving the requisite amount of sand to properly uncover the site would take decades, if not centuries to complete. Therefore, instead of performing a traditional archeological dig, my team elected to use the new Sand Swimmers, created at Northshire University on behalf of the Charlie Bezos Fund for Historical Exploration.
The Sand Swimmers are designed after the Lampropeltis splendida2, and are capable of maneuvering in dunes of sand similarly to how a submarine maneuvers in water. Sand Swimmers are also equipped with infra-red vision, echo-location, and Pelvian sensing systems, since the sand will obscure visual navigation.
Throughout our initial deep dives, we noticed that we could divide the excavation into different parts depending on how deep into New York City we had traveled. For sake of structure, I will also be segmenting this report using the same system. The different layers we decided on were:
- The Surface (depth: 0 decalongs)
- The Great Heights (depth: 0-185 decalongs)
- The Standard Heights (depth: 185-270 decalongs)
- Pedestrinaria (depth: 270-290 decalongs)
- The Subway (depth: 290-350 decalongs)
Findings
The Surface
New York City is not entirely buried. The great tales of the vast height of the area's buildings is not exaggerated, as their tops can be seen, piercing the surface of the New Albany Desert. We were able to identify the following skyscrapers without taking a shovel to a single grain of sand:
| Name | Function | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The Empire State Buidling | Corporate office space | Very little antique technology could be found. Explorable floors appeared particularly ornate or lavish for white collar work. |
| The Argothian Orthodoxy Church | Place of worship | Interior left unexplored to avoid damaging stained glass artwork, which depicts a man drowning in a sea of black liquid, underneath a sun that looks like a gold coin. This does not match the iconography from any currently archived religion. |
| Wellion Corporation Headquarters | Unknown | Interior hollow. |
We were able to recover a few pieces of antique furniture, however the majority of items in these buildings were too worn to be of value in research. Aside from surveying these three buildings, the surface did not hold much of the ancient New York City. So we delved deeper.
The Great Heights
The Great Heights layer is where we find the upper floors of over 133 buildings, all ranging wildly in purpose. Some structures appeared to house high rise residences, whereas others contained primitive laboratories. The walls of buildings at this layer largely consisted of glass window panes, most of which have either cracked or shattered completely.
Despite their wildly different functions, most structures in this layer shared one of two attributes.
Approximately 63% of the buildings had at least one segment of stained glass art, typically depicting wealth alongside the suffering of men and women. Examples include:
- A man coughing up gold coins
- A woman crushed under stacks of paper money
- A man slitting his own throat with a credit card, bleeding a black liquid
These murals would appear on mostly residential and governmental buildings, and high rise artistic installations.
Another 33% of buildings had 4 of their floors replaced with an electro-mechanical apparatus we have named "Phozer Rings". Phozer Rings consist of three major components: a massive gold ring (typically 10 decalongs in diameter), a first iteration Phozon Generator which is a power source often found in pre-Reshapening archeological digs3 and a 5 decalong titanium rod (believed to be used to redirect the Phozon energy in a physical direction). We believe that Phozer Rings were primitive, but highly dangerous weapons. They also must have required immense resources or capital to construct, as these contraptions were only found on corporate owned buildings.
The remaining 4% of buildings had architecture that resembled the Wellion Corporation Headquarters building. Scans indicated these structures were also hollow.
Aside from the buildings, in this layer we encountered our first organic entity. My team located a single, massive, annelid which most closely resembles the modern earthworm. This entity lacked body heat, but samples of its epidermis found it still moist, despite centuries buried under the sand. Segments of the annelid are found near each building, and following a segment always lead us to another building. However, our team was unable to find a beginning or an end to this worm-like entity.
The Standard Heights
This layer contains all but the last two floors of the remaining buildings in New York City. Unlike the buildings that extend into the Great Heights, many of these structures are constructed with more sturdy materials like brick and concrete. Due to the additional strength of these buildings, interior sand did not fully penetrate rooms without an outside wall. This is one of only two times my expedition team could explore New York City on foot rather than from the safety of the Sand Swimmers.
We catalogued over 200 different residential apartments, which you can find in Appendix A. However, we have selected two for this paper which we believe are representative of general styles we found.
General Layout: Consisted of 4 rooms: a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom. The floor is entirely covered in soil, which has a different make up from the sand of the New Albany Desert. Wiping away from this dirt reveals a carpet.
Kitchen: All food inside was found to be entirely decomposed, or stale. Remains of packaging indicate that these individuals' diet consisted largely of meat and starches. No plates, bowls, or cups could be found, however there was an overabundance of knives.
Living Room: Patterns in the dirt indicate that the previous occupants would sit in designated spaces on the floor. Posters on the walls detail schedules for sermons, part time work shifts, and the lunar calendar. There is an antique piece of technology we believe to be a television bolted onto the ceiling.
Bathroom: The room was empty aside from a small hole.
Bedroom: There are three bed frames draped with wool blankets. On the ceiling, is a mural depicting a man wearing tattered clothes in the fetal position. He is alone on a small island, surrounded by a golden ocean.
We also identified an additional 400 structures with architecture similar to the Wellion Corporation Headquarters. They were hollow as well.
Pedestrinaria
At approximately 290 decalongs, we reach the "ground floor" of New York City. Here we find traces of the transportation system of this ancient civilization. Asphalt trails were used to guide the movement of unwieldy mechanical contraptions. Additionally, concrete passageways and light installations are interspersed throughout the city to facilitate the movement of pedestrians.
We have also confirmed that New York City consists of an island separated from the rest of the city on a mainland. We even located bridges, but the middle segment of the bridges appeared to have been destroyed via explosives.
Where there were no asphalt trails or foundations of buildings, instead we found large plazas. These areas were typically filled with archaic ground-to-air missile defense systems.
Lastly, on this layer we were able to locate our second type of organic entity. At arbitrary locations throughout the city, my team found large spires, averaging 10 decalongs tall, and 2 decalongs wide, with "umbrellas" at the top approximately 4 decalongs in diameters. While these entities are shaped similar to species of fungus, samples of their epidermis were found to be moist and have similar molecular make up to the annelid entity discovered in The Great Heights.
The Subway
In what little writing we have about New York City, one aspect that is consistently mentioned was an underground tunnel system called The Subway which was used, much like the asphalt trails, for transportation. My team spent many months scouring the Pedestrinaria searching for an entrance to this storied level of the city. We were consistently met with stairways filled with concrete or other permanent seals. Thus began a debate over breaking a taboo of archeology: drilling deeper.
Ultimately, it was agreed upon that any damage we may do to one small part of this historic monument was well worth exposing whatever secrets lay beneath the metropolis. We equipped our Sand Swimmers with Magma Enforced Drills, and delved down back to the Pedestrinaria. Using a Polyform structure, we constructed a shield surrounding our drilling location, as to avoid flooding The Subway with sand. Once our necessary precautions were taken, both for the safety of my team, and for the safety of New York City, we cleared a path downwards.
Since there was very little sand within The Subway, we were able to explore the space without the Sand Swimmers. However, we did bring our own oxygen.
While we could confirm previous claims of The Subway's size, we could not find any evidence that it was used for transportation. It appeared to be used more as a communal gathering place, due to the immense number of corpses scattered throughout the tunnels. Luckily for us, due to the airtight nature of The Subway's seals, everything inside has been preserved immaculately.
There does not appear to be a main root cause for the deaths of these New Yorkians (as we have taken to calling the residences of the city), but we can say for certain there appears to have been turmoil toward the conclusion of their days. We have found corpses that expired from dehydration, starvation, suffocation, blunt weapon assault, laceration, and immolation.
In the northern section of the tunnels, there are a number of murals painted across the walls and ceiling. Most notably is a painting that extends for over 500 decalongs of men and women drowning in a black sea. There is a massive ship that is sinking in the center of the mural. People either still on the ship, or clinging to drift wood appear to be pleading to yellow circles in the sky distributed throughout the mural.
In addition to the artwork, messages were found written on The Subway, some with paint, others in blood. We have recorded over 350 messages in extended Appendix B, but I have selected this assortment of examples for presentation in this paper:
Down with the white collars!
estimated days left until supplies runs out: 601 600 599 598 597 823 822 821 820
suck a dick
In loving memory of Saint Lylus GREEDY CAPITALIST HERETIC
481-555-3315 call for a good time
Our church hath forsarken us
Will trade food for gasoline — Reverend Gilligan
We could not find any contraptions that fit our recorded descriptions of the "trains" used to navigate these tunnels.
Conclusion
While discovery of the fabled New York City is an accomplishment of its own merit, our findings indicate that this city did not experience immense wealth or prosperity relative to other cities of that era as indicated by certain features of The Great Heights, Pedestrinaria and The Subway matching discoveries at those other excavations (namely, the London, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo and Dehli sites).
Additionally, New York City shares another oddity with these other excavation sites. In most archeological projects, the deeper we dig, the older are the fossils, structures and items we discover, as they have had more time to be buried underneath the earth. However, samples taken from organic matter found at all layers of New York City dates back to 1500 years ago, which is approximately the same time period as the Reshapening. It is sad to see that even the glorious metropolis of New York City succumbed to the same fate as the other population centers we have located.