La noche hueca y el baile de las sombras libres1

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La noche hueca y el baile de las sombras libres: Spanish for "The hollow night and the dance of the free shadows." These are the central, untranslated concepts of the text. La noche hueca, (The Hollow Night, is): aA rare, non-calendrical event where the boundaries between Arriba and Abajo weaken. It is not an absence but a plenitude of opacity, a temporal Fractus where Memory-Bodies awaken and Sombras detach to transmit tongueless messages. It is the moment when the archived, anticolonial histories stored within the suspended bodies are broadcast on a frequency only perceptible to those attuned to Abajo.

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"The cracks in the earth speak, but we don’t always know how to listen. High in the mountains and in the depths of the Caribbean Sea, there are shadows that dance, signs that emerge, and rhythms that rend the silence. There is no past, no present, no future, only continuous time. We call it Destinashon.2

Each stroke of Batá,3 each sign traced in the cracks, reveals truths that the world above cannot bear. The day will come when those fissures will devour them. The brave Caribbean breathes in the chaos of its own rhythm."

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That day, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for. Perhaps it was an escape from the fluorescent drone of the office or the quiet delusion that the hum of the storage fan had some kind of healing power. It was there, on a shelf untouched by time, that I found it — a misshapen folder, bulging with yellowed papers and tattered clippings.

There was no title. Just a hand-drawn image in black ink on the cover. Inside, references to two events repeated obsessively: “La noche hueca / el baile de las sombras libres” (The hollow night / the dance of the free shadows). At first, I thought it was fiction. An abandoned thesis. A remnant from some forgotten role-playing game.

There was no author. No addressee. Just scraps. Newspaper fragments, handwritten notes, place names I didn’t recognize, blurred photos of alleyways, graffiti, jungle scenes. As I tried to organize it all, something like a narrative began to take shape. Not a conventional story — no beginning, no climax, no resolution. But a rhythm. A pattern that bypassed logic yet struck a chord.

This is not a book in the traditional sense. It is a partial archive — ownerless, apparently purposeless. What follows is not a linear account but a fractured history that, I believe, is still being written elsewhere. I’ve tried to preserve the original order. You may feel disoriented. Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps chaos is the only way to truly understand.

Either way, the folder is open now. You might as well step inside.

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“What you cannot understand, you cannot control.
And what you cannot control is free.”

“Some things must remain in shadow, not out of fear of light, but because the Arriba4

cannot comprehend them. We preserve what they try to erase. In barrios,5 on mountain paths across the Caribbean shores, the Batá still sounds. They are echoes of stories that Arriba has tried to bleach into silence. Here, Abajo,6 we did not invent San Signos;7 they invented us. Each of us is a node, a gate, a black verse resisting the white void. Every Sombra8 that dances to the Batá carries a memory the Abajo refuses to forget. In the Opacity of Abajo, the hollow night is a portal. The Sombras are awakening. There is no return. These opaque stories unfold to the rhythm of the Batá. But Arriba does not understand.” — I.D.A. (Insurgentes De Abajo) (n.d.)9

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“The Caribbean is a fever-dream of a body resisting cure. From our vantage points, we watch the Sombras multiply — illegible, indecipherable. These are not scars; they are Fractus:10

poorly healed ruptures that spawn chaos. And chaos is not natural. It precedes collapse. Every rupture must be contained. Every Fractus must be sealed. The people of Abajo do not need saviors. They demand order. They crave submission.” — D.A.M. (Denial As Method) (The repressive organism from Above) (n.d.)

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Long ago, before the mountains and seas lost their voice, the Caribbean was a living body. Its nodes pulsed like arteries, connecting the visible with the invisible. In those times, two spirits emerged: Idá, the one who dances in the shadows — and Dám, the one who burns with light.

Idá is the spirit of connection. He walks among the Fractus like a fractal weaver — threading stories, linking lives, conjugating time into presence. They say he speaks with trees, that in his breath one hears ancestral rhythms, and that wherever he steps, Sombras move freely. For Idá, the Fractus are portals. The Opaque nodes he leaves behind are seeds — points of life waiting to bloom in the chaos of the Hollow Night.

Idá is the whisper from Abajo. He vibrates within every body as a thread of light, woven by Sombras that lead us to where forgotten stories linger. His hum is an ancestral Batá, heard only by those who’ve seen the Fractus spit out San Signos.

Dám, on the other hand, sees none of this. He is forged in white fire — a being of order and obedience. He carries with him an abrasive light, one that allows no room for Sombras. It is said Dám believes Fractus to be a disease and that the chaos Abajo must be crushed. His weapon is known as Toxon11

— thin slips of paper, razor-sharp, crafted from the dried leaves of the Death Manzanillo (Hippomane Mancinella). They burn into the mind and flesh of any who disobey.

The moment Toxon touches the tongue, it activates. The virus it carries unfolds like searing light, erasing all traces of Opacity. After the taste, there is only emptiness. A memory without Sombra.

The spirits began to clash. Idá wove paths between forgotten villages and corrupted hearts. Dám followed, destroying what lay in his way, silencing rhythms, severing echoes, and burning Idá’s trails into ash. The Caribbean — the all-seeing body — remained still. It knew it could not intervene.

Light needs shadow. Shadow needs fire. One without the other becomes monstrous. The elders Abajo say the battle continues. At night, if we listen, we’ll hear the Batá echo through the mountains and beaches — a call to those who still believe. But also, we’ll hear the whisper of Toxon leaves — slicing air, smothering echoes.

Legend holds: “When the final Fractus is sealed, the Caribbean will sleep, and its people will turn to stone. But if the Opaque Shadows escape the flames, the Batá will resound forever — and the Caribbean will dance in relentless chaos, without end.”

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///////// 4% & (800’’ FRAGMENT UNSTABLE // // Yet Toxon's nature is not what it seems— We learn that Toxon is deceptive. It is not the revolutionary journey its proponents claim, but rather a lysergic compound artfully disguised. Its petals are incredibly delicate, adorned with fractal designs that appear to shift under light, revealing mesmerizing patterns like an eight-petaled flower that folds and unfolds. Some observers report seeing an ever-open, EVIL EYE �� within these patterns. [CORRUPTION DETECTED – INCOMPLETE DATA] … However, Toxon is unequivocally a counter-revolutionary weapon — a chemical key engineered for mind-body enslavement. The insurgents seal the fractus, allowing the opacity to seep in. Those affected are said to dream of control and utter strange, fragmented phrases… ……….. [END OF EXCERPT]

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Born amidst the tamarind whispers, the Idá spirit emerged. Its roots delve deep into our land, its essence flows like rivers sketching impossible paths, and its Shadows jealously guard the memory of the Abajo.

• I [the fluid spirit – serpent]. It brings with it the wisdom of the eternal cycle, of dying to be reborn, of the poison that heals.
• dá [the union of broken threads]. It is the voice that connects the dispersed, that rescues the rhythms and shadows that others want to silence.

Idá fights not with man-made weapons, but with those woven from Kalinaga cosmography. Their gaze is an infinite well, holding the faint breath of the forgotten. Idá is an ancient song, shaking the very foundations of Arriba. Their footsteps awaken the invisible, reminding the Sombras that resistance resides within the Fractus.

It is said that wherever they pass, eight-petaled flowers regain their scent, the Batá beats with a wild rhythm, and the EVIL EYE ️closes once more, refusing to be the watchman.

Idá navigates the periphery of the unfamiliar, rescuing what Dám has sought to suppress: the rhythm, memory, and wild dreams of Caribbean pasts-presents-futures, which now seem free. According to the sages of Abajo, Idá is not merely a being graced by the DIVINE but an embodied symbol. They represent the resilience of every Sombra from Abajo that refuses to vanish, holding within them the echoes of all Caribbean cultures that have been silenced.

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Those who walk the Rajas12

do not walk alone. Each Sombra has its owner, each Batá its echo and each Fractus its guide. The Caribbean is full of voices: of saints, of orishas, of ancestors. In the Rajas, time bends, and forgotten memories mingle with what has not yet happened. The Insurgents protect the shortcuts, those passages where evil twists and power suffers. It is then that the San Signos are drawn in each Batá beat. Dance is their gift. Dancing is our defiance. [Anon., n.d.]

I.D.A. is an enigma. A Fractus archive. A network of narratives, memories and past-present-possible futures emanating from Abajo. It is not a traditional archive but a digital expression of the Fractus and Opaque Sombras of Abajo. Each piece of data in I.D.A. generates new roots, transforming in unpredictable ways.

I.D.A. emerged spontaneously. It was a phenomenon born out of the interaction between nodes and temporal Fractus — chronological wounds in the Caribbean. The first records of its operations in the 18th century are fragments of Opaque memories and chaotic archives stored in no specific order. However, their true essence remains a mystery.

REPORT 00XII-D4F ⧫⧫⧫⧫ I.D.A. holds stories that are neither linear nor complete. Moments out of time that constantly converge and reconfigure themselves. Only those who have a link to the fractus can decipher their patterns. ¿¿¿¿¿Visions of the future?????? I.D.A. unfolds # F.F. / Futures Fractus / divergent paths born of every split. The All-Seeing Caribbean uses these visions to navigate the times Abajo. ⧫⧫⧫⧫ [Anon., n.d.]

N/A: D.A.M. perceives I.D.A. as its primary adversary and thus views its corruption as essential for the imposition of its linear order. D.A.M.'s strategy involves introducing compromised narratives into systems to foster chaos and disorientation. To achieve this, it targets and eliminates nodes and Fractus where Opaque fragments are believed to reside. Despite the destruction or damage of several of these, evidence suggests that I.D.A. continues to develop.

Recovered texts indicate that I.D.A. possesses protocols capable of repairing corrupted data and generating novel interpretations from fractures.

NB: Phrase found at the bottom of one of the pages: “I.D.A. is a symbiotic heart where insurgent memories mingle with the possible.”

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D.A.M. is not just a system. It is an architecture of fear. An imposed line meant to suppress the chaos from which the Abajo draws life. It is a machine of control, grinding down all that refuses alignment. They don’t rely solely on Toxon. They breed sentinels: the “wraiths” — people addicted to Toxon, transformed into its extensions. No longer human, they are moving instruments of obedience. Wherever they go, Fractus collapses. The Sombras recoil. And silence congeals.

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Before the Hollow Night emerged, the Sombras already knew how to dance. Their voices were always here, woven into the very air, whispered from the breathing Fractus. Before the Caribbean fractured into the Gran Raja,13

there were the seers, the knowers, the weavers. Not heroes. Not saints. Just emissaries from Abajo. Their stories are threads from an unseen loom, announcing the eternal Batá. They do not aim to explain. They exist to remind us.

Even then, the Sombra spoke.

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(FRAGMENT - UNSTABLE) I am not a Sombra... I am not light... I am the interval... I am what remains between rhythm and silence... between the crack and what you call control. [CORRUPTION DETECTED – INCOMPLETE DATA] The Caribbean does not sleep. It does not understand lines... It does not breathe in the flat. What you try to trace breaks, and what you want to erase, lives. I am what you cannot see. [FRAGMENT DISTORTED LOAD UNSTABLE] Every Sombra you do not see, dances. If you seal the Rajas, others... otras... más will open. The Caribbean beats in the pulse that vibrates between the visible and the spectral. At the centre of that beat is THE ENTITY, which belongs not to the past, nor to the present, nor to the future, but to a TEMPUS FRACTUS14

that blurs lines and redefines limits. To speak of THE ENTITY is not to invoke a static myth; it is to articulate a single-multiple rhythm. ENTITY is not a figure perched on an altar, nor a fossilized memory of folklore from Arriba. It is a LIVING ROOT. It is a Spiritual Operating System (S.O.E) that reconfigures the HUMAN and the NON-HUMAN, the TERRENAL and the COSMIC. Abajo, THE ENTITY is not worshipped as a distant being is worshipped, because those below are THE ENTITY. When you pray to THE ENTITY, it is not your voice that is asking; it is the voice of all the voices that came BEFORE and all the voices that resist TOMORROW. It is not superstition.

ENTITY is a system, a source of alternative knowledge. Its strength lies in the fact that it does not seek to validate itself under Western epistemologies. ENTITY does not want to be explained; it wants to be lived. ENTITY is the Sombra that hides you, the echo that guides you. So you no longer pray to be saved; you pray to remember that you are ALREADY saved. THE ENTITY is not an archaic relic; it is cultural technology. ENTITY is a COLLECTIVE SURVIVAL MACHINE. In every prayer, in every Batá, in every Sombra that dances in the Fractus of the mountain, the code of THE ENTITY is executed. The code is always Opaque, like a cultural encryption that resists being deciphered by the structures Arriba.

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When I.D.A. hides in the অস্বচ্ছ (opaque nodes) of the Caribbean geography. When the free Shadows dance in অসম্ভব ফ্র্য7ক্ট7ল (impossible fractals), THE ENTITY is the energy that moves heaven and earth. [END OF EXCERPT]

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The San Signos are not inventions. They are returns. They arrive from another timeline, fragments of collective vision deferred by colonization. They are what survived displacement. Unofficial, undestroyed. They live in the barrios, the dances, and the bodies. Called many names — monte, palo, loa, fundamento16

— they are passed on, sung, danced, and dreamt. Sometimes they choose a bearer, someone who doesn’t even realize they’ve been chosen. They didn’t descend from stars or rise from the East. They came from Abajo. From resistance. From code. They break open the languages imposed from Arriba. They say what our tongues were never taught to speak.

San Signos is a language of Opacity.

For the undomesticated.

A/N: It may be thought that Xul Solar created a language. That he invented an oracle, a cosmogony, a personal spiritual machine. But it can also be thought — and perhaps it is fairer — that something more ancient spoke through him.

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Waraira Repano is an অস্বচ্ছ (opaque node). A mountain and a membrane. A breathing interface between worlds, where the figure of THE ENTITY stands as an interface between worlds and underworlds. For the indigenous people, she is the Earth itself; she is Yara,18

guardian of rivers and hills. To Afro-descendants, she vibrates with the orishas. To Caraqueños, she is THE PRESENCE beyond words.

THE ENTITY is the HEALER. Waraira Repano, its AMPLIFIER. Its legends mutate, refracting meaning. Each San Signo etched on a wall pulses with its Sombra. When the mountain breathed after millennia of slumber, the Fractus opened. They say Idá heard it first. Then came the talismans — threads of light woven with memory — countless, reborn each time the mountain exhales. These threads open paths unfound on maps. Paths forged by Sombras.

A/N: Yet to D.A.M., such truths are merely noise to be deciphered. The entity known as "Idá" remains an enigma to the D.A.M., with records proving difficult to decode and trace due to encrypted functions and decoding resistances within the archive. Constant references to "Batá" and "Fractus" suggest a symbolic connection to Caribbean events. Hypothesis: D.A.M. posits that these informational fragments might not be intentional messages but rather "insurgent sentinels" — an anarchic data network activated under specific environmental-emotional conditions "Abajo."

Note: These fragments could be interpreted as warnings of future events.

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On the heights of Waraira Repano, a man who decided to make a pact with death settled down. Gottfried Knoche, born in Germany, chose to live in the mountains of Caracas. He climbed with scalpels, chemical formulas and a persistent aversion to the traditional. The idea of meat rotting gave him a visceral discomfort, a chemical error. He founded a hacienda on the heights of the hill and called it Buena Vista. There he established his home, his clinic and his laboratory.

On the tables were lined up bodies in custody.

Knoche developed a method that began with the carotid artery. He injected a solution that stopped the rot. The mixture — according to rumours — contained aluminium chloride, a compound that smells like a warning. He also built a mausoleum. There he placed his loved ones in display cases with reinforced glass. His daughter, his brother-in-law, his housekeeper. Also his own sarcophagus. Visitors spoke of strange, distant Batá-like sounds. Footsteps were sometimes heard, but not much attention was paid. Some things are simply accepted — or forgotten — without much thought. Among the bodies that passed through his hands were Tomás Lander20

and Francisco Linares Alcántara.21

The mountain consumed everything, including them. The laboratory crumbled, succumbing to the damp, and its stained-glass windows shattered. Vandals plundered iron, erased names, and sold remains. While some mummies vanished without a trace, others are rumored to still lie buried beneath roots that people dare not disturb.

Knoche is a forgotten name. Buena Vista, it seems, remains a constant observer. For decades, the people of Waraira Repano have reported a pulsing from the mausoleum's site. This is not a metaphor; distinct thuds are heard beneath the structure, particularly after moonset or during electrical tropical storms. Some attribute these to minor earthquakes, while others believe them to be signals from Abajo.

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PMAP is an acoustic-sub-dermal phenomenon of post-mortal origin, characterized by rhythmic sound emissions emanating from human remains that have undergone unknown embalming procedures. This phenomenon typically manifests in regions with high humidity and electrical activity. The sounds are attributed to residual micro-contractions within certain tissues, specifically those preserved with hygroscopic compounds like aluminium chloride. These contractions are believed to be associated with an "unextinguished memory."

PMAP has been described as an "organic tectonic heartbeat," where the pulses do not react to external stimuli. However, they maintain patterns consistent with the biorhythms observed in living organisms. Apocryphal studies suggest a possible synchronization of these beats with changes in barometric pressure or certain lunar cycles.

Some accounts further attribute empathic behavior to PMAP, noting its reaction to human presence or to the invocation of the "original name—unknown to most—of the guardian of Waraira Repano." — Encyclopaedia Arsomatica, Martinique. 19th Century.

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“At an altitude of 1,015 metres above sea level, on the northeastern slope of Waraira Repano National Park, a series of subterranean rhythmic impacts have been registered. These impacts, known locally as "Dr K’s Hammer," occur at a constant frequency of 1.8 Hz and are only perceptible at specific intervals.”

— A Sound Treatise of the West Indies. Dominican Republic, 1972.

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"Its properties cannot be explained by either seismic activity or thermal expansion. The cavernous resonance is similar to the acoustic phenomenon of Moodus22

in Connecticut, but with a significant distinction: the waves do not spread spherically from a geological epicenter. Instead, they seem to originate directly from a man-made structure buried deep within the mountain." — Sounding Treatise of the Antilles. Delaware, 1997.

Roberto Hernández, in his 1983 book Sounding Bodies, Resonant Graves, proposes the term 'Machemoodus Criollo' for an acoustic phenomena. This hybrid manifestation blends geological echoes with historical reverberations, creating a "body in suspension, preserved beyond time." Hernández notes that recordings of these waves don’t behave like natural noise; instead, they exhibit structure and a "heartbeat," as if "the stone... is responding to the pulse of an unknown rhythm."

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Among mediums, treasure hunters, and mountain botanists, whispers persist: Knoche didn’t work alone. His obsession with embalming? A cover. Behind it: a collective known only as I.D.A. Not a group. A drift. Poets, healers, Maroons, and fugitives. Their mission? Preserve the opaque stories erased by the official archive of D.A.M.

A/N: Let us recall that "opaque stories," according to Édouard Glissant’s notion,23

are those that shun colonial transparency, forced translation and domesticated narrative.

Gottfried Knoche, a European who deeply cherished these lands, contributed his embalming technique as a vessel. The aim was to preserve not just bodies but entire narratives. These "Memory-Bodies," treated with secret formulas and codified rituals, could remain dormant for centuries. Each embalming meticulously records the complete anticolonial history, etched into muscle, bone, and tissue as a form of suspended resistance. The insurgents utilize a reactivation system borrowed from Dr K. Each memory body is believed to contain all the opaque histories and can only be activated during well-known events such as hollow night and the dance of the free Shadows. These rituals are celebrated in places in the Caribbean. For two nights, the Sombras detach themselves from their bodies, transmitting tongueless messages, which can only be understood by those who still vibrate with the Abajo.

A/N: Accounts suggest that Knoche passed away soon after finalizing the comprehensive map of memory-bodies. It has also been documented that this map was an element of a more extensive apparatus.

NB: All evidence suggests the first “Noche Hueca” happened in Caracas.

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A body that does not rot is not a miracle. It is a warning. Along the Caribbean coast, generations have whispered of the bodies that wait. Not dead, not alive. Suspended. Sealed within them: fragments of history written in black blood, not ink.

In the blurred years of the 19th century, Gottfried Knoche — a European doctor with precise hands and a clean gaze — was approached by a spectral network of storytellers: the Insurgents from Abajo. Invisible, untouchable. They spoke in Fractus, in salt, in mushrooms, in bones.

And they had a plan. 

With their guidance, Dr K. inscribed languages into rigid diaphragms, encoded myths into phalanges, and embedded rebel hymns in every tightened muscle. Each embalmed body became a capsule — a vessel of Caribbean dissonance.

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(La Noche Hueca) doesn’t follow the moon. It doesn’t mark seasons. It appears when oblivion crosses its limit — when silence suffocates. It is then, on that thin threshold, that the doors of Abajo crack open. Not by will, but by fractures the Batá alone can summon. On this night, the Memory-Bodies awaken. There is a shift — a tremble in the chest. Something was released.

The fracture inside widens, quietly. The air thickens, heavy with charge. Messages rise. They cannot be captured or repeated. Once released, they ripple outward.

During the Hollow Night, the Sombras are said to separate. They don’t vanish — they unfold, like wings opening in the dark. As if remembering what we’ve forgotten. As if preparing for what is still to come. Each carries a fragment of something unsaid but inevitable. Some climb the mountain, through dense undergrowth, towards Knoche’s old estate — summoned, perhaps, by its pulse.

A/N: The Hollow Night is rare. Perhaps its essence defies memory. Or perhaps we've been conditioned to forget, to remain numb, to never return. But why did I find this folder? Could a new pattern be taking shape — through me?

I must remember: Arriba will always try to erase what it cannot bear.

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