“History is a compass. But a compass held too tightly becomes a chain.”

  Inside a bamboo-and-glass structure shaped like a spiral shell, the Decentralized Council of Memory meets in full assembly for the first time in months.

  Seated around the central fire are:

  Elder Lakan Uria – a Memory Shepherd who survived the Martial Law era, custodian of analog archives.

  Krystal Magdayo – a visionary technologist from Zone 4 who helped engineer the Story Forests.

  Datu Andreas – a youth faction representative known for his phrase, “Burn the books, build new ones.”

  Tina of the Rememberers – weary, voice hoarse from too many zones, too many stories.

  Their agenda, “How long must we preserve the past before we are allowed to dream unburdened?”

  Neo-Filipinas is thriving—perhaps too well.

  Schools now begin each day with ancestral chants.

  Children memorize five generations of family trees before learning calculus.

  Digital devices are heavily curated—no external feeds, only internal knowledge loops.

  Memorial Rituals fill entire weeks.

  Death anniversaries have become near-national holidays.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Young artists feel stifled.

  “Everything I make is judged by what came before,” says a Zone 6 poet.

  “I want to write a future where we are the ancestors.”

  Yet elders worry, “We spent lifetimes in silence. You ask us to forget again?”

  In Zone 2, a controversial art exhibit appears overnight.

  Titled “Amnesia is a Right,” it features: Blank scrolls. Statues with erased names. A projection of Rizal with his eyes closed, whispering: “What if I was wrong?”

  It sparks outrage and awe.

  Students weep.

  Teachers debate.

  Someone throws red ink at the installation.

  Someone else guards it with their body.

  Magdayo calls it “a future-shaped scream.”

  Lakan Uria calls it “an echo of colonial rupture.”

  The founding duo is split.

  Rizal sits under a balete tree, reading a zine written by the youth of Zone Zero titled “Tomorrow Isn’t a Museum.”

  “Maybe we’ve created a shrine, not a society,” he murmurs.

  Bonifacio disagrees, “Memory was our sword. You want to trade it for what? A vision with no roots? We died to give them stories. And now they’re tired of hearing them?”

  Rizal stands, “Maybe they’ve heard them enough to finally speak their own.”

  A massive open forum is held in Luneta Circle.

  Thousands attend. Anyone can speak.

  An elder says, “My language was stolen. Now I wake up with it on my tongue. You want me to let it go?”

  A child replies, “But I’ve only known your language. I want to make my own.”

  A poet speaks, “Memory without freedom is just preservation. And freedom without memory is just noise. We need both.”

  The Assembly ends not with consensus—but with a question, "Can we remember without repeating the past?"

  Tina proposes a compromise.

  The “Living Futures Accord.”

  Memory pods remain, but participation is voluntary.

  Youth councils can create speculative mythologies—alternate futures, even alternate pasts—as tools for dreaming.

  Ancestral languages will evolve—allowed to blend, mutate, reinvent.

  Story Forests will include empty pages for futures not yet written.

  It’s controversial. But it’s passed.

  At the edge of Zone Zero, children gather to plant seeds in biodegradable scrolls.

  Not just of memory, but of imagination.

  Each scroll contains one sentence, “We remember the past so we can be the present and the future.”

  Bonifacio, watching from a distance, whispers to Rizal, “I’m still not sure.”

  Rizal answers, “Maybe that’s the only way to move forward.”