Marks, Not Memory

He came from a society where speakers told stories and others with perfect memories, people called papers, stood by and listened and remembered all that was spoken so it could be repeated back any time.  They found that papers decayed, and aged, and grew worn, and sometimes unreliable, and when one was discovered adding and subtracting — editing — that was the beginning of writing, and marks, and the end of memory.   So now we speak to each other across time in marks, our voices kept still and unchanging, our memories fixed until the betrayer, called interpretation, slips in and fosters forgetting.