papyrus
Papyrus is the thin, plant-based board that has mercilessly chronicled humanity’s thoughts and delusions from antiquity to the modern age. Revered as sacred, it nonetheless succumbs to moisture and insects in museums’ forgotten corners. Words inscribed with aspirations of eternity persist forever, complete with typos and emendation marks. Simultaneously a mirror to civilization’s zenith and a faithful record of its decay, papyrus is a capricious medium of memory. When humanity perishes, it may be this fragile paper that laughs last.