THE FAÇADE
Some say that the gates of Paradise are hardly different than the doors of a supermarket: equipped with light and temperature sensors, they will open right up if you are standing before them. Others do not believe in such nonsense, arguing that if the way up and the way down are nothing if not the same, you must cross the Valley of the Dead before reaching the final destination. In this case, Paradise wouldn’t be needing any gates at all.

Room 1
As you look up, you see a blue ceiling ornamented with what looks like repeated stars. And then it hits you. They aren’t stars. You are actually in a tomb, a very special tomb. You have already been here and you have seen this very ceiling, just as you have seen the images covering the walls, and these images were telling you a story.

Room 2
You read: “After a while, you see a pond, full of fish. But remember: in each and every part of it, a fish is a fish but also a pond, and the garden which envelops the pond, and the whole universum enveloping the garden which envelops the pond, as this fish cannot but reflect all of it more or less precisely, like a mirror that might be flat or curved, blurred or crystal clear.” You start to realize that you are dealing with a puzzle here. Though it’s not a lottery that you are about to play, nor tarot, but the noble game of Senet.

Room 3
Walls, walls, walls. Walls and dead ends. It’s a pinball game, and you are starring as the ball. You suddenly think of that old friend who liked to play with balls. But what was his name? Oh yes, Nicholas of Cusa. As the walls multiply in number, try to do the opposite of what he would have advised you: avoid moving in a straightforward manner. Remember, in a pinball game, the more walls you touch, the more points you get.

Room 4
Stuck in a loading program as you wait for an image to appear. You do it quite often – taking part in this new form of imperfect resurrection– each time you turn on an old movie and stare at the glowing screen while this thing that you are looking at keeps watching you in return. You start to think that this space in which you have found yourself is a grey area between digital and physical dimensions, balancing on the thin frontier separating the two worlds.

Room 5
Timaeus claimed that the universe is not eternal but was created out of triangles, not out of circles (that leave too much of a void and cannot be properly glued together), nor squares (that are not flexible enough). There are four types of triangles: those with right angles, those with equally measured sides, and two others, but they are not that important, really.

Room 6
Death itself (like eternity itself, or a table itself) is not bodily, but more a very quick switch (mostly metaphysical) which turns something off. It is quite eager to take part in a masquerade, a quid-pro-quo comic play passing for what it is not (for example, for something that exists even if it doesn’t (cf. Epicurus)). To render the game truly fantastic, towers, chapels, pyramids and tombs are constructed, made of bronze, marble, wood, or other materials like bricks and stones, atoms and waves, pearls and eyeballs. Some call them monuments, others – toys.

Room 7
History is a Book of the Dead (Chapter IX), written in the language of comics: a story one should listen to with eyes rather than ears. Achilles never outruns the turtle, as the space between them keeps dividing itself into smaller and smaller distances preventing him from getting to his adversary. Likewise, History will never run out of stories, as it would keep dividing itself into shorter and shorter narratives. After all, to testify or to invent, are these any different?

Room 8
A trustworthy source mentions that the original armillary sphere was not destroyed in the terrifying fire in the dark year of **A.D. but was kept hidden in what is told to be “a fictional maze.”^[1] In the footnote on the same page we read that the sphere in question is the one and only truthful sphere, being both Ptolemaic and Copernican: “like a two-faced Janus, it may manifest itself in one form or another – as a shadow of the past or an icon of the present.”^[2] Apparently, those who run only in mental circles, taking the path of introspection as they turn around the axle of their inner voice, won’t see the same thing as those who add a physical circular movement to their ritual.

^{[1]Kerfiled, P.129; [2] Comenius, P.64}