A Look into the 4 Converged Worlds
Memory storms, alien technologies, rich cultural histories and forgotten stories await within Convergence
By Jordan Rumsey
Photos by Kate Russell
Published Issue 094, October 2021
Welcome travelers. Before you begin your voyage, write down any memories you would like to hold onto for the future, in case of a memory storm.
You don’t need to know the story to appreciate the collection of imaginative, exploratory art within Convergence Station, but in case the background appeals to you:
Nearly three decades ago, a freak cosmic event known as the Convergence tore away pieces of four different worlds in the blink of an eye. Ripped from their loved ones and native planets, scores of displaced citizens were thrust into this new Convergence of Worlds, with only memories of the lives they had before.
Memory itself became so vital that an entire memory sharing economy developed and soon flourished. This new memory economy was all the more important because in the wake of being smashed together, these worlds were wracked by relentless “Memory Storms” — psychic aftershocks of the Convergence that would scatter citizens’ memories whenever they struck.
Today, Convergence is buzzing with activity: Quantum Department of Transportation (QDOT) has opened its latest station (the first on Earth) as an endpoint in Denver, so this is the first time Convergence residents are able to visit Earth. And citizens have suddenly started remembering glimpses of four forgotten women – who were each somehow tied to the moment of Convergence on their homeworlds.
Did the Forgotten Four cause the Convergence? Are they working for QDOT? Were they left in the past? As you travel through these worlds where memories are currency, you can choose to dig deeper into the story or simply enjoy the journey through the multiverse.
C Street
Ride the C Line from the Lobby then step into this busy, colorful but grimy area that was once the scorned sanitation district of a planet-wide metropolis.
C Street became a melting pot for beings from across the universe after the Convergence, happy to be torn away from the landlord-bureaucracy of their homeworld and ready for change.
The residents of C Street don’t trust politicians, so they elect a new mayor every 20 minutes. Top leaders in the community work to keep businesses independent from big corporations and everyone who lives there recycles and reuses as much as possible.
Check out the Convergence Newsfeed on any Memory ATM, a hybrid newsource/social media feed where you can read the latest revelations from the Same Day News, or watch posts from local celebrity and true crime beauty content creator, Tracking Error.
Ossuary
The people of Ossuary have a deep history, visually laid out in the floor and ceiling medallions in the main lobby in Ossuary.
The Y’ruk people worked underground, mining natural elements and Oss crystals that stored memories until a massive transfixing light appeared in the sky. The whole civilization devoted their culture to create a megastructure to try to reach out and touch this bright light, known as The Glimmer.
But the higher they built the structure, the more they forgot about their culture, until one day the planet punished the Y’ruk for their hubris, with volcano eruptions so severe that the event was later referred to as The Cataclysm. The planet’s surface was rendered unlivable, and the Y’ruk were pushed into their subterranean mines to survive. Lyra, known as the first librarian, was able to hold on to her people’s memories through the Oss crystals. These crystals allowed Lyra to preserve their ancient histories through the fiery Cataclysm, and to lay the bedrock for their future.
Find out about the first librarian and listen to past librarians recite The Tome of Forgetting in the hall of busts near the 3rd floor stairwell.
Eemia
When a piece of the Eemia was torn away from the rest of the planet in the Convergence, people were torn away from loved ones and leaders.
Kaleidogoth High Priestess Araceli desperately wants to find a way back home by “opening the sky” to try to save her civilization from the thousand-year ice age it’s been facing. Her brother thinks their people have a better future after the Convergence. Their mother, Panoa is one of the Forgotten Four, and her memories may hold the key to the future of this world through Panoa’s melody, written by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein who also wrote the original Stranger Things soundtrack.
Read up on the Eemian history from the onset of the ice age to the moment of Convergence in a neon colored metal book known as The Book of Whales, written by Julianne Aguilar, Joanna Garner, and Michael Wilson and designed by Gabriella Léger-Lovato, Julian Williams, Chimezie Onuoha, and Caitlin LeMoine.
Numina
Numina is both a “character and a universe. A living sentient universe, not unlike our own but unlike our own in many ways,” according to Caity Kennedy, Meow Wolf Senior Creative Director & Co-Founder.
Each cell within Numina is a timeline and universe. All of the creatures are visitors like us or parts of the cell, organelles of the larger creature. What we are able to visit is just one cell of the plant.
Numina is curious about us simpler creatures and language as a function of linear time since it does not operate on linear time. When beings with free will (like Earth humans) make decisions, it makes a timeline split. “This is how Numina grows. Higher dimensional mitosis. Cell division by way of timeline splitting,” said Caity.
Look for the ears that you can speak into. Numina has portals to other worlds because it’s exploring and connecting all over the place, examples of reaching out and learning.
There are obvious portals through doorways and dioramas as well as warped mirrors and mirror globe dioramas that serve as connection points from one parallel universe to another.
If you are looking for theories and research into this world and its creatures, look in Leomi’s handwritten field journal.
You can’t miss the Cosmohedron, which serves as the nucleus of the cell of Numina but is also its own creature with a past. The Cosmohedron has a symbiotic relationship with Numina that helps stabilize Numina in the third and fourth dimensions for travellers to visit more easily and with less risk of being lost in the multiverse.
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If you look a little deeper as you explore these worlds, you’ll encounter several questions that the citizens of Convergence are trying to answer. The Last Stop promises to return everyone to their home worlds – but at what cost? What role did each of these worlds and the Forgotten Four play in the creation of this Convergence? What’s causing the memory storms? And what role do we Earthers (all of us) play in this story?
THIS FEATURE WAS PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MEOW WOLF.
Check out Meow Wolf’s September Birdy install Long Live The Parlour Birds w/ Maya Linke By Allyson Lupovich here, or head to our Explore section to see more MW monthly content.