THE TUNNEL VISION is an audiovisual presentation.
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PREAMBLE
Professor Brown presented his grand idea at an event in the great hall of The All-Male Explorers' Club (for Men Only)*.
His plan was to attempt a journey into the depths of the Earth's crust, far below the reach of any mines or other existing man-made tunnels. To achieve that end a craft had been constructed with the ability to burrow through even the firmest and most solid ground. As I recall it, he also spoke about the prospect of finding and making contact with any undiscovered human-like civilizations that might reside there. He had theories about this hypothetical species. Very detailed theories if I'm not mistaken, about their anatomy, language, religion - all theoretical of course! Now that I think about it, most of the presentation consisted of speculation on the religious practices among the many as yet undiscovered but highly advanced species that presumably live their lives in tunnels and caverns that apparently proliferate in the unknown reaches below our feet.
The audience was mostly favourable in their response, though perhaps somewhat quizzical. The professor's exit was greeted with polite applause. This writer was certainly highly impressed with the project and made a note of following the reports on its progress.
The event was reported by various media, mostly of the regional variety, but was never really given an accurate and fair account at the time. One sensed a tone of bemusement and ridicule in many of the articles.
The expedition itself was barely reported at all, and the aftermath left more questions than answers. The assembled reports give a somewhat disjointed picture of the events. Different members of the crew give contradicting accounts, some more imaginative than others.
This is our attempt at reconstructing the mission, using all the contemporary reports and documentation we could assemble considering time restraints and our meagre research allowances - together with interviews and some more recent retellings in book form by aged and enfeebled former adventurers and relatives.
This preamble is the most substantive of our text-based contributions to this retelling of events. From hereon you will mostly have to make do with images, sounds and scents to orient yourself and make sense of it all. Maybe the occasional word here and there. But to complete the picture we have also included links to all the source documents. If you wish to consult these before going further into the audio-visual extravaganza before you, simply follow this link: BIBLIOGRAPHY
* There were women in attendance, but never more than a few, all of them seemingly harmless and not frightening at all.
