(1) Astronomical ellipses; shifting barycentres of the Lye system: One of the essential foundations for the development of life on any planet is a consistent climate. As with the Earth, the ecosystem of the Lye Planet was able to evolve thanks to an optimal distance from the sun, a moderate axial tilt, and a generally regular and reliable orbit. The former (a 15° tilt, compared to Earth’s 23.5°) would have resulted in milder seasonal variation were it not for a slight orbital eccentricity, which still to this day brings the planet closer to the sun during the summer of its southern hemisphere. This led to a stabler climate in the north and more pronounced seasonal changes in the south. These disparities were the source of some cultural stereotypes present in artefacts from both hemispheres which feature depictions of their neighbours: southerners often portraying northerners as stern, supercilious, physically inflexible, prone to anxiety; northerners often portraying southerners as wayward, lazy, clumsy, impulsive. A section of LPA669.484.21 provides an example of a light-hearted, self-aware deployment of these tropes:
A perpetual Stone through stem-work gathers a spiral of dust to help build a great seed-bed. The Stone has discovered Duty. The Duty of the Dust is to salvage itself from Idiots' Mire and once settled form a bedrock the size of the World, with this to keep the seed-bed hidden from the world’s faces.
Stumbling the Dust spirals on the plain half-bound. Cackling Dust turns seeds to dust, water to red-dust-of-excrement, settling on a great weeping stench – Duty’s grimace! – the Dust blankets stems which become husks of stems, rises to fire, bellows after hill-slopes – Stone yelps like a small fresh-stem and sinks into the Grey Bog of Stones. The sun and moons shine without Duty; the Dust and bedrocks in cackling dance-forms; perpetual song of crop-stems in their circling.
Other effects of the Lye Planet’s orbit included differing day lengths at different times of year, the result of an increased velocity as the planet approached its periapsis, and even mild changes in gravitational pull. It could be argued that the highly fluctuating though reliable climate of the Lye Planet contributed to mythological conceptions of natural ‘chaotic harmony’.
A further intriguing cultural phenomenon that arose from these disparities was the popular ‘jumping festivals’, performed by travelling groups of ‘air-combers’: these performers, originating from the south, would spend their summer in training under heavier gravitational conditions, and then travel north, taking advantage of the levity of that hemisphere’s summer to perform astonishing, high leaps and other acrobatic routines. Some sources claim that air-combers could jump six or seven times their own height. There is speculation that the description of travellers in LPA186.480.26 was at least partially based on these troupes, documenting their fall from favour in the early stages of the Decline.
A slight reduction in the sun’s mass – a consequence of rapid heat loss – has over time aggravated the eccentricity of the planet’s orbit. As the sun shrinks, the planet’s orbit slows, further lengthening the days and nights as well as affecting the bodies’ common centre of mass, which compounds an increasingly volatile and complex set of gravitational forces.
Technician William Ganz spent just under one Lye year stationed on the planet, and towards the end of his tenure sent a letter to his wife Mary which gives an impression of Lye's current condition and reflects on the seasonal patterns he and his team had witnessed. Due to persistent difficulties in communication between the planets, portions of this final transmission were lost in space:
“DEAREST MARY, THIS EVENING WE FINISHED COMPILING THE LAST WINTER READINGS AND PREPARING THE SHIP FOR THE JOURNEY HOME. GOD KNOWS HOW MUCH I’VE MISSED YOU […] FIND MYSELF ONCE MORE AMONG LIVING BREATHING NATURE AND THE REGULAR COMINGS AND GOINGS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE. IT SEEMS LIKE EVERY DAY […] SOME OTHER MARVELLOUS POEM OR SO THEY TELL ME, EXTOLLING THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD THAT USED TO BE HERE, AND WHILE I CAN SOMEWHAT PICTURE THAT PAST LIFE FROM THE HUSK OF IT LEFT TO BE SEEN IT’S SURELY DEAD AND DRIED UP NOW […] QUITE LUNAR, YOU MIGHT SAY. LIKE A LANDSCAPE’S SHADOW […] POSSIBLE BY SUNLIGHT AT CERTAIN COORDINATES AT CERTAIN TIMES OF YEAR, AND THE HORIZON IS NEARLY ALWAYS VISIBLE, BUT BY AND LARGE […] ANAEMIC FOR EASE OF VISION. IT PUTS THE WORLD IN A KIND OF PERMANENT EVENING. MOSTLY THE TEAM HAS TO INVESTIGATE THE SETTLEMENTS BY THE BEAM OF THEIR TORCHES […] BROWN OR GREY-COLOURED, EXCEPT NOW, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE SOUTHERN SUMMER, WHEN THE YELLOW TINTS OF THE LAND REALLY COME OUT. I KNOW NOW THIS IS AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE PLANET GETS THESE DAYS, AND IT’S THE WINTERS WE HAVE TO WATCH OUT FOR; YOU REMEMBER THE TIME WE NEARLY LOST […] FLEW OFF INTO ORBIT TRYING TO SALVAGE A BIG TRICKY VAT FROM A SINKHOLE. THESE EVENTS WILL ONLY BECOME MORE COMMON AS THE YEARS GO BY, AND WE’LL HAVE TO MOVE QUICKLY I THINK BEFORE THE WINDS AND DEEPENING ICESHEETS BURY ALL WHAT’S LEFT OF THEM […]”
(2) Mythological/textual ellipses; the 'fragment' in Lye writing: Thanks to the efficacy of the vats designed by Lye inhabitants to protect their artefacts from loss or damage, we believe that most of the items in our possession are in their complete form. Despite this, a surprising number have a fragmentary, incomplete quality that would seem to indicate otherwise. It is impossible to accurately measure or define an artefact’s ‘completeness’ for a number of reasons: the difficulty of determining whether the maker and preserver of a given artefact were the same individual; the many reasons for unfinished work beyond issues of preservation, especially at a time of increasing social and ecological instability (as may account for both the lack of resolution in LPA186.480.26 as well as the truncated final section of LPA210.045.42); and, most importantly, the very notion of ‘completeness’, and how it is subject to our own conceptions of linear, anthropocentric narrative and experiential time. Lye texts, for example, are known to eschew sequential or causal narratives, or for long periods of time to be unaccounted for in more linear chronicles.
At the onset of the Decline, there is the additional complication of the nascent, individual voice in Lye writing, which leads to a hesitant fragmentary-ness, as if the author is tentatively sketching the boundaries of their being in contrast to the surrounding world without wanting to supplant it entirely (see LPA209.227.26). Nevertheless, the idea that these items were ever intended to represent, record, transcend, or act as stand-in for the lives of their creators is a folly often committed by Lye researchers. For the most part, they are small glimpses from societies of perpetual motion and infinite recurrence, from inhabitants who for this reason mostly lived in the present moment. There are, as always, exceptions to this generalisation, and as external pressures drew into focus difficult questions of past and future, the omissions and obfuscations of these texts took on a different character.