Excavation Report, Structure 4: the "Waiting Sanctum," so named for the extraordinary evidence of prolonged ritual duration found within.
The chamber was small and windowless, its rows of low benches bolted to the floor so that no supplicant could rearrange them, evidence of a highly regimented devotion. Along one wall we recovered a shrine of gray box-vessels (the "Coff-Ee" reliquaries) which once dispensed a sacred bitter liquid to the faithful in tiny pleated cups.
Underfoot, a floor covering worn to threads in a single narrow lane, precisely between the benches and a sealed inner door, testifying to the ceaseless pacing of the devout.
Most telling were the tributary scrolls: brittle stacks of glossy leaves, printed with the faces of beautiful and untroubled strangers, left deliberately fanned upon the low central altars. We now believe these were offerings of idealized ancestors, presented to appease whatever presence dwelt beyond the inner door. That the leaves were touched but never taken suggests they were sacred and could not leave the chamber.
The Screen People sat here in rows, we are certain, for durations bordering on the devotional, each clutching a glowing tablet, heads bowed in the posture our field long ago identified as prayer. A single suspended box-shrine on the far wall flickered ceaselessly with moving images to which no one attended, an eternal flame no priest tended and no supplicant needed to see.
What the inner door concealed we may never know. But no people would build a chamber so plain, so scentless, so purpose-emptied of comfort, unless they came here to hand something over, and to wait, and to hope it might be handed back. These were a people who worshipped the threshold itself, and who learned, in these small bright rooms, the terrible patience of those who love something they cannot follow through the door.