Field Journal, Dig Site 12: The Assessment Chamber.
We have at last reconstructed the initiation rite of the Screen People, and it was a savage one. Two supplicants would enter a small sealed room bearing a single ceremonial scroll, the Resumay, upon which the applicant had inscribed every deed of their short life in shrinking, desperate script. This scroll was offered across a barren table to a seated elder, or sometimes a tribunal of three, who received it without warmth.
What follows we deduce from the wear patterns on the recovered furniture. The supplicant's chair shows deep abrasion at the seat edge alone, suggesting the body was never permitted to rest fully upon it. The elder's chair is worn evenly, luxuriously, throughout. Rank, then, was measured in the right to lean back.
The rite demanded specific liturgical exchanges, preserved in the corrupted texts we call Whairdoyouseeyourself and Whatisyourgreatestweakness, this last a ritual confession in which the initiate was required to name a flaw so cunningly that it became a boast. To fail this reversal was to be cast out. We have found no fewer than four thousand such chambers across the ruined settlements, which tells us the Ancients underwent this trial constantly, perhaps monthly, forever seeking admission to sanctums they would abandon within a season.
Most poignant is the closing formula, spoken by the elder at the threshold: We will be in touch. We now understand this was not a promise but a benediction of dismissal, for the recovered devices show these words were almost never followed by any touch at all.
They were a people who believed, against all evidence, that if they described themselves well enough in a small cold room, someone would finally choose them.