ATLAS // FOUNDATION // ENTRY 00: A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE TERRITORY

The territory came into existence within one human lifetime. It holds no land and, at last count, five and a half billion travelers. Most entered as children. No documents were issued at the border, because no border was built.The territory has weather that no meteorology covers and inhabitants that no census sorts. Its physics were manufactured, are privately owned, and are revised without notice. Travelers average more than six hours a day inside it. A traveler can keep that schedule for twenty years and be unable to name one law of the place. This is not the traveler's failure. No map was ever made.The Atlas is the map.It records what is actually there: the weather, the terrain, the fauna, the inhabitants, the recurring events, and the small set of instruments a traveler carries. Every mechanism recorded in the Atlas is real and may be checked. The taxonomy is the Atlas's own. Where the record is incomplete, the entry says so.The Atlas is maintained by Mode Labs. The Atlas is not about Mode Labs. It is about the territory, and the territory is where you live.Begin anywhere. The weather is a common starting point. You are in it now.