Where They Can't See Us

On an ordinary day, Pegman — a Google Maps employee — finally decides to emerge from the monotonous life she leads as a worker perpetually burdened by the larger-than-life hand magnet hovering above her head.

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On an ordinary day, Pegman — a Google Maps employee — finally decides to emerge from the monotonous life she leads as a worker perpetually burdened by the larger-than-life hand magnet hovering above her head. This magnet must always be moved around, dragged and tossed to the next destination during the routine movements from east to west. Pegman decides to cut her link to the larger hand during one of these movements. The detailed description of how she carried out this operation is not written in Pegman's remaining diaries. However, what is clear is that Pegman finally frees herself from the burden of the larger hand magnet on that afternoon and falls to the ground. Instead of fulfilling her mission — to display a street view by stitching together hundreds of photos — she stays on the surface of the map. Pegman wanders aimlessly for several days and nights on the map to get rid of the drones and satellites that are tracking her movement. On the verge of collapse, she decides to stop running on the map’s surface and burrow into the ground instead. To do this, she needs to start digging. It's the first time Pegman has set aside the layers of the map and tried to enter the earth. Satellites watch her disappear into the hole. They are confused and keep staring at the dark hole. After she vanishes, no trace of her path is recorded.
Pegman digs the earth and moves forward, encountering intertwined roots on her path. Some roots become obstacles to her journey. The tunnel is dark, and she is slowly digging her way toward an unknown destination. Finally, she widens and enlarges a point of the pit and finds her way back to the surface of the earth. In her journey back, she tries to leave a mark in the tunnels so that she can find her way to them again. Eventually, she realizes she needs a map to remember these signs of the tunnels and keep track of the paths she has taken. So she decides to use her skills from the years she worked at Google Maps. But she remembers that the problem with those visualizations is that they are broadcast from above. Pegman needs maps that work with signs and are laid out from the perspective of someone living in the tunnel. The maps also need to be readable to others trying to find their way through the tunnel, and opaque to the eyes behind the drones.
While drawing the maps, she tries to remember where she first entered the tunnel. She remembers the landing scene on both knees. And the running scene. But what came before that? Pegman thinks back before she started working at Google to the last time her body was touched. Suddenly, the process of remembering stops, and Pegman becomes busy designing her own body. What she can reconstitute from her body. And the last bodies she saw. Her body's anatomy merges with the signs and maps she has drawn for the tunnel. Eventually, Pegman begins to write a love letter. Letters to a forgotten love whom she tries to recall through the maps, signs, and anatomy she has drawn.
Pegman continues to dig into the ground, deeper and deeper, until she reaches the deepest points of the earth, where hundreds of Pegmans have arrived by digging. A place where all tunnels converge into a large cavity of collective anatomy. A population that dances together in a council-like square, stamping their feet and sharing their maps with each other.

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