Tahawus is the first of many bits of obscure American history we visit in this story, other than Roseland itself. Also called “Adirondac,” it was a mining town embedded in the wilderness of the Adirondack Mountains. When the mine started to dry up, it became something like a resort or private club for wealthy outdoorsmen to station themselves at while they hiked and hunted and did whatever else it was they liked to do. Even this eventually dissolved, and the town sat unoccupied and rotting for many years until, in the 2000s, many of the vacant structures were destroyed and the site was renovated into a small tourist attraction, centered around the now non-functional forge that once was used for smelting iron ore.
Vice President Teddy Roosevelt was staying at Tahawus when he got the call that McKinley had been shot at the Pan-American Exposition and was slowly dying from the wound. He made the trip on horseback to try and be at the President’s side, but ended up having to be sworn in, as McKinley died before he completed the trip. The house Roosevelt was staying in is still standing, having been restored. You can read a sign about it and everything.
I visited the ghost town myself in 2018. It was a long drive up into the wilderness, and while it was pretty there - and I sorta maybe broke into the improperly-locked Roosevelt cabin and took a look around, but you can’t prove that - there isn’t much to see anymore. Like a lot of the subjects of this story, Tahawus is a place squarely located in the past. You can read about it, you can look at pictures of it, but you can absolutely never visit there, even if you go to the exact place it used to be.
In terms of the show’s story, this episode isn’t too relevant, at least not yet. I also wrote this one mostly as setup, and as a standalone vignette. It’s a historical what-if: in this alternate version of the United States, McKinley survives his assassination attempt, and Roosevelt is the one who dies. Or, well, lingers on in a state of pained, inhuman monstrousness after being forced to watch his family get mauled to death. Same diff. We also get more context for the retrofuture the setting takes place in, with McKinley’s experiences at the Pan-American Exposition. This timeline has a collaboration between Tesla and Edison to speed things along, with crude humanoid robots already being tested in 1901. At the source of this technological acceleration is Lady Byron, also known to us as Ada Lovelace - she went by Byron in the story for branding purposes - establishing the groundwork for something like the analog computer way back in the early 1800s. We wouldn’t get there ourselves until well into the 20th century. This change has far-reaching implications, including for terminology. What we know as “computers” were patented as “automatic abacus machines” very early on, and the word “computer” never enters the lexicon in this timeline. Instead, we get “autabs” and eventually “tabs” as the technology becomes more widespread. No one in the Roseworld story uses the word “computer.”
One of my primary associations with Tahawus is the fact that I tried to collect an ant queen there, only for her to die soon after. So emerges the miners’ legend of the massive ants, which is based on a kind of truth. In this timeline there is something lurking under the Adirondacks. Can’t say what yet. But this story is setting up some stuff down the line. For the time being, it’s just a creepy little tale adding to the atmosphere of this world.
We also get more context for the narrator’s circumstances. Apparently, information that is actually “true” is hard to come by, because of “generative traces” and “slurry” that can corrupt data and make it worthless and untrustworthy. These stories they’re telling us are the only things they can confirm haven’t been tainted in some way, and they assure us that, despite how it may seem, everything they’re saying is relevant. You’re not meant to understand at this point what has happened, but the opening segments continue to give more and more context until hopefully you get what’s going on.