18th Aught, 1122 My life has ended. 25th Aught, 1122 My room is cold. Although the weather cannot be called fierce, my high perch groans awfully with the whistling wind. It seems happy to find the small cracks and infest them. The glass on my windows is dirty; I have yet to draw the curtains since 5th Plenty, 1122   Yes. I have been “advised”, which is to say ordered to record my thoughts in this journal I once so fastidiously curated. Somehow, my continuing grief offends people. Perhaps one...

I have in my possession a queer brass cylinder. Many thousands of years old, or so my appraiser claims. Bought at auction for quite a sum, no expense spared and fished from some sea-trawler or other. No, no. I appreciate your concerns, but I assure you that no-one was cheated. The cylinder by itself is quite worthless. The device is an ancient record, you see, impossible to read without the right mechanism; a mechanism that it so happens is also a part of my storied collection. I have already...

It had been a long age of quiet since the Revelation scorched the earth. Eight centuries had passed, and the world of Rotundum, how cast in silver, glass and ash, showed the first stirrings of life. Machine Gods, last survivors of a fallen world, had shepherded mankind, preserved in the scratchings of brass cylinders and re-cast in resin and lighting. Education and fulfilling work were given to the reborn generations of humans, but as the eighth century turned over, the humans yearned for...