Memoirs Found in a Bathtub [antikvár]

Introduction "Notes from the Neogene" is unquestionably one of the most precious relics of Earth's ancient past, dating from the very close of the Prechaotic, that period of decline which directly preceded the Great Collapse. It is indeed a paradox that we know much more of the civilizations of the Early Neogene, the protocultures of Assyria, Egypt and Greece, than we do of the days of paleoatomics and rudimentary astrogation. While those archaic cultures left behind permanent monuments in bone, stone, slate and bronze, almost the only means of recording and preserving knowledge during the Middle and Late Neogene was a substance called papyr. Papyr was whitish, flaccid, a derivative of cellulose, rolled out on cylinders and cut into rectangular sheets. Information of all kinds was impressed on it with a dark tint, after which the sheets were collated and sewn in a special way. In order to understand what brought about the Great Collapse, that catastrophic event which in a matter of weeks totally demolished the cultural achievement of centuries, we must go back three thousand years. Metamnestics and data crystallization did not exist in those days. Papyr performed all the functions now served by our mnemonitrons and gnostors. True, there were the beginnings of artificial memory; but these were large, bulky machines, troublesome to operate and maintain, and used only in the most limited, narrow way. They were called "electronic brains," an exaggeration comprehensible only in the historical perspective, much like the boast of the builders of Asia Wm: p; i; I' i If , - . i: M