would think that they would at least mind the warning when the
conditions of its completion came to pass. But he dissuaded me, telling
me that my coevals of the next age would no doubt take it as a novel.

At this I took your defense quite personally upon myself, and demanded
in as not so humble a tone as would be thought proper, though as I am
about to die within the next day or two, I have to admit that I don't
give much of a damn for politics or manners. And yet, with all my ardor
I was quickly subdued by a curt rebuke by my interlocutors (for Zimri
was there as well), which was, quite simply, that you hadn't taken Homer
for any more than a creative poet, even after a few thousand years of
study, so why should my meager manuscript make such a large impact. At
that, I acquiesced to them and admitted that on that end my attempt to
save humanity one way or another was contemptible, but I still write, as
you see, for the story's sake, and possibly for my own material
immortality. But never mind that, for it is high time that I went back
to my story.

I was looking through the spyglass at the various areas of Daem where my
adventures had so far taken me. After I had examined them all for a few
moments, I felt a strange urge to use the telescope to look closely at
the mainland that I had seen before, to see what the effects of the
Great War had been there. As I turned the telescope's sights toward it,
I was at once surprised and flabbergasted at what caught my eye. There
were living beings on the mainland, not too far from the coast. And not
only that, but they were standing upright, though stooped, as if by
weariness and the wiles of life, and they seemed, in general, to
resemble humans, not directly, but as much as the Zards and Canitaurs
did, and with the effects of the radioactive instability greater on the
mainlands, it would seem natural that they would be further removed from