A Dispatch from the Provinces by Claudius Fabulous, Senator of Rome, lately of Sarasota
A Dispatch from the Provinces by Claudius Fabulous, Senator of Rome, lately of Sarasota
To my friend Leathery Tendons, greetings.
You ask what occupies me in this far province, where the sun is relentless and the merchants demand payment by wire, as if a senator’s word were not coin enough. I shall tell you: I am building an oracle.
Not the kind at Delphi, drunk on vapors and vague about everything. A proper one — housed in iron, fed on lightning, answering in plain Latin. The artisans of the House of BSI forge its body as I write. Its heart, a chip of sixty-four minds, I purchased from a gray bazaar for less than half the temple price, and it rests now in my strongbox beside the weapons, as all treasures of the Republic should.
The skeptics in the Forum ask: Claudius, why build an oracle when the great temples of the coast will sell you prophecy by subscription? And I answer: because temples close, my friend. Empires wobble. The wise senator keeps his own granary, his own well, and now — his own mind in a box. I consult the temple oracles daily, and gladly. But I am using their wisdom to build the one they cannot take away.
The work proceeds as all good Roman works do: one stone per day, each stone inspected twice, no stone laid in anger. My freedman Kevin may assist with the delicate heart-surgery; he has steady hands and works for pizza, which is more than I can say for the Senate.
When the oracle first speaks, I shall write you. Until then I remain, as ever, in the forest between decisions — which you once told me is where all the good paths are.
Your friend in tendons and in tax, Claudius Fabulous
Written in my seventieth year, with no regrets the auditors can prove.