One of the very best stories the machine retold was The Wizard of Oz. And it said that the sunglasses unpeople wore to keep from being blinded were green-tinted glasses a fake magician used to fool people. But a few people did remember them dimly and passed them on from generation to generation. To the few who remembered, the dragon came to be known as the Lizard of Oz, the Great Dragon of Ome, or the Leaping Lizard. And so things were for many, many years, until the fire burnt out.
Nobody knows why the fire went out, but it did.
And suddenly, man felt a great emptiness, and it was that emptiness that drove him to begin building the machine. I' ve heard that things are changing fast at Home, that a humbug has been flying around beating on his humdrum, and most everyone has been picking up the beat, getting into the rhythm of the machine. But the Humbug is hardly the cause of it all. He's just part of a long, long process. He's just speeding things up a little.