No doubt many of the people involved viewed it as a minor
miracle that the near-constant threat of mechanical breakdown did not
endanger the success of the mission proper.
But the mechanics and engineers worked more than a few miracles of
their own when catastrophe loomed, as it did more than once, and their
determination ultimately prevailed.
Safely deposited on dry land after having been lost and forgotten for
almost all of recorded human history, the stone jars were finally
opened to reveal, instead of wine or oil, the curious little clay
tablets safely dry and cushioned in a packing medium of loose straw and
uncombed wool. The clay tablets, finally exposed to the light of day
after holding their secrets for so long, were gently removed from their
stone keepers and carefully packed in crates to be secretly shipped to
the back rooms of a major museum. There, it was hoped, they could be
systematically catalogued, transcribed, and translated by the dedicated
ministrations of a team of the foremost scholars of our time.
After careful and intensive study, the story was derived and adapted
-by express and exclusive museum permission- by the author, who poured
himself out in an exhaustive work upon this unspeakably priceless
literary treasure, to such an extent that a state of chronic ill-health
and increasingly strained and weakened eyesight had begun to set in
toward the end of the project.
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