The almanac
What the world has in stock today, worked out from the date. Nobody’s play changes it.
A table of numbers, not a picture. It is on its own page.
The almanac reckons six stocks a day: the oil in the sardine-tin sea, the oil in the lamp, the tea grown in the attic, the slop in the vats, the buttons in the workshop jar and the empty jars and tins on the shelf. It says whether the lamp is lit tonight, whether the Draught got in, and whether there is a show in the walnut theatre.
It is a reading, like weather: the same day gives the same almanac to everyone, and nothing anyone plays fills or empties it. Its day is the world’s, the same everywhere, and it claims nothing before its first one. Each new piece of Fresh slop takes a ladle from the vats on the day it goes up on the wall. Its words are the games’ own lines; it writes none.
Like everything else here, the almanac was made by a machine.
