Neal Stephenson Quote

Back in very ancient times, when the marble columns of the Halls of Orithena still rose from the black rock of Ecba, all the world’s theors would gather beneath the great dome just before noon. Their leader (at first, Adrakhones himself; later, Diax or one of his other fids) would stand on the analemma, waiting for the shaft of light from the oculus to pass over him at midday: a climax celebrated by the singing of the Anathem to our mother Hylaea who had brought us the light of her father Cnoüs. The aut had fallen into disuse when Orithena had been destroyed and the surviving theors had embarked on the Peregrination. But much later, when the theors retreated to the maths, Saunt Cartas drew on it to anchor the liturgy that was then practiced all through the Old Mathic Age. Again it fell into disuse during the Dispersal to the New Periklynes and the Praxic Age that followed, but then, after the Terrible Events and the Reconstitution, it was revived again, in a new form, centered on the winding of a clock. The