The old ones had grand and glorious machines. They could fly across oceans. Their sailing vessels filled the skies. They inhabited glittering cities of light. They mapped the stars and sent men into space-but they went mad and destroyed themselves. We are their offspring. Faint traces of the old world can still be seen in our world, in ruins and refuse not yet been reclaimed by nature. We do not know what lies beyond our own shores. Our seafaring vessels are not capable of traversing the globe. Over many generations our people have engaged in battles but nothing like the great wars of the past. We live a peaceful existence. We feel blessed. We share a common language with the old world, with our ancestors; even so, many of their words seem foreign to us and are difficult to decipher. The old ones were capable of great magic. They were able to record and transmit images of themselves across great distances. This art has now been lost. We do have transcripts of these talking pictures along with faded photographs, ragged books and other deteriorating volumes archived in makeshift libraries. Sadly the largest of these libraries recently burned. This is why we have decided to compile and distill from the existing archives a few stories that moved us. We are thinking of future generations, that there will be a record not just of sacred texts (stories of sky gods and virgin births), of poets and philosophers and of visionaries and prophets (Nostradamus, George Orwell and Edgar Cayce), but we wish to produce (using the archives and literary techniques discovered in the books of the old ones) a glimpse into this ancient civilization before death and the whirlwind overtook them. There is no known record of the final days of our ancestors. Shortly after the death of Star, Parker Jane's diary ends. She did, however, make a few more entries. Princess Larissa did visit the compound for the funeral of Star. After this, Parker Jane and Princess Larissa became like sisters. In the final months, the Prime Minister imposed martial law. Anarchy prevailed. Everyone, it seemed became infected. After that, the whirlwind began. It was miles long and ferocious; it passed from one side of the country to the other, destroying everything in its path. It returned again and again. So much was destroyed. There are no records at all beyond a certain date. We do know a few hardy souls survived, in the debris and dust of the whirlwind, in the falling darkness, in the rubble of those dark days.