This morning I spoke to my Lord of my most recent dream. And I said to him, “My dear Lord, last night as you slept, I dreamt. And in this dream I saw the horrors of civilisation laid uncommonly bare. Not by the removal of any veil, that had previously hidden these things from view, but by the removal of the constraints of time, so that I could witness things beyond the here and now, and so see the structure that housed the whole. And I saw then a million generations of humanity, across a billion years, witnessed a trillion lives, all now lost, all now forgotten, all as irrelevant to today as the waves that shape our shores, and as relentless, as unending, as ignorant of any waves that broke before, as unconcerned by any that shall break behind. For as long as the worlds rotate beneath their suns, so shall these waves rise and fall, and so long as there is life shall there be death, and as long as there is memory, so shall we lament the loss of it. And so long as there is an Empire, shall we live this pretence of civilisation.”