Hello, world! Or whoever it is who would read this, really. I’m not sure anyone ever will, and that’s not the point, of course. I just wanted a place to jot down my thoughts and ideas, and Grandfather told me that he used to keep a diary back when he was young—and I thought, hey, maybe I should do the same! Maybe I will have something to draw from when I have grandchildren of my own, and wanna tell them about my life and adventures.

And if, for some reason, someone finds this elsewhen, in a different time, in a different age—maybe it is you who is reading this now—well, then you would know all about this Caissan called Zed, about her life in the aerodomes, and about this strange world I find myself in. I hope you find something interesting, among these pages!

Maybe it is silly of me to talk about my “adventures” — it seems such a dramatic and faraway word, so distant from my daily life of study and tinkering.

Honestly, what I do most days isn’t that interesting: I read, I garden, I practice on my sono-synth, and I play around with some of the old hardware in the workshop (I really enjoy tinkering, you see—the other day I invented a tabletop momento-machine!).

And I also read about topics that interest me, from Grandfather’s vast collection—usually something on machine anatomy, engineering, and sometimes even human anatomy. I am fascinated by what we’re like, what we’re made of—and how we are different from the bots.

That being said, I haven’t met many bots—really! I mean, there’s Fritz, who is my friend—more like a pet, really—and then there are the botsweeps that I see sometimes scurrying across the edge of the domes. Once or twice I saw Grandfather talking to some Senatorbots on a video-talk, and of course from Grandfather’s stories I know a little bit about some of the other bots.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about bots now—it’s something I don’t like talking about or thinking about very much—except in the comfort of one of Grandfather’s stories, of course. Next time, I’ll tell you all about Grandfather—and Fritz—but I have to go water my astro-berries now!