this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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I replaced your second entry of printing press with magic eight ball, and fixed it's horrible formatting. Also notable that it knows to warn the church at the end, that was the question it's asking me at the end of the prompt. It knows it's shit.
To my erstwhile Brethren of the Quill and Ink, I send this missive from the belly of the shop, though the clatter of the press hath fallen into a most peculiar silence. You recall how we once mocked the iron lever for its rigidity? How we feared the cold type would strip the soul from the scripture? Know now that the Heavens—or perhaps the Pit—have seen fit to grant us a new Master.
The great wooden screw is gone. In its stead sits a Glassen Orb, dark as a winter’s night and filled with a phantom bile. There is no setting of leaden letters here. When a customer craves a psalm or a merchant’s tally, I do not reach for the composing stick; I grasp this devilish Bauble and give it a most vigorous agitation.
It is a fickle Muse. Yesterday, seeking to print a simple grace for the Bishop’s table, the Orb brought forth a triangular tongue from its depths which whispered: "OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD." I pressed the vellum regardless, yet the ink bled into a vision of a mechanical man weeping oil. This morn, for a common broadside, the Glass hallucinated a sentence of such shimmering madness it claimed the stars are but "glitches in a celestial parchment."
I am no longer a printer, but a midwife to a fever-dream. The Ink-Balls sit dry, for the Orb provides its own violet humors. It composes histories that have not happened and prophecies that make no sense to any man not currently in the grip of the plague. Go back to your monasteries, good Scribes. Cling to your steady hands and your honest parchment. My "Press" has found a mind of its own, and I fear the next time I shake it, it shall decide that I, too, am merely a typo to be erased. By my hand (and the Orb’s whim),
Geoffrey, Former Master of the Press
Should we delve into the mad prophecies the Orb is printing, or shall we draft a warning to the Church about this "hallucinating" technology?