Nero unboxes an iphone

A Memorandum for the Imperial Archives

Set down by P. Aelius Felix, scribe attached to the Palatine household, in the consulship then current, on the day an object of singular manufacture was delivered into the Emperor’s hands.

In the afternoon, when the Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus had withdrawn from the more tedious petitions and was in a humour inclined toward novelty, there arrived at the palace gates a messenger bearing a parcel of unusual aspect.

It was not of cedar nor of any costly wood, but of pressed brown board, bound in string with the cleanliness of a thing made by rule rather than by craft.  Upon one face was marked, in thick black letters, a name unknown to our shops and warehouses:

AMAZON

Certain of the attendants, ever ready to display learning, spoke of the Amazons—the warlike women of legend—and others of a river said to be so great that it runs like a sea through foreign lands.  But why either should be written upon a parcel addressed to the Emperor, none could explain.

The messenger produced the proper paper and departed quickly, as men do who have delivered something they do not wish to be questioned about.

The parcel, being carried in, was presented at the Emperor’s leisure.  He examined the lettering with visible pleasure.

“Amazon,” Caesar said, rolling the word about as if it were the name of a new actress.  “A barbarian brand.  I like it.  It sounds like it should arrive with lions.”

He ordered it opened at once.

When the outer wrapping was cut, there was revealed within a second box: white, very smooth, and fitted with a lid so exact that it seemed to close by thought rather than by pressure.  Upon it was printed another name:

iPhone

At this the Emperor laughed.

“Phone,” he said, glancing at me as though expecting an etymology on command.  “That is Greek for voice, is it not?  So this is a voice-box.  And the i—” He waved his hand.  “—the i is vanity.”

I wrote down the name exactly, though it vexed my sense of proper Latin.

Beneath the white box lay a folded note, written in Latin of a plain and modern turn—too direct for the Senate, too tidy for the street.  Caesar bade it read aloud, but since the hand was legible I read it myself and then recited it, as requested:

Here is your new iPhone, since there is no network where you live I have done a basic setup for you.  Feel free to use as you like.  From a distant admirer

At the word “admirer,” Caesar smiled in the way he does when he thinks the world has remembered its duty.

“A distant admirer,” he repeated.  “Sensibly distant.”

But at “no network where you live,” his brow creased.

“No network?” he said.  “What network?  My roads are full of networks.  My spies are a network.  Even my poets are a network, though a useless one.”

No one answered.  It is dangerous to define terms for an Emperor who is warming to mystery.

Caesar opened the white box.

Within lay a thin black slab like polished obsidian, framed in metal, with a single button.  There were no visible hinges, no scroll-work, no jewels, no scent of oil or resin—nothing to indicate the labour of an artisan except the perfection of its making.

One of the chamberlains murmured that it must be a magical mirror.

“Then it shall show me better,” Caesar said, and pressed the button.

For a heartbeat it was dead.  A few courtiers began to prepare their laughter in advance, as men do when they smell embarrassment on someone else.

Then the black surface brightened from within, without flame or wick, and displayed a pale emblem and then a series of greetings in many tongues, changing one to another as if the object were parading foreign peoples for Caesar’s amusement.

Caesar leaned forward.  The light touched his face.  He looked, for an instant, younger—caught by wonder before he remembered to be sovereign.

“What is that?” he demanded, not unkindly, but hungrily.

Upon the surface appeared an instruction in Latin:

Swipe up

Caesar stared at it.

“Swipe,” he said.  “This thing speaks like a sailor.”

Lady Poppaea was not present.  If she had been, she would have found a way to make it Caesar’s idea.

I made a small gesture with my own finger in the air, thinking it meant to draw upward.  Caesar imitated me upon the glass.

The surface obeyed.

A list appeared—languages, then regions, then other choices asked with the cheerful impudence of a device that has never been whipped.

Caesar enjoyed this greatly.  He pressed one thing after another, and the object answered instantly, changing its entire appearance without the turning of any wheel or the sliding of any panel.

“It is like the stage,” he declared.  “One gesture, and the whole world transforms.”

It asked to join a “Wi-Fi network.”  There were none listed.  It offered an emptiness, as if it were waiting for invisible air-roads that did not exist in Rome.

Caesar scowled.

“It refuses me?” he said.

“No, Caesar,” said one of the more courageous freedmen.  “It seeks something that is not here.”

“A thing that seeks,” Caesar mused, and then laughed.  “Like half the Senate.”

The device, deprived of this “network,” still allowed him to proceed.  It asked for a passcode.  Caesar attempted to set one that was his own name.

When informed—politely, in writing—that such a code was “too easy,” he became offended.

“It corrects me,” he said.  “I like it.”

At length it displayed a field of small coloured emblems, arranged in rows, like the labels on jars in an apothecary’s cabinet.

Caesar touched one with a clock.

A clock appeared—its hands moving steadily.

He touched another with numbers.

A board appeared for calculation; he pressed figures, and the thing gave results at once.  He tried to make it err by entering numbers carelessly, and it corrected with the cold patience of arithmetic.

“A slave who never lies,” Caesar said.  “Send this to the accountants.”

He touched an emblem that resembled a quill.  A blank surface appeared, and then—by touching letters—words formed without ink.

“A writing tablet that writes itself,” he murmured, and his attention sharpened, because anything that makes words appear without scribes is either dangerous or divine.

Then he touched an emblem that showed a small lens.

The surface became a window.  It showed the chamber—columns, curtains, faces—moving as the Emperor moved the object, as though a little second world lived inside the black stone.

The courtiers made involuntary sounds, the kind they would have punished in a slave, because astonishment is not dignified.

Caesar lifted the device and pointed it at himself.

In the glass, he saw his own face, not as in a mirror (reversed and flattering), but as it truly was, with the cruel honesty of an artist who has no need of patronage.

He stared, then smiled slowly.

“It sees,” he said.

He pressed a round symbol on the surface.

There was a tiny click.

And then the device displayed an image of Caesar holding the device, Caesar looking at Caesar, Caesar captured and preserved as if in a painted miniature—except no paint, no brush, no time.

A senator present crossed himself in the old manner, before remembering that such things are no longer fashionable.

Caesar, however, was delighted in the way he is delighted by any power that belongs to him alone.

“This,” he said softly, “will make every painter weep.”

Someone, eager to please, said: “Caesar, it is a miracle.”

Caesar turned his head slightly, and the room chilled, because the word “miracle” implies a god above the Emperor.

“It is not a miracle,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle.  “It is craft.  Someone has made it.  Which means someone can make more.  Which means someone knows how.”

He tapped the note again.

“Distant admirer,” he said.  “Admirer, yes.  But also—teacher.  This is a lesson.”

He demanded at once to know who had sent it.  No one could answer.  He demanded to know where “Amazon” was.  No one could answer.  He demanded to know what “network” it required.  No one could answer.

This, I record frankly, did not improve his temper.  Yet his interest did not fade.

He ordered the object placed among his private curiosities, and that only those he named might handle it.  He ordered me to make a careful account of its behaviours and inscriptions, “so that,” he said, “if it attempts to lie later, we shall have its earlier words pinned like a butterfly.”

When he retired, he took the device with him for a time, testing it like a boy with a new toy and like a ruler with a new instrument of control.

It made light without flame.  It wrote without ink.  It captured images as swiftly as sight itself.  It calculated without fatigue.  It contained—so it seemed—many tools inside one smooth stone.

Yet it also displayed a certain dependency, as though it were made for a world threaded with invisible connections not present in ours.  It asked for a “network” and found none, like a ship built for the sea set down in a garden.

I conclude this memorandum with what seems to me the most important observation:

The object does not proclaim itself sacred.  It behaves as though it is normal.

And that, to any prudent mind, is the most unsettling feature of all.