Armored black figures move with silent purpose through the ruins of the past. Goggle-eyed, seeing far more than visible light, they stalk down the corridors of dead and dying machinery.

At last, in the corner of the hall, they come to one monolith of black that seems undamaged by the passage of time. They crowd around it, prodding it with black cables snaking from their torsos.

It comes to life, ejecting a tiny silver oblong no larger than the span of a hand. A precious remnant of the time before. The proud bearer of information, preserved against all the odds, against time and entropy, against the worst humanity could do to itself.

The torrent of data starts slowly. A red banner. A tagline. Then text, reams and reams of text. Stories, verses, sentences, paragraphs, persuasive, factual, descriptive, epics, poems and more pour out of that tiny silver box.

English lives.