MACHINA RATIOCINATRIX

The scene is a dank, cold, dark crypt. At a desk made of tombstones sits a dark, shrouded figure, holding a mouse in its gloved left hand. But this is no normal mouse. In place of LEDs, the mouse contains two small candles, emitting smoke through a pair of chimneys. The photocells pick up the light in the normal way. The entire mouse can be opened in order to relight and extinguish the candles, and to polish the stained glass windows which protect the photocells.

Before the figure on the desk sits a granite manual keyboard with slate keys. On each key a letter is engraved, and on the numeric keypad the letters I, V, X, L, C, D and M are scratched. Each hammer of the typewriter-style keyboard is imprinted with a pattern of eight broken and unbroken metal strips in the style of I Ching hexagrams, a broken one representing a zero, an intact line representing a one. Each time a key is struck, the hammer makes contact with eight pairs of terminals, closing a circuit and sending a byte in parallel to the computer.

The output device is a pen plotter attached to a quill, with an ink pot into which it is occasionally dipped. A sheet of parchment is placed beneath this output device and the appropriate letters appear, with an appropriate scratching sound.

On the parchment appears the following script:

X NOTA BENE: CRIBRVM ERATOSTHENIS
XX PRETIA
XXX TABVLA BINARIAE: NVMERI
XL BINARIVM: EXAMEN
L INTEGRI: LOCVS. PRIMVS. RATIO.
LX TABVLA NVMERI(M)
LXX ORBIS LOCVS AB I AD M FACE
LXXX :PONE VERITATEM IN NVMERVM(LOCVS)
XC TERMINVS
C PONE II IN PRIMVM
CX ORBIS EXAMEN AB PRIMVM AD M GRADVS PRIMI FACE
CXX :PONE FALSVM IN NVMERI(EXAMEN)
CXXX TERMINVS
CXL ADDE I AD PRIMO
CL SI PRIMVS M NON AEQVI SVNT ERGO INSILI AD CXX
CLX SCRIBE: NVMERI PRIMI
CLXX LINEA NOVA
CLXXX SI NVMERI(RATIO) ERGO SCRIBE NVMERI(RATIO)
CXC TERMINVS