From the day
Perspective: The Future Historian · Sound
The crackle of the new transcontinental wires hums through the city, a ghostly static competing with the local news hawkers shouting of Kitchener’s arrival in Rome. I duck into a bakery to escape the damp November chill, wincing as the clerk demands a full **$0.06** for a simple loaf, a steep price that echoes the growing scarcity of a world at war. Down the street, the melancholic melody of *I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier* drifts from a nearby window, its pacifist rhythm clashing against the harsh slang of veterans returning from the mud. They speak of **no man's land** in hushed, jagged tones, their voices sounding like grinding gears in a machinery of history that is only just beginning to accelerate.