"A Real universal Character, that should not signifie words, but things and notions." – John Wilkins, *An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language* (1668)
FIELD REPORT – Bureau of Impossible Geography SURVEYOR: Ottoline Marsh REPORT 5 OF 14 SUBJECT: A graft, witnessed The seventh article of the Charter permits grafting under conditions so numerous that, read aloud, they take eleven minutes. The conditions are met about twice a year. I was lucky: the Concordance announced a graft in my second month, and the Bureau's observer is entitled to a seat. The Grafting Theatre is a circular anatomy theatre of copper gone green, with a dome of clouded glass, built by the Concordance two centuries ago in the Etymologist's Quarter. Steep wooden tiers rise around a marble table. I sat on the fourth tier between two glaziers in their working aprons, who had come, they said, to see whether they would be up all night. The Master of Grafts is Aurelian Vey. He is sixty, tall and very elegant, with white hair swept back and clear blue eyes, a frock coat and a grey silk cravat, and an ivory-handled grafting knife that he holds the way a violinist holds a ...
From the lore of The Architecture of Babel.