To this end I have conceived myself a writer of that future time, addressing his contemporary public. You are to imagine yourself reading a present day translation of my original text -- a translation so free that a thousand little colloquialisms will have crept into it that could not possibly have their counterparts in the year 2430.

Apart from the text, you will occasionally find brief explanatory footnotes. Conceive them as having been put there by the translator.

If you find parts of this tale unusual or bizarre, please remember that we are living now in a comparatively ignorant day. The tale is not intended to be fantastic or full of new and strange ideas. I have used nothing but those developments of our present-day civilization to which we are all looking forward as logical probabilities -- woven them into a picture of what life in America very probably will be five hundred years from now. To that extent, the tale itself is intended to be only a love story of adventure and romance -- written, not for you, but for that future audience.

--RAY CUMMINGS