"Yes, yes, I had one of these!" He turned it over in his hands, the feel of it bringing back memories. "Or something very much like it."

A scrap of a tune popped into his mind, a musical phrase he hadn't thought about in decades. He hummed a few measures but couldn't remember the rest. It was on the edge of his thoughts, close, but he couldn't quite reach it.

"Even if technology itself doesn't make civilization, it feels to many like humanity has lost its heritage. Like Rome has fallen and we're all living in the Dark Ages now. Only instead of Moors, Celts, and Visigoths we have Indogenes, Irathians, and Castithans."

Not a perfect metaphor, but it conveyed the sense that once there was order and stability and power and greatness...and then there wasn't.