„We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end“
– James Hutton, Theory of the Earth, 1795
Deep underground, life moves slowly. Once teeming life, the great swamps of the Carboniferous era were buried under the weight of 300 million years, eventually returning to the surface as coal. In this new form they would be consumed in fires and furnaces for three thousand years before blackening the lungs of Empire and driving the Industrial Revolution. It was then that James Hutton, the first geologist, began to consider the depths beneath our feet and the unimaginable abyss of time that they represent. This is the world of The Stargazer‘s Assistant. This is the forge of the Earth. This is deep time.