On Keeping Things
By the time this reaches you, the pieces described in this archive will be older than the people who made them intended to think about.
That is the part we could not test. Everything else — the stitching, the finish, the numbering — could be checked before it shipped. Whether any of it still means something to you cannot be.
So this is less an explanation than a note left where you would find it.
We did not assume you would keep these things out of loyalty. Loyalty is a poor material; it thins. We assumed instead that if an object was made honestly enough, and recorded clearly enough, keeping it would simply be the easier choice.
If that assumption held, you are holding something whose history you can read without asking us. That was the whole intention. The archive was never meant to require our presence to work.
If it did not hold — if what you have is only an object, and the record has gone quiet — then the failure is ours and it is on the page, which is at least the right place for it.