Desiring to construct a history in material I imagine a drill, flexible but hard as diamond, injecting itself into the earth, passing through layers if igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock, into ancient coalbeds and caches of tin and copper. A sensing tube, like those that doctors place into the body for a glance more private than one might like, would be inserted. Into this shaft it would slide, past the petrified droppings of Australopithecus, lost in some ancient Olduvai, and nearby, the shattered bones of Eohippus, unable to support the weight of so large a rider, would lie, awaiting just this moment.