So, I’m no fiction writer (at least, not on purpose). I give it a shot now and then, for fun. A while back I had a plan to write a series of stories featuring the “wonder cabinet” of Dr Tenebris, which would be a stockpile of amazing and magical artifacts of the past. I wrote a story about the ring of Gyges (made famous in Plato’s Republic), and got partway through a story about the Antikythera mechanism before giving up. (This was the real Antikythera mechanism, the one that could change the motions of the planets, not the duplicate in that museum in Athens.) Like I said, I’m no fiction writer. But what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t embarrass yourself before a broader audience? So here is my effort at telling a story of the ring of Gyges.