The First Sale

Rove Lewin couldn't contain his anxiousness as a triad of uniformed young men unloaded and assembled a convoluted contraption in the empty backroom of his bookshop. In the past, this place would be filled with rows of equally spaced desks for the scribes in his employ to transcribe books. But now, it was mostly cleaned out, barring three desks at the front of the room closer to the shopfront. If Rove was to believe the teen who hoodwinked him into a contractual agreement, this machine which only took up the space of four scribes would in fact replace ten. How did things end up this way?