The Clockwork Book of Retropolis sits in its lair below the city and contains answers. It accumulates stories. This is its only function. (Apart from Making More Book, you suggest: but these two are actually the same thing.)
Its huge graven face looms over the stainless steel sheets that are its pages and when it’s not otherwise occupied, which is most of the time, it reads. From time to time it adds a footnote or a cross-reference. But mostly, it reads. And it waits.
From The Lair of the Clockwork Book at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual.
This version of the illustration is based on the one at the web site, and in the book, but has been re-rendered and overpainted in a much higher resolution even than the book’s version: 300 pixels to the inch, at 18 by 24 inches.