Individuality -- Fiction; Love stories; Men -- Psychology -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
We go on and we bless the earth under our feet. But questions
come to us again, as we walk in silence. If that which we have
found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for
save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, then
what is good and what is evil?
Everything which comes from the many is good. Everything which
comes from one is evil.
[-This have-] {+Thus+} we {+have+} been taught with our first
breath. We have broken the law, but we have never doubted it. Yet
now, as we walk [-through-] the forest, we are learning to doubt.
There is no life for men, save in useful toil for the good of [-all-]
their brothers. But we lived not, when we toiled for our
brothers, we were only weary. There is no joy for men, save the
joy shared with all their brothers. But the only things which
taught us joy were the power [-we-] created in our wires, and the Golden
One. And both these joys belong to us alone, they come from us
alone, they bear no relation to [-all-] our brothers, and they do not
concern our brothers in any way. Thus do we wonder.
There is some error, one frightful error, in the thinking of men.
What is that error? We do not know, but the knowledge struggles
within us, struggles to be born.
Today, the Golden One stopped suddenly and said:
"We love you."
But {+then+} they frowned and shook their head and looked at us
helplessly.
"No," they whispered, "that is not what we wished to say."
They were silent, then they spoke slowly, and their words were
halting, like the words of a child learning to speak for the
first time:
"We are one . . . alone . . . and only . . . and we love you who
are one . . . alone . . . and only."
We looked into each other's eyes and we knew that the breath of a
miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly.
And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
[-PART TEN-]
{+Chapter Ten+}
We are sitting at a table and we are writing this upon paper
made thousands of years ago. The light is dim, and we cannot see
the Golden One, only one lock of gold on the pillow of an ancient
bed. This is our home.
We came upon it today, at sunrise. For many days we [-had-] {+have+} been
crossing a chain of mountains. The forest rose among cliffs, and
whenever we walked out upon a barren stretch of rock we saw great
peaks before us in the west, and to the north of us, and to the
south, as far as our eyes could see. The peaks were red and
brown, with the green streaks of forests as veins upon them, with
blue mists as veils over their heads. We had never heard of these
mountains, nor seen them marked on any map. The Uncharted Forest
has protected them from the Cities and from the men of the
Cities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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