Individuality -- Fiction; Love stories; Men -- Psychology -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
I shall live here, in my own house. I shall take my food from the
earth by the toil of my own hands. I shall learn many secrets
from my books. Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild the
achievements of the past, and open the way to carry them further,
the achievements which are open to me, but closed forever to my
brothers, for their minds are shackled to the weakest and dullest
ones among them.
I have learned that my power of the sky was known to men long
ago; they called it Electricity. It was the power that moved
their greatest inventions. It lit this house with light which
came from those globes of glass on the walls. I have found the
engine which produced this light. I shall learn how to repair it
and how to make it work again. I shall learn how to use the wires
which carry this power. Then I shall build a barrier of wires
around my home, and across the paths which lead to my home; a
barrier light as a cobweb, more impassable than a wall of
granite; a barrier my brothers will never be able to cross. For
they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their
numbers. I have my mind.
Then here, on this mountaintop, with the world below me and
nothing above me but the sun, I shall live my own truth. Gaea is
pregnant with my child. Our son will be raised as a man. He will
be taught to say “I” and to bear the pride of it. He will be
taught to walk straight and on his own feet. He will be taught
reverence for his own spirit.
When I shall have read all the books and learned my new way, when
my home will be ready and my earth tilled, I shall steal one day,
for the last time, into the cursed City of my birth. I shall call
to me my friend who has no name save International 4-8818, and
all those like him, Fraternity 2-5503, who cries without reason,
and Solidarity 9-6347 who calls for help in the night, and a few
others. I shall call to me all the men and the women whose spirit
has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of
their brothers. They will follow me and I shall lead them to my
fortress. And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my
chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the first chapter
in the new history of man.
These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door
of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the
history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I
wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was
the spirit of man’s freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from
what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him,
save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.
That is freedom. That and nothing else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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