[-PART FIVE-]
{+Chapter Five+}
We made it. We created it. We brought it forth from the night of
the ages. We alone. Our hands. Our mind. Ours alone and only.
We know not what we are saying. Our head is reeling. We look upon
the light which we [-have-] {+had+} made. We shall be forgiven for anything we
say [-tonight.-] {+tonight .+} . . .
Tonight, after more days and trials than we can count, we
finished building a strange thing, from the remains of the
Unmentionable Times, a box of glass, devised to give forth the
power of the sky of greater strength than we had ever achieved
before. And when we put our wires to this box, when we closed the
current--the wire glowed! It came to life, it turned red, and a
circle of light lay on the stone before us.
We stood, and we held our head in our hands. We could not
conceive of that which we had created. We had touched no flint,
made no fire. Yet here was light, light that [-come-] {+came+} from nowhere,
light from the heart of metal.
We blew out the candle. Darkness swallowed us. There was nothing
left around us, nothing save night and a thin thread of flame in
it, as a crack in the wall of a prison. We stretched our hands to
the wire, and we saw our fingers in the red glow. We could not
see our body nor feel it, and in that moment nothing existed save
our two hands over a wire glowing in a black abyss.
Then we thought of the meaning of that which lay before us. We
can light our tunnel, and the City, and all the Cities of the
world with nothing save metal and wires. We can give our brothers
a new light, cleaner and brighter than any they have ever known.
The power of the sky can be made to do men's bidding. There are
no limits to its secrets and its might, and it can be made to
grant us anything if we but choose to ask.
Then we knew what we must do. Our discovery is too great for us
to waste our time in sweeping [-the-] streets. We must not keep our
secret to ourselves, nor buried under the ground. We must bring
it into the sight of all men. We need all our time, we need the
work rooms of the Home of the Scholars, we want the help of our
brother Scholars and their wisdom joined to ours. There is so
much work ahead for all of us, for all the Scholars of the world.
In a month, the World Council of Scholars is to meet in our City.
It is a great Council, to which the wisest of all lands are
elected, and it meets once a year in the different Cities of the
earth. We shall go to this Council and we shall lay before them,
as our gift, [-this-] {+the+} glass box with the power of the sky. We shall
confess everything to them. They will see, understand and
forgive. For our gift is greater than our transgression. They
will explain it to the Council of Vocations, and we shall be
assigned to the Home of the Scholars. This has never been done
before, but neither has a gift such as ours ever been offered to
men.
We must wait. We must guard our tunnel as we had never guarded it
before. For should any men save the Scholars learn of our secret,
they would not understand it, nor would they believe us. They would
see nothing, save our crime of working alone, and they would destroy
us and our light. We care not about our body, but our light [-is . . .-] {+is...+}
Yes, we do care. For the first time [-do-] we {+do+} care about our body.
For this wire is [-as-] a part of our body, as a vein torn from us,
glowing with our blood. Are we {+are+} proud of this thread of metal,
or of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these [-two?-]
{+two.+}
We stretch out our arms. For the first time do we know how strong
our arms are. And a strange thought comes to us: we wonder, for
the first time in our life, what we look like. Men never see
their own faces and never ask their brothers about it, for it is
evil to have concern for their own faces or bodies. But tonight,
for a reason we cannot fathom, we wish it were possible to us to
know the likeness of our own person.
