At the inn I met a man who had been born in the city. He suggested the roast chicken, which I immediately ordered. We began to talk as I waited for my meal. He said:
“The City of Sorrow is a city of memory. A repository for the history of the Days Before. There is beauty here, culture, industry and business. The world as it was--the last form of a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”
When I asked him what he did for a living, he explained he was a scientist. I asked him what a scientist does and he offered me this answer:
“A scientist studies what exists, so that science may change it into something more useful.The chief tools of the scientist are measurement, experiment and theory. If something cannot be measured, it is left to those who call themselves “artists.” They are charming people, the self-appointed guardians of what they call “culture.” Yet it is the scientists who define the artists’ starting point and their end.”
The man smiled kindly and looked modestly down.
“In the Days Before, the city was the center of life. It was powerful by reason of it’s attractions. Those attractions were made possible by the means science was able to provide. And also by the power that went into its defense.
I understand that, in the world outside the city, science is a word that has been almost forgotten. So the people who live in the City of Sorrows have a knowledge the rest of the world cannot understand. It is a knowledge based on fire, or in other words, the explosive principle, in which energy is created out of destruction. Therefore we hold destruction in high esteem. Our entire way of life is based on it.”
He looked up and smiled, and then explained further:
“Take the neon you see around you in the city. The advertisements, store names, and pictures frozen in bright varicolored tubes of glass, marking the locations of buildings, and other important places, their functions and their worth. As such it is highly valued by all, or, as one of our better writers has said, neon is: “a dream of desire frozen in the incandescent shapes of words.” This neon is created with the use of electricity, and electricity is the product of friction created by the destruction of fossil fuels.”
I told him of the stone garden outside the city, and of the music I had heard there. I asked him if he would please explain to me the science of such a creation.
It was for this question that I was brought before the council.