“This is how the world works!” they told me holding forth the paper, white and black, in outstretched hands. “Read the words, learn the secrets, you too can have value.” It was hard not to retch. I imagined a life spent living in worship, in pursuit of a number, a number arbitrarily assigned by towers who only saw me as a unit in their vast operation. What value did I want with their enterprise? What care did I have for any of them. These vast creatures that devoured humanity were not to be trusted. Their victims, still chanting before me, confused and disturbed by my resistance, grew silent. These people, these worshipers at the idols of gold and silver never owned anything. They toiled for a tower that gave them a shelter, they toiled for a tower that gave them a transport, and they toiled for a tower that gave them food. They sold everything to own nothing and I pitied them.
My chains still rattle, though, reminding me that I once shared their fate. I can see them now wrapped around me. I am Marley reborn and I have systematically torn the chains away. Someday, I will be free. Even today, I am freer than most and the towers know it. They tease with invitations, they beg and wheedle, the seek to make me theirs with a constant influx of garish advertisement that disgust more than interest. I won’t go back.
This is not “how the world works,” it is how the world dies. A thousand souls offered up with cheer and joy to our gods of chrome, steel, silver, and gold. We stumble over ourselves, rushing to curry the favor of the tower, never realizing that the tower will never care. Look, another soul devoured, another dime for the pile, another debtors’ prison created. The dreams of millions shriveled down to a number, modern alchemy of the most evil kind.
“This is how the world works,” they tell me and I want to scream. I want to shake them free of the blind acceptance of such idiocy. They cannot hear me, though. The tower took their ears, eyes, mind, and soul long ago. There is nothing left to save.
