What a sad place is Ergon! I was taken there one night, as if in a dream. Watching myself, impelled forward, I could not choose to turn back.
As I limped along, I saw ancient ruins, which littered the space. First, I saw a toolmaker’s hollow. But it was empty. My heart leapt almost as if I had remembered something I had long forgotten. Forward I swayed, and I saw yet more. Second was a tenantless carpenter’s hut. Instead, manning the hut were tools, which, I strangely thought, must have been assembled, carved, forged by the toolmaker, whose home I just left behind. Still forward I trekked and glimpsed a stable and a fence. I imagined they once held horses, horses which once had owners. From that stable, I saw in the distance, as I was marching forward, a manor, a large castle, which perhaps, I supposed, was home to a thousand souls. It imposed itself upon me, so that everything before it and beyond it was obscured.
Vines scaled its walls like men at war, and cracks formed as if cannons had rallied against them. Forward, upward, I strode around and past the manor, and large tracts of land came into view. These expanses, at first held in common, were suddenly separated from one another, and day laborers competed for work. And I saw raised before me, as I ran alongside it, a massive factory, but no smoke emanated from its concrete hull. Windows were smashed, and old posters fluttered about and cried, as much as paper can cry, for wages, for security. Then, beginning to sprint, I saw, as if all at once, large stores, crowded around each other, and empty parking lots, and large billboards around a highway. The signs were read no more, for no one was home. And I saw homes and homes, only built because there was nothing else to build. There was no longer anywhere to go nor anything to do but to live. The jobs were gone, given to something else. Finally, everything blurred, passing along too quickly to take note of or behold.
And, suddenly and not soon enough, I arrived. I heard children laughing, and a great chatter. The air was thinner; sight was easier. And I met with a great walled enclosure. Through its gates I saw a courtyard, but no court, and a crowd gathered on its green grass. Above these gates was inscribed, “Come and See Ergon, City of Peace,” and when I had read it, I stopped, freed from whatever dragged me along. Then, a great multitude appeared behind me, single-file, unable to escape, as I had been before. At this moment, a voice beckoned me to climb, instructing me that the gate was not for me but the wall. And, as I ran toward the city and grasped its walls, opaque jasper, I was carried up to the top.
Below me, I saw the multitude entering through the gate into the courtyard, and the line continued until, at a certain distance, they stopped, as I had done a moment before. The person at the front of the line would turn to look around and, as if seeing nothing else to do, leave the line and walk to one end of the grass or the other. And so, each person, as they reached the head of the line, would stop and choose a side of the city until the entirety of the multitude was split into two. And toolmakers were separated from toolmakers, and carpenters from carpenters; serfs from serfs, and souls from souls. Those who once worked together, now brought to rest, revealed themselves to be of a different stock. Those who loved no longer worked, except to work for love, and those who hated stopped their labors, except to labor for hate. As for me, I hurried home and fell asleep.