At The Foot of The Altar
“Here,” he said to himself, gazing up at the sky above. “Here we will be free.”
He turned to look at his people, all waiting on his word.
He raised a fist, catalyzing a roaring chain reaction of cheer, spreading back as far as he could see.
“No longer! No longer will we be bonded by the chains of sovereignty, the whips of morality, or the cross of wealth. No! These institutions that have served no purpose but to retain us cannot hold. We have grown in numbers and in force. And like an enormous wave crashing down upon a levee, on this day, we break free, allowing it to crumble at the heels of our feet.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, now we turn our eyes to this new land. This vast open horizon, where the sky doesn’t look menacingly down upon us, but we look sternly up at it. And in this land there will be nothing refraining us from reaching it.
I believe that I speak for everyone of us when I say that freedom should be the only law of this new land. And anyone who impedes upon that right, which is sown into this very soil, shall be put to death for treason.
And so, let us harness this freedom, ladies and gentlemen, and let it pull us in the only direction we know to be true. Up. We have been bound by land for too long. If we seek true freedom this is where we must go. Not to the clouds, but beyond them.
It is the duty of every man, woman, and child to participate in this divine task. So let us express our freedom for all to see.”
And so for years this new civilization slaved at the altar of freedom, uninhibited by any regulations that would transgress their creed. It grew upon itself, layer after layer, until, as prophesied, it stretched above the clouds.
“Yes! See how far we have come!” He cried from atop the altar. “See how much we are able to achieve without the tyranny of precept. We have reached the clouds and we will continue to go higher. There is nothing, no force, capable of stopping us. So let us build, and let us never stop building. With our freedom we have unlocked the gates of eternity.”
All along the scaffolding of the structure, people intoxicated by the man's words, clambered to get to the top, to be part of the progress. They moved with the chaos of a boiling pot, pulling at each others shirt tails and legs in a violent display of patriotism, pushing up and forward.
Around the 800th story, a young girl fell and was trampled by the stampede of good samaritans, who pushed on with noble ignorance. Yet one man, an infidel of freedom, stopped and knelt down by her side. He picked her up with tender hands, and for a moment, cradled her in his arms until he too was trampled by the feet of progress.
The chauvinists stumbled over the bodies of the man and young girl, creating a clot in the veins of this free flowing blood. But the masses pulsed with force against the obstruction, not wanting to stop their forward motion. They climbed over each other and pushed themselves off the scaffolding, plummeting to their deaths as martyrs of the cause.
Yet the blood continued to coagulate, the weight of it ripping the scaffolding from the brick with a liberating groan. People leapt, with their eyes still fixed on the sky, trying to cling on to the structure decaying in their hands.
“No! What are you doing! Quick, secure the scaffolding, throw up the support beams! Don’t let our freedom perish!” The man cried from atop as the altar crumbled, freely falling from above the clouds.
What a silly creature I have made.
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