Chapter 8: Chapter 8: The man and the machine

“I was never a man of worship. None of us were, at least not anyone that I knew. But… you had to be there to really understand. You young people, you just…

- You had to be there, alright?

I’ve never seen anything like it.

I saw it with my own eyes. I was there on the marketplace that day, when we offended the heavens and their chosen.

Everything just…

- There was glass everywhere. The sky, the ground, it was shining in a way that still makes me wonder if it all wasn’t just a wayward snowstorm, passing through in the middle of summer.

But then I remember the screams of those cut and hurt by the glass. I remember the screams of those trapped beneath the collapsed houses of poor construction, the ruins being consumed by fires, spreading out from overturned hearths.

I remember the screams, stemming from mothers, howling for their fragile newborns.

We paid for our arrogance and we all became men and women of worship that day; creatures of fear.

- You young people, you just don’t understand.

You had to be there.”