HOME | DD

Description
It was a beautiful day in Paragon City.  It was always a beautiful day, not only here, but everywhere.  Science had long ago eliminated the need for rains, snows, and winds.  It was only a short step from there to eliminating the occurrences all together.

Jacob walked down the street, dressed, like everyone else on the street, in a pair of overalls.  His particular pair was black with white shoulders.  The young man was one of the ranking members of Paragon City's science council, and in a world where all of the old illogical religions and ways of spontaneous, disruptive emotions, this had brought him no small amount of prestige.

The new ways of logic and science had secured for the world and it's colonies peace and prosperity.  There was no longer need for arguments, and despair over being different.  Every one was of the same mind and accord.  Why should they not be?  The New Ways had explained everything.  There was no reason to disagree on anything.

The twenty-eight year old came to Sky Wall 13AC and entered, the door disappearing completely for him as he neared.  The building was an impressive sight, even for the young man that had been responsible for the design of some of the newest and largest features of Elder City.

Jacob smiled as he was moved to his room by the building's Internal Transporter System.  He had studied under the man that had invented the ITS, and it gave him no small sense of pride whenever he used one.

As he looked around the room he was in, he walked over to his table and sat down.  He picked up his WI5, Writing Instrument v5 and began moving it across the sheets of paper that lay there.  It started out with a box.  Then something in his mind clicked.  He frowned as he began writing in the box, "Nothing inside the box is true."

He stared at his paper for at least fifteen minutes before he fully understood what he was looking at.  It was impossible, but that wasn't the important part.  Things that were impossible were becoming possible every second of every day.  The horrible thing was that it defied all logic.  The Clever Ones had always taught that logic was the answer to every question in the universe, and that if something wasn't logically possible yet, it only required more information.

But this, this was impossible.  He threw the paper off his desk as he began writing again.  This time he wrote "This statement is a lie."  He shuddered in disgust of the act.  If what he had written was a lie, then it obviously wasn't true.  But if it wasn't true, then it wasn't true that it was a lie, and if it wasn't a lie, then it had to be true, but if it was true, then it wasn't true.

Jacob's hand came to his forehead, his eyes closing tightly as new, brave thoughts rushed into his mind.  The Elders were wrong.  What else had they been wrong about?  If logic couldn't explain words on a piece of paper, then could it explain everything else?  Perhaps… Perhaps emotions were there to explain things like the paper, or perhaps the Ancients from the times of the Old Ways had the answers.  What ever the answer, he was certain that it was beyond any logic ever taught to him.  If it was beyond logic, then

"Don't move," an older voice said.  Jacob didn't look up.  He knew that there was a man on his ITS pad with a firearm pointed at him.  He knew that the man was dressed in an orange overalls.

"You've written something bad there, haven't you?" the man asked.

Jacob nodded.  "Yeah, I suppose I have."

"You need to be removed.  The Elders apologize, but you might make the others despair."

"Yeah," the young man with tears now in his eyes replied grimly, "I suppose I do."

"Stand up, and come with me," the man said.

As Jacob stood, he saw his arrester's face.  It was old and worn, probably from years of arresting young men like himself who had gone too far in their thoughts.

Jacob stopped in front of the man and turned away from him as his room disappeared, only this time, nothing appeared to take its place.