diff --git a/forensics/eavesdrop/capture.flag.pcap b/forensics/eavesdrop/capture.flag.pcap
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..229b1cc
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/eavesdrop/capture.flag.pcap differ
diff --git a/forensics/eavesdrop/file.des3 b/forensics/eavesdrop/file.des3
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31983e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/eavesdrop/file.des3
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Salted__��<�P��O�r��E~cbk��ƒ��p&�}�����
+F
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/forensics/eavesdrop/file.txt b/forensics/eavesdrop/file.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16b01f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/eavesdrop/file.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picoCTF{nc_73115_411_5786acc3}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/forensics/eavesdrop/solution.md b/forensics/eavesdrop/solution.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54b43f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/eavesdrop/solution.md
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+Taken from `tcp.stream eq 0`
+
+> Hey, how do you decrypt this file again?
+> You're serious?
+> Yeah, I'm serious
+> *sigh* openssl des3 -d -salt -in file.des3 -out file.txt -k supersecretpassword123
+> Ok, great, thanks.
+> Let's use Discord next time, it's more secure.
+> C'mon, no one knows we use this program like this!
+> Whatever.
+> Hey.
+> Yeah?
+> Could you transfer the file to me again?
+> Oh great. Ok, over 9002?
+> Yeah, listening.
+> Sent it
+> Got it.
+> You're unbelievable
+
+`file.des3` taken from `tcp.stream eq 2`, by showing data as `Raw` and saving to file.
diff --git a/forensics/eavesdrop/solve.sh b/forensics/eavesdrop/solve.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..8ef297d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/eavesdrop/solve.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell
+#!nix-shell -i bash -p bash openssl
+
+openssl des3 -d -salt -in file.des3 -out file.txt -k supersecretpassword123
diff --git a/forensics/enhance/drawing.flag.svg b/forensics/enhance/drawing.flag.svg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b46a637
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/enhance/drawing.flag.svg
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
+<!-- Created with Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) -->
+
+<svg
+   xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
+   xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
+   xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
+   xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
+   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
+   xmlns:sodipodi="http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/DTD/sodipodi-0.dtd"
+   xmlns:inkscape="http://www.inkscape.org/namespaces/inkscape"
+   width="210mm"
+   height="297mm"
+   viewBox="0 0 210 297"
+   version="1.1"
+   id="svg8"
+   inkscape:version="0.92.5 (2060ec1f9f, 2020-04-08)"
+   sodipodi:docname="drawing.svg">
+  <defs
+     id="defs2" />
+  <sodipodi:namedview
+     id="base"
+     pagecolor="#ffffff"
+     bordercolor="#666666"
+     borderopacity="1.0"
+     inkscape:pageopacity="0.0"
+     inkscape:pageshadow="2"
+     inkscape:zoom="0.69833333"
+     inkscape:cx="400"
+     inkscape:cy="538.41159"
+     inkscape:document-units="mm"
+     inkscape:current-layer="layer1"
+     showgrid="false"
+     inkscape:window-width="1872"
+     inkscape:window-height="1016"
+     inkscape:window-x="48"
+     inkscape:window-y="27"
+     inkscape:window-maximized="1" />
+  <metadata
+     id="metadata5">
+    <rdf:RDF>
+      <cc:Work
+         rdf:about="">
+        <dc:format>image/svg+xml</dc:format>
+        <dc:type
+           rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage" />
+        <dc:title></dc:title>
+      </cc:Work>
+    </rdf:RDF>
+  </metadata>
+  <g
+     inkscape:label="Layer 1"
+     inkscape:groupmode="layer"
+     id="layer1">
+    <ellipse
+       id="path3713"
+       cx="106.2122"
+       cy="134.47203"
+       rx="102.05357"
+       ry="99.029755"
+       style="stroke-width:0.26458332" />
+    <circle
+       style="fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332"
+       id="path3717"
+       cx="107.59055"
+       cy="132.30211"
+       r="3.3341289" />
+    <ellipse
+       style="fill:#000000;stroke-width:0.26458332"
+       id="path3719"
+       cx="107.45217"
+       cy="132.10078"
+       rx="0.027842503"
+       ry="0.031820003" />
+    <text
+       xml:space="preserve"
+       style="font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;font-family:sans-serif;letter-spacing:0px;word-spacing:0px;fill:#ffffff;fill-opacity:1;stroke:none;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+       x="107.43014"
+       y="132.08501"
+       id="text3723"><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.08501"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3748">p </tspan><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.08942"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3754">i </tspan><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.09383"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3756">c </tspan><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.09824"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3758">o </tspan><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.10265"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3760">C </tspan><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.10706"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3762">T </tspan><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.11147"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3764">F { 3 n h 4 n </tspan><tspan
+         sodipodi:role="line"
+         x="107.43014"
+         y="132.11588"
+         style="font-size:0.00352781px;line-height:1.25;fill:#ffffff;stroke-width:0.26458332;"
+         id="tspan3752">c 3 d _ d 0 a 7 5 7 b f }</tspan></text>
+  </g>
+</svg>
diff --git a/forensics/enhance/flag.txt b/forensics/enhance/flag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b2f059
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/enhance/flag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picoCTF{3nh4nc3d_d0a757bf}
diff --git a/forensics/extensions/flag.png b/forensics/extensions/flag.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81d54f7
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/extensions/flag.png differ
diff --git a/forensics/extensions/flag.txt b/forensics/extensions/flag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81d54f7
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/extensions/flag.txt differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/Flag.sh b/forensics/file_types/Flag.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..e7da9ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/file_types/Flag.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,172 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+# This is a shell archive (produced by GNU sharutils 4.15.2).
+# To extract the files from this archive, save it to some FILE, remove
+# everything before the '#!/bin/sh' line above, then type 'sh FILE'.
+#
+lock_dir=_sh00046
+# Made on 2023-03-16 01:40 UTC by <root@e076735df429>.
+# Source directory was '/app'.
+#
+# Existing files will *not* be overwritten, unless '-c' is specified.
+#
+# This shar contains:
+# length mode       name
+# ------ ---------- ------------------------------------------
+#   1092 -rw-r--r-- flag
+#
+MD5SUM=${MD5SUM-md5sum}
+f=`${MD5SUM} --version | egrep '^md5sum .*(core|text)utils'`
+test -n "${f}" && md5check=true || md5check=false
+${md5check} || \
+  echo 'Note: not verifying md5sums.  Consider installing GNU coreutils.'
+if test "X$1" = "X-c"
+then keep_file=''
+else keep_file=true
+fi
+echo=echo
+save_IFS="${IFS}"
+IFS="${IFS}:"
+gettext_dir=
+locale_dir=
+set_echo=false
+
+for dir in $PATH
+do
+  if test -f $dir/gettext \
+     && ($dir/gettext --version >/dev/null 2>&1)
+  then
+    case `$dir/gettext --version 2>&1 | sed 1q` in
+      *GNU*) gettext_dir=$dir
+      set_echo=true
+      break ;;
+    esac
+  fi
+done
+
+if ${set_echo}
+then
+  set_echo=false
+  for dir in $PATH
+  do
+    if test -f $dir/shar \
+       && ($dir/shar --print-text-domain-dir >/dev/null 2>&1)
+    then
+      locale_dir=`$dir/shar --print-text-domain-dir`
+      set_echo=true
+      break
+    fi
+  done
+
+  if ${set_echo}
+  then
+    TEXTDOMAINDIR=$locale_dir
+    export TEXTDOMAINDIR
+    TEXTDOMAIN=sharutils
+    export TEXTDOMAIN
+    echo="$gettext_dir/gettext -s"
+  fi
+fi
+IFS="$save_IFS"
+if (echo "testing\c"; echo 1,2,3) | grep c >/dev/null
+then if (echo -n test; echo 1,2,3) | grep n >/dev/null
+     then shar_n= shar_c='
+'
+     else shar_n=-n shar_c= ; fi
+else shar_n= shar_c='\c' ; fi
+f=shar-touch.$$
+st1=200112312359.59
+st2=123123592001.59
+st2tr=123123592001.5 # old SysV 14-char limit
+st3=1231235901
+
+if   touch -am -t ${st1} ${f} >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
+     test ! -f ${st1} && test -f ${f}; then
+  shar_touch='touch -am -t $1$2$3$4$5$6.$7 "$8"'
+
+elif touch -am ${st2} ${f} >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
+     test ! -f ${st2} && test ! -f ${st2tr} && test -f ${f}; then
+  shar_touch='touch -am $3$4$5$6$1$2.$7 "$8"'
+
+elif touch -am ${st3} ${f} >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
+     test ! -f ${st3} && test -f ${f}; then
+  shar_touch='touch -am $3$4$5$6$2 "$8"'
+
+else
+  shar_touch=:
+  echo
+  ${echo} 'WARNING: not restoring timestamps.  Consider getting and
+installing GNU '\''touch'\'', distributed in GNU coreutils...'
+  echo
+fi
+rm -f ${st1} ${st2} ${st2tr} ${st3} ${f}
+#
+if test ! -d ${lock_dir} ; then :
+else ${echo} "lock directory ${lock_dir} exists"
+     exit 1
+fi
+if mkdir ${lock_dir}
+then ${echo} "x - created lock directory ${lock_dir}."
+else ${echo} "x - failed to create lock directory ${lock_dir}."
+     exit 1
+fi
+# ============= flag ==============
+if test -n "${keep_file}" && test -f 'flag'
+then
+${echo} "x - SKIPPING flag (file already exists)"
+
+else
+${echo} "x - extracting flag (text)"
+  sed 's/^X//' << 'SHAR_EOF' | uudecode &&
+begin 600 flag
+M(3QA<F-H/@IF;&%G+R`@("`@("`@("`@,"`@("`@("`@("`@,"`@("`@,"`@
+M("`@-C0T("`@("`Q,#(T("`@("`@8`K'<>H`.Y*D@0`````!````$F2#<P4`
+M``#^`69L86<``$)::#DQ05DF4UF(WJSO```@____Y)U_U<SW/^OTZ?'U_=L^
+M[6U=O_O(8_WQ_?;^]R_>L[`!&U8(`T&F0VH`T&@:```#0!IH``&@'J:#1HT`
+M]"`!H-``!M0;4VH>IM3,:FH@T:&(#3)B:`T,F@:-!IDTT-&AHP3(&@T-,0T&
+M(&0Q#1IH/2`,(-H1H`R9`%4T3)H>D:`TR9&AHT`R!H&09#",0``8C0#$,@,@
+MR8F@`TT:!H:!D8C0`0`@`"01`H!^_$QU,`V*$A`!6'F(]N[-;FC]^&3PR1#9
+MPR,KRW><F<49%$Q!!N[Y?=40;N##KW4D[`_\>RXRA?-VG(E/=DW&Q`:DU8G>
+MMFW,-D>1C@-1P&"MR*[TX&O7KM9]S5=DU0VC=9?.T'0?DVD+/#[?',M)']85
+M*8@&IZ7%1U*=`[3V(?.C;*QER!+T,)6UYG?BLMV7!\L\;3$+^W%89SR(9RO(
+M>+3K'>QL]21+'O&!V`_:4<<C7R!.D'BG?GI\GT1*W#AC625`V>W`87AZF@[I
+M:]!!QL1^'NUJ#8O\=0A54@29A#E-6B(?TR(09S3_#,Z0H'SQBO?]^LMC2G$!
+MA!19*?93"DWLZ`^I!$.L*!%ILMU#!AJ3SP_!>:^5PJIFC)-,*5ERC!7="@"$
+M,$;I*<PV8-8[\ORRQ:K_%W)%.%"0B-ZL[\=Q``````````````$`````````
+M"P``````5%)!24Q%4B$A(0``````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+M````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
+,````````````````
+`
+end
+SHAR_EOF
+  (set 20 23 03 16 01 40 19 'flag'
+   eval "${shar_touch}") && \
+  chmod 0644 'flag'
+if test $? -ne 0
+then ${echo} "restore of flag failed"
+fi
+  if ${md5check}
+  then (
+       ${MD5SUM} -c >/dev/null 2>&1 || ${echo} 'flag': 'MD5 check failed'
+       ) << \SHAR_EOF
+0838b0ca0f0415b3cb6f24da377204de  flag
+SHAR_EOF
+
+else
+test `LC_ALL=C wc -c < 'flag'` -ne 1092 && \
+  ${echo} "restoration warning:  size of 'flag' is not 1092"
+  fi
+fi
+if rm -fr ${lock_dir}
+then ${echo} "x - removed lock directory ${lock_dir}."
+else ${echo} "x - failed to remove lock directory ${lock_dir}."
+     exit 1
+fi
+exit 0
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.ar b/forensics/file_types/flag.ar
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0343913
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.ar differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.bz2 b/forensics/file_types/flag.bz2
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1fc9c5
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.bz2 differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.cpio b/forensics/file_types/flag.cpio
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..763837e
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.cpio differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.gz b/forensics/file_types/flag.gz
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b18272f
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.gz differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.lz b/forensics/file_types/flag.lz
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..521522c
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.lz differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.lz4 b/forensics/file_types/flag.lz4
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..028473f
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.lz4 differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.lzip b/forensics/file_types/flag.lzip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..804ed55
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.lzip differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.lzop b/forensics/file_types/flag.lzop
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80f4eee
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/file_types/flag.lzop differ
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.txt b/forensics/file_types/flag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a4455a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/file_types/flag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picoCTF{f1len@m3_m@n1pul@t10n_f0r_0b2cur17y_950c4fee}
diff --git a/forensics/file_types/flag.txt.hex b/forensics/file_types/flag.txt.hex
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..077a9f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/file_types/flag.txt.hex
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+7069636f4354467b66316c656e406d335f6d406e3170756c407431306e5f
+6630725f3062326375723137795f39353063346665657d0a
diff --git a/forensics/information/cat.jpg b/forensics/information/cat.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7351fbc
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/information/cat.jpg differ
diff --git a/forensics/information/solve.sh b/forensics/information/solve.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..aad2447
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/information/solve.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+#
+# NOTE: this is the license in the EXIF data. Not easy to spot...
+#
+echo "cGljb0NURnt0aGVfbTN0YWRhdGFfMXNfbW9kaWZpZWR9" | base64 -d
diff --git a/forensics/like1000/1000.tar.bak b/forensics/like1000/1000.tar.bak
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1910d19
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/like1000/1000.tar.bak differ
diff --git a/forensics/like1000/flag.png b/forensics/like1000/flag.png
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..125251d
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/like1000/flag.png differ
diff --git a/forensics/like1000/solve.sh b/forensics/like1000/solve.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..199ece6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/like1000/solve.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell
+#!nix-shell -i bash -p bash ouch
+
+cp 1000.tar.bak 1000.tar
+
+for i in {1000..2}; do
+	ouch decompress $i.tar
+	mv $i/$((i-1)).tar .
+	rm -rf $i $i.tar
+done
+
+ouch decompress 1.tar
+mv 1/flag.png .
+rm -rf 1 1.tar
diff --git a/forensics/lookey_here/anthem.flag.txt b/forensics/lookey_here/anthem.flag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0db4cdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/lookey_here/anthem.flag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2146 @@
+      ANTHEM
+
+      by Ayn Rand
+
+
+        CONTENTS
+
+         PART ONE
+
+         PART TWO
+
+         PART THREE
+
+         PART FOUR
+
+         PART FIVE
+
+         PART SIX
+
+         PART SEVEN
+
+         PART EIGHT
+
+         PART NINE
+
+         PART TEN
+
+         PART ELEVEN
+
+         PART TWELVE
+
+
+
+
+      PART ONE
+
+      It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others
+      think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It
+      is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears
+      but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression
+      blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The
+      laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations
+      bid them so. May we be forgiven!
+
+      But this is not the only sin upon us. We have committed a greater
+      crime, and for this crime there is no name. What punishment
+      awaits us if it be discovered we know not, for no such crime has
+      come in the memory of men and there are no laws to provide for
+      it.
+
+      It is dark here. The flame of the candle stands still in the air.
+      Nothing moves in this tunnel save our hand on the paper. We are
+      alone here under the earth. It is a fearful word, alone. The laws
+      say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for
+      this is the great transgression and the root of all evil. But we
+      have broken many laws. And now there is nothing here save our one
+      body, and it is strange to see only two legs stretched on the
+      ground, and on the wall before us the shadow of our one head.
+
+      The walls are cracked and water runs upon them in thin threads
+      without sound, black and glistening as blood. We stole the candle
+      from the larder of the Home of the Street Sweepers. We shall be
+      sentenced to ten years in the Palace of Corrective Detention if
+      it be discovered. But this matters not. It matters only that the
+      light is precious and we should not waste it to write when we
+      need it for that work which is our crime. Nothing matters save
+      the work, our secret, our evil, our precious work. Still, we must
+      also write, for—may the Council have mercy upon us!—we wish to
+      speak for once to no ears but our own.
+
+      Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron
+      bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names
+      upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and
+      this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet
+      tall. Ever have the Teachers and the Leaders pointed to us and
+      frowned and said:
+
+      “There is evil in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has
+      grown beyond the bodies of your brothers.” But we cannot change
+      our bones nor our body.
+
+      We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts
+      which are forbidden. It has always given us wishes which men may
+      not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us
+      and no power to resist it. This is our wonder and our secret
+      fear, that we know and do not resist.
+
+      We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be
+      alike. Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there
+      are words cut in the marble, which we repeat to ourselves
+      whenever we are tempted:
+
+  “WE ARE ONE IN ALL AND ALL IN ONE.
+  THERE ARE NO MEN BUT ONLY THE GREAT _WE_,
+  ONE, INDIVISIBLE AND FOREVER.”
+
+      We repeat this to ourselves, but it helps us not.
+
+      These words were cut long ago. There is green mould in the
+      grooves of the letters and yellow streaks on the marble, which
+      come from more years than men could count. And these words are
+      the truth, for they are written on the Palace of the World
+      Council, and the World Council is the body of all truth. Thus has
+      it been ever since the Great Rebirth, and farther back than that
+      no memory can reach.
+
+      But we must never speak of the times before the Great Rebirth,
+      else we are sentenced to three years in the Palace of Corrective
+      Detention. It is only the Old Ones who whisper about it in the
+      evenings, in the Home of the Useless. They whisper many strange
+      things, of the towers which rose to the sky, in those
+      Unmentionable Times, and of the wagons which moved without
+      horses, and of the lights which burned without flame. But those
+      times were evil. And those times passed away, when men saw the
+      Great Truth which is this: that all men are one and that there is
+      no will save the will of all men together.
+
+      All men are good and wise. It is only we, Equality 7-2521, we
+      alone who were born with a curse. For we are not like our
+      brothers. And as we look back upon our life, we see that it has
+      ever been thus and that it has brought us step by step to our
+      last, supreme transgression, our crime of crimes hidden here
+      under the ground.
+
+      We remember the Home of the Infants where we lived till we were
+      five years old, together with all the children of the City who
+      had been born in the same year. The sleeping halls there were
+      white and clean and bare of all things save one hundred beds. We
+      were just like all our brothers then, save for the one
+      transgression: we fought with our brothers. There are few
+      offenses blacker than to fight with our brothers, at any age and
+      for any cause whatsoever. The Council of the Home told us so, and
+      of all the children of that year, we were locked in the cellar
+      most often.
+
+      When we were five years old, we were sent to the Home of the
+      Students, where there are ten wards, for our ten years of
+      learning. Men must learn till they reach their fifteenth year.
+      Then they go to work. In the Home of the Students we arose when
+      the big bell rang in the tower and we went to our beds when it
+      rang again. Before we removed our garments, we stood in the great
+      sleeping hall, and we raised our right arms, and we said all
+      together with the three Teachers at the head:
+
+      “We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are
+      we allowed our lives. We exist through, by and for our brothers
+      who are the State. Amen.”
+
+      Then we slept. The sleeping halls were white and clean and bare
+      of all things save one hundred beds.
+
+      We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those years in the Home of
+      the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us.
+      It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be
+      born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be
+      different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to
+      them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked
+      upon us.
+
+      So we fought against this curse. We tried to forget our lessons,
+      but we always remembered. We tried not to understand what the
+      Teachers taught, but we always understood it before the Teachers
+      had spoken. We looked upon Union 5-3992, who were a pale boy with
+      only half a brain, and we tried to say and do as they did, that
+      we might be like them, like Union 5-3992, but somehow the
+      Teachers knew that we were not. And we were lashed more often
+      than all the other children.
+
+      The Teachers were just, for they had been appointed by the
+      Councils, and the Councils are the voice of all justice, for they
+      are the voice of all men. And if sometimes, in the secret
+      darkness of our heart, we regret that which befell us on our
+      fifteenth birthday, we know that it was through our own guilt. We
+      had broken a law, for we had not paid heed to the words of our
+      Teachers. The Teachers had said to us all:
+
+      “Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when
+      you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do that which the
+      Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of
+      Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your
+      brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little
+      minds. And if you are not needed by your brother man, there is no
+      reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies.”
+
+      We knew this well, in the years of our childhood, but our curse
+      broke our will. We were guilty and we confess it here: we were
+      guilty of the great Transgression of Preference. We preferred
+      some work and some lessons to the others. We did not listen well
+      to the history of all the Councils elected since the Great
+      Rebirth. But we loved the Science of Things. We wished to know.
+      We wished to know about all the things which make the earth
+      around us. We asked so many questions that the Teachers forbade
+      it.
+
+      We think that there are mysteries in the sky and under the water
+      and in the plants which grow. But the Council of Scholars has
+      said that there are no mysteries, and the Council of Scholars
+      knows all things. And we learned much from our Teachers. We
+      learned that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around
+      it, which causes the day and the night. We learned the names of
+      all the winds which blow over the seas and push the sails of our
+      great ships. We learned how to bleed men to cure them of all
+      ailments.
+
+      We loved the Science of Things. And in the darkness, in the
+      secret hour, when we awoke in the night and there were no
+      brothers around us, but only their shapes in the beds and their
+      snores, we closed our eyes, and we held our lips shut, and we
+      stopped our breath, that no shudder might let our brothers see or
+      hear or guess, and we thought that we wished to be sent to the
+      Home of the Scholars when our time would come.
+
+      All the great modern inventions come from the Home of the
+      Scholars, such as the newest one, which was found only a hundred
+      years ago, of how to make candles from wax and string; also, how
+      to make glass, which is put in our windows to protect us from the
+      rain. To find these things, the Scholars must study the earth and
+      learn from the rivers, from the sands, from the winds and the
+      rocks. And if we went to the Home of the Scholars, we could learn
+      from these also. We could ask questions of these, for they do not
+      forbid questions.
+
+      And questions give us no rest. We know not why our curse makes us
+      seek we know not what, ever and ever. But we cannot resist it. It
+      whispers to us that there are great things on this earth of ours,
+      and that we can know them if we try, and that we must know them.
+      We ask, why must we know, but it has no answer to give us. We
+      must know that we may know.
+
+      So we wished to be sent to the Home of the Scholars. We wished it
+      so much that our hands trembled under the blankets in the night,
+      and we bit our arm to stop that other pain which we could not
+      endure. It was evil and we dared not face our brothers in the
+      morning. For men may wish nothing for themselves. And we were
+      punished when the Council of Vocations came to give us our life
+      Mandates which tell those who reach their fifteenth year what
+      their work is to be for the rest of their days.
+
+      The Council of Vocations came on the first day of spring, and
+      they sat in the great hall. And we who were fifteen and all the
+      Teachers came into the great hall. And the Council of Vocations
+      sat on a high dais, and they had but two words to speak to each
+      of the Students. They called the Students’ names, and when the
+      Students stepped before them, one after another, the Council
+      said: “Carpenter” or “Doctor” or “Cook” or “Leader.” Then each
+      Student raised their right arm and said: “The will of our
+      brothers be done.”
+
+      Now if the Council has said “Carpenter” or “Cook,” the Students
+      so assigned go to work and they do not study any further. But if
+      the Council has said “Leader,” then those Students go into the
+      Home of the Leaders, which is the greatest house in the City, for
+      it has three stories. And there they study for many years, so
+      that they may become candidates and be elected to the City
+      Council and the State Council and the World Council—by a free and
+      general vote of all men. But we wished not to be a Leader, even
+      though it is a great honor. We wished to be a Scholar.
+
+      So we awaited our turn in the great hall and then we heard the
+      Council of Vocations call our name: “Equality 7-2521.” We walked
+      to the dais, and our legs did not tremble, and we looked up at
+      the Council. There were five members of the Council, three of the
+      male gender and two of the female. Their hair was white and their
+      faces were cracked as the clay of a dry river bed. They were old.
+      They seemed older than the marble of the Temple of the World
+      Council. They sat before us and they did not move. And we saw no
+      breath to stir the folds of their white togas. But we knew that
+      they were alive, for a finger of the hand of the oldest rose,
+      pointed to us, and fell down again. This was the only thing which
+      moved, for the lips of the oldest did not move as they said:
+      “Street Sweeper.”
+
+      We felt the cords of our neck grow tight as our head rose higher
+      to look upon the faces of the Council, and we were happy. We knew
+      we had been guilty, but now we had a way to atone for it. We
+      would accept our Life Mandate, and we would work for our
+      brothers, gladly and willingly, and we would erase our sin
+      against them, which they did not know, but we knew. So we were
+      happy, and proud of ourselves and of our victory over ourselves.
+      We raised our right arm and we spoke, and our voice was the
+      clearest, the steadiest voice in the hall that day, and we said:
+
+      “The will of our brothers be done.”
+
+      And we looked straight into the eyes of the Council, but their
+      eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
+
+      So we went into the Home of the Street Sweepers. It is a grey
+      house on a narrow street. There is a sundial in its courtyard, by
+      which the Council of the Home can tell the hours of the day and
+      when to ring the bell. When the bell rings, we all arise from our
+      beds. The sky is green and cold in our windows to the east. The
+      shadow on the sundial marks off a half-hour while we dress and
+      eat our breakfast in the dining hall, where there are five long
+      tables with twenty clay plates and twenty clay cups on each
+      table. Then we go to work in the streets of the City, with our
+      brooms and our rakes. In five hours, when the sun is high, we
+      return to the Home and we eat our midday meal, for which one-half
+      hour is allowed. Then we go to work again. In five hours, the
+      shadows are blue on the pavements, and the sky is blue with a
+      deep brightness which is not bright. We come back to have our
+      dinner, which lasts one hour. Then the bell rings and we walk in
+      a straight column to one of the City Halls, for the Social
+      Meeting. Other columns of men arrive from the Homes of the
+      different Trades. The candles are lit, and the Councils of the
+      different Homes stand in a pulpit, and they speak to us of our
+      duties and of our brother men. Then visiting Leaders mount the
+      pulpit and they read to us the speeches which were made in the
+      City Council that day, for the City Council represents all men
+      and all men must know. Then we sing hymns, the Hymn of
+      Brotherhood, and the Hymn of Equality, and the Hymn of the
+      Collective Spirit. The sky is a soggy purple when we return to
+      the Home. Then the bell rings and we walk in a straight column to
+      the City Theatre for three hours of Social Recreation. There a
+      play is shown upon the stage, with two great choruses from the
+      Home of the Actors, which speak and answer all together, in two
+      great voices. The plays are about toil and how good it is. Then
+      we walk back to the Home in a straight column. The sky is like a
+      black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst
+      through. The moths beat against the street lanterns. We go to our
+      beds and we sleep, till the bell rings again. The sleeping halls
+      are white and clean and bare of all things save one hundred beds.
+
+      Thus have we lived each day of four years, until two springs ago
+      when our crime happened. Thus must all men live until they are
+      forty. At forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to
+      the Home of the Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do
+      not work, for the State takes care of them. They sit in the sun
+      in summer and they sit by the fire in winter. They do not speak
+      often, for they are weary. The Old Ones know that they are soon
+      to die. When a miracle happens and some live to be forty-five,
+      they are the Ancient Ones, and the children stare at them when
+      passing by the Home of the Useless. Such is to be our life, as
+      that of all our brothers and of the brothers who came before us.
+
+      Such would have been our life, had we not committed our crime
+      which changed all things for us. And it was our curse which drove
+      us to our crime. We had been a good Street Sweeper and like all
+      our brother Street Sweepers, save for our cursed wish to know. We
+      looked too long at the stars at night, and at the trees and the
+      earth. And when we cleaned the yard of the Home of the Scholars,
+      we gathered the glass vials, the pieces of metal, the dried bones
+      which they had discarded. We wished to keep these things and to
+      study them, but we had no place to hide them. So we carried them
+      to the City Cesspool. And then we made the discovery.
+
+      It was on a day of the spring before last. We Street Sweepers
+      work in brigades of three, and we were with Union 5-3992, they of
+      the half-brain, and with International 4-8818. Now Union 5-3992
+      are a sickly lad and sometimes they are stricken with
+      convulsions, when their mouth froths and their eyes turn white.
+      But International 4-8818 are different. They are a tall, strong
+      youth and their eyes are like fireflies, for there is laughter in
+      their eyes. We cannot look upon International 4-8818 and not
+      smile in answer. For this they were not liked in the Home of the
+      Students, as it is not proper to smile without reason. And also
+      they were not liked because they took pieces of coal and they
+      drew pictures upon the walls, and they were pictures which made
+      men laugh. But it is only our brothers in the Home of the Artists
+      who are permitted to draw pictures, so International 4-8818 were
+      sent to the Home of the Street Sweepers, like ourselves.
+
+      International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to
+      say, for it is a transgression, the great Transgression of
+      Preference, to love any among men better than the others, since
+      we must love all men and all men are our friends. So
+      International 4-8818 and we have never spoken of it. But we know.
+      We know, when we look into each other’s eyes. And when we look
+      thus without words, we both know other things also, strange
+      things for which there are no words, and these things frighten
+      us.
+
+      So on that day of the spring before last, Union 5-3992 were
+      stricken with convulsions on the edge of the City, near the City
+      Theatre. We left them to lie in the shade of the Theatre tent and
+      we went with International 4-8818 to finish our work. We came
+      together to the great ravine behind the Theatre. It is empty save
+      for trees and weeds. Beyond the ravine there is a plain, and
+      beyond the plain there lies the Uncharted Forest, about which men
+      must not think.
+
+      We were gathering the papers and the rags which the wind had
+      blown from the Theatre, when we saw an iron bar among the weeds.
+      It was old and rusted by many rains. We pulled with all our
+      strength, but we could not move it. So we called International
+      4-8818, and together we scraped the earth around the bar. Of a
+      sudden the earth fell in before us, and we saw an old iron grill
+      over a black hole.
+
+      International 4-8818 stepped back. But we pulled at the grill and
+      it gave way. And then we saw iron rings as steps leading down a
+      shaft into a darkness without bottom.
+
+      “We shall go down,” we said to International 4-8818.
+
+      “It is forbidden,” they answered.
+
+      We said: “The Council does not know of this hole, so it cannot be
+      forbidden.”
+
+      And they answered: “Since the Council does not know of this hole,
+      there can be no law permitting to enter it. And everything which
+      is not permitted by law is forbidden.”
+
+      But we said: “We shall go, none the less.”
+
+      They were frightened, but they stood by and watched us go.
+
+      We hung on the iron rings with our hands and our feet. We could
+      see nothing below us. And above us the hole open upon the sky
+      grew smaller and smaller, till it came to be the size of a
+      button. But still we went down. Then our foot touched the ground.
+      We rubbed our eyes, for we could not see. Then our eyes became
+      used to the darkness, but we could not believe what we saw.
+
+      No men known to us could have built this place, nor the men known
+      to our brothers who lived before us, and yet it was built by men.
+      It was a great tunnel. Its walls were hard and smooth to the
+      touch; it felt like stone, but it was not stone. On the ground
+      there were long thin tracks of iron, but it was not iron; it felt
+      smooth and cold as glass. We knelt, and we crawled forward, our
+      hand groping along the iron line to see where it would lead. But
+      there was an unbroken night ahead. Only the iron tracks glowed
+      through it, straight and white, calling us to follow. But we
+      could not follow, for we were losing the puddle of light behind
+      us. So we turned and we crawled back, our hand on the iron line.
+      And our heart beat in our fingertips, without reason. And then we
+      knew.
+
+      We knew suddenly that this place was left from the Unmentionable
+      Times. So it was true, and those Times had been, and all the
+      wonders of those Times. Hundreds upon hundreds of years ago men
+      knew secrets which we have lost. And we thought: “This is a foul
+      place. They are damned who touch the things of the Unmentionable
+      Times.” But our hand which followed the track, as we crawled,
+      clung to the iron as if it would not leave it, as if the skin of
+      our hand were thirsty and begging of the metal some secret fluid
+      beating in its coldness.
+
+      We returned to the earth. International 4-8818 looked upon us and
+      stepped back.
+
+      “Equality 7-2521,” they said, “your face is white.”
+
+      But we could not speak and we stood looking upon them.
+
+      They backed away, as if they dared not touch us. Then they
+      smiled, but it was not a gay smile; it was lost and pleading. But
+      still we could not speak. Then they said:
+
+      “We shall report our find to the City Council and both of us will
+      be rewarded.”
+
+      And then we spoke. Our voice was hard and there was no mercy in
+      our voice. We said:
+
+      “We shall not report our find to the City Council. We shall not
+    report it to any men.”
+
+      They raised their hands to their ears, for never had they heard
+      such words as these.
+
+      “International 4-8818,” we asked, “will you report us to the
+      Council and see us lashed to death before your eyes?”
+
+      They stood straight all of a sudden and they answered: “Rather
+      would we die.”
+
+      “Then,” we said, “keep silent. This place is ours. This place
+      belongs to us, Equality 7-2521, and to no other men on earth. And
+      if ever we surrender it, we shall surrender our life with it
+      also.”
+
+      Then we saw that the eyes of International 4-8818 were full to
+      the lids with tears they dared not drop. They whispered, and
+      their voice trembled, so that their words lost all shape:
+
+      “The will of the Council is above all things, for it is the will
+      of our brothers, which is holy. But if you wish it so, we shall
+      obey you. Rather shall we be evil with you than good with all our
+      brothers. May the Council have mercy upon both our hearts!”
+
+      Then we walked away together and back to the Home of the Street
+      Sweepers. And we walked in silence.
+
+      Thus did it come to pass that each night, when the stars are high
+      and the Street Sweepers sit in the City Theatre, we, Equality
+      7-2521, steal out and run through the darkness to our place. It
+      is easy to leave the Theatre; when the candles are blown out and
+      the Actors come onto the stage, no eyes can see us as we crawl
+      under our seat and under the cloth of the tent. Later, it is easy
+      to steal through the shadows and fall in line next to
+      International 4-8818, as the column leaves the Theatre. It is
+      dark in the streets and there are no men about, for no men may
+      walk through the City when they have no mission to walk there.
+      Each night, we run to the ravine, and we remove the stones which
+      we have piled upon the iron grill to hide it from the men. Each
+      night, for three hours, we are under the earth, alone.
+
+      We have stolen candles from the Home of the Street Sweepers, we
+      have stolen flints and knives and paper, and we have brought them
+      to this place. We have stolen glass vials and powders and acids
+      from the Home of the Scholars. Now we sit in the tunnel for three
+      hours each night and we study. We melt strange metals, and we mix
+      acids, and we cut open the bodies of the animals which we find in
+      the City Cesspool. We have built an oven of the bricks we
+      gathered in the streets. We burn the wood we find in the ravine.
+      The fire flickers in the oven and blue shadows dance upon the
+      walls, and there is no sound of men to disturb us.
+
+      We have stolen manuscripts. This is a great offense. Manuscripts
+      are precious, for our brothers in the Home of the Clerks spend
+      one year to copy one single script in their clear handwriting.
+      Manuscripts are rare and they are kept in the Home of the
+      Scholars. So we sit under the earth and we read the stolen
+      scripts. Two years have passed since we found this place. And in
+      these two years we have learned more than we had learned in the
+      ten years of the Home of the Students.
+
+      We have learned things which are not in the scripts. We have
+      solved secrets of which the Scholars have no knowledge. We have
+      come to see how great is the unexplored, and many lifetimes will
+      not bring us to the end of our quest. But we wish no end to our
+      quest. We wish nothing, save to be alone and to learn, and to
+      feel as if with each day our sight were growing sharper than the
+      hawk’s and clearer than rock crystal.
+
+      Strange are the ways of evil. We are false in the faces of our
+      brothers. We are defying the will of our Councils. We alone, of
+      the thousands who walk this earth, we alone in this hour are
+      doing a work which has no purpose save that we wish to do it. The
+      evil of our crime is not for the human mind to probe. The nure
+      of our punishment, if it be discovered, is not for the human
+      heart to ponder. Never, not in the memory of the Ancient Ones’
+      Ancients, never have men done that which we are doing.
+
+      And yet there is no shame in us and no regret. We say to
+      ourselves that we are a wretch and a traitor. But we feel no
+      burden upon our spirit and no fear in our heart. And it seems to
+      us that our spirit is clear as a lake troubled by no eyes save
+      those of the sun. And in our heart—strange are the ways of
+      evil!—in our heart there is the first peace we have known in
+      twenty years.
+
+
+
+      PART TWO
+
+      Liberty 5-3000... Liberty five-three thousand ... Liberty
+      5-3000....
+
+      We wish to write this name. We wish to speak it, but we dare not
+      speak it above a whisper. For men are forbidden to take notice of
+      women, and women are forbidden to take notice of men. But we
+      think of one among women, they whose name is Liberty 5-3000, and
+      we think of no others. The women who have been assigned to work
+      the soil live in the Homes of the Peasants beyond the City. Where
+      the City ends there is a great road winding off to the north, and
+      we Street Sweepers must keep this road clean to the first
+      milepost. There is a hedge along the road, and beyond the hedge
+      lie the fields. The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie
+      like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some
+      hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide
+      apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with
+      thin, green spangles. Women work in the fields, and their white
+      tunics in the wind are like the wings of sea-gulls beating over
+      the black soil.
+
+      And there it was that we saw Liberty 5-3000 walking along the
+      furrows. Their body was straight and thin as a blade of iron.
+      Their eyes were dark and hard and glowing, with no fear in them,
+      no kindness and no guilt. Their hair was golden as the sun; their
+      hair flew in the wind, shining and wild, as if it defied men to
+      restrain it. They threw seeds from their hand as if they deigned
+      to fling a scornful gift, and the earth was a beggar under their
+      feet.
+
+      We stood still; for the first time did we know fear, and then
+      pain. And we stood still that we might not spill this pain more
+      precious than pleasure.
+
+      Then we heard a voice from the others call their name: “Liberty
+      5-3000,” and they turned and walked back. Thus we learned their
+      name, and we stood watching them go, till their white tunic was
+      lost in the blue mist.
+
+      And the following day, as we came to the northern road, we kept
+      our eyes upon Liberty 5-3000 in the field. And each day
+      thereafter we knew the illness of waiting for our hour on the
+      northern road. And there we looked at Liberty 5-3000 each day. We
+      know not whether they looked at us also, but we think they did.
+      Then one day they came close to the hedge, and suddenly they
+      turned to us. They turned in a whirl and the movement of their
+      body stopped, as if slashed off, as suddenly as it had started.
+      They stood still as a stone, and they looked straight upon us,
+      straight into our eyes. There was no smile on their face, and no
+      welcome. But their face was taut, and their eyes were dark. Then
+      they turned as swiftly, and they walked away from us.
+
+      But the following day, when we came to the road, they smiled.
+      They smiled to us and for us. And we smiled in answer. Their head
+      fell back, and their arms fell, as if their arms and their thin
+      white neck were stricken suddenly with a great lassitude. They
+      were not looking upon us, but upon the sky. Then they glanced at
+      us over their shoulder, as we felt as if a hand had touched our
+      body, slipping softly from our lips to our feet.
+
+      Every morning thereafter, we greeted each other with our eyes. We
+      dared not speak. It is a transgression to speak to men of other
+      Trades, save in groups at the Social Meetings. But once, standing
+      at the hedge, we raised our hand to our forehead and then moved
+      it slowly, palm down, toward Liberty 5-3000. Had the others seen
+      it, they could have guessed nothing, for it looked only as if we
+      were shading our eyes from the sun. But Liberty 5-3000 saw it and
+      understood. They raised their hand to their forehead and moved it
+      as we had. Thus, each day, we greet Liberty 5-3000, and they
+      answer, and no men can suspect.
+
+      We do not wonder at this new sin of ours. It is our second
+      Transgression of Preference, for we do not think of all our
+      brothers, as we must, but only of one, and their name is Liberty
+      5-3000. We do not know why we think of them. We do not know why,
+      when we think of them, we feel all of a sudden that the earth is
+      good and that it is not a burden to live. We do not think of them
+      as Liberty 5-3000 any longer. We have given them a name in our
+      thoughts. We call them the Golden One. But it is a sin to give
+      men names which distinguish them from other men. Yet we call them
+      the Golden One, for they are not like the others. The Golden One
+      are not like the others.
+
+      And we take no heed of the law which says that men may not think
+      of women, save at the Time of Mating. This is the time each
+      spring when all the men older than twenty and all the women older
+      than eighteen are sent for one night to the City Palace of
+      Mating. And each of the men have one of the women assigned to
+      them by the Council of Eugenics. Children are born each winter,
+      but women never see their children and children never know their
+      parents. Twice have we been sent to the Palace of Mating, but it
+      is an ugly and shameful matter, of which we do not like to think.
+
+      We had broken so many laws, and today we have broken one more.
+      Today, we spoke to the Golden One.
+
+      The other women were far off in the field, when we stopped at the
+      hedge by the side of the road. The Golden One were kneeling alone
+      at the moat which runs through the field. And the drops of water
+      falling from their hands, as they raised the water to their lips,
+      were like sparks of fire in the sun. Then the Golden One saw us,
+      and they did not move, kneeling there, looking at us, and circles
+      of light played upon their white tunic, from the sun on the water
+      of the moat, and one sparkling drop fell from a finger of their
+      hand held as frozen in the air.
+
+      Then the Golden One rose and walked to the hedge, as if they had
+      heard a command in our eyes. The two other Street Sweepers of our
+      brigade were a hundred paces away down the road. And we thought
+      that International 4-8818 would not betray us, and Union 5-3992
+      would not understand. So we looked straight upon the Golden One,
+      and we saw the shadows of their lashes on their white cheeks and
+      the sparks of sun on their lips. And we said:
+
+      “You are beautiful, Liberty 5-3000.”
+
+      Their face did not move and they did not avert their eyes. Only
+      their eyes grew wider, and there was triumph in their eyes, and
+      it was not triumph over us, but over things we could not guess.
+
+      Then they asked:
+
+      “What is your name?”
+
+      “Equality 7-2521,” we answered.
+
+      “You are not one of our brothers, Equality 7-2521, for we do n
+      wish you to be.”
+
+      We cannot say what they meant, for there are no words for their
+      meaning, but we know it without words and we knew it then.
+
+      “No,” we answered, “nor are you one of our sisters.”
+
+      “If you see us among scores of women, will you look upon us?”
+
+      “We shall look upon you, Liberty 5-3000, if we see you among all
+      the women of the earth.”
+
+      Then they asked:
+
+      “Are Street Sweepers sent to different parts of the City or do
+      they always work in the same places?”
+
+      “They always work in the same places,” we answered, “and no one
+      will take this road away from us.”
+
+      “Your eyes,” they said, “are not like the eyes of any among men.”
+
+      And suddenly, without cause for the thought which came to us, we
+      felt cold, cold to our stomach.
+
+      “How old are you?” we asked.
+
+      They understood our thought, for they lowered their eyes for the
+      first time.
+
+      “Seventeen,” they whispered.
+
+      And we sighed, as if a burden had been taken from us, for we had
+      been thinking without reason of the Palace of Mating. And we
+      thought that we would not let the Golden One be sent to the
+      Palace. How to prevent it, how to bar the will of the Councils,
+      we knew not, but we knew suddenly that we would. Only we do not
+      know why such thought came to us, for these ugly matters bear no
+      relation to us and the Golden One. What relation can they bear?
+
+      Still, without reason, as we stood there by the hedge, we felt
+      our lips drawn tight with hatred, a sudden hatred for all our
+      brother men. And the Golden One saw it and smiled slowly, and
+      there was in their smile the first sadness we had seen in them.
+      We think that in the wisdom of women the Golden One had
+      understood more than we can understand.
+
+      Then three of the sisters in the field appeared, coming toward
+      the road, so the Golden One walked away from us. They took the
+      bag of seeds, and they threw the seeds into the furrows of earth
+      as they walked away. But the seeds flew wildly, for the hand of
+      the Golden One was trembling.
+
+      Yet as we walked back to the Home of the Street Sweepers, we felt
+      that we wanted to sing, without reason. So we were reprimanded
+      tonight, in the dining hall, for without knowing it we had begun
+      to sing aloud some tune we had never heard. But it is not proper
+      to sing without reason, save at the Social Meetings.
+
+      “We are singing because we are happy,” we answered the one of the
+      Home Council who reprimanded us.
+
+      “Indeed you are happy,” they answered. “How else can men be when
+      they live for their brothers?”
+
+      And now, sitting here in our tunnel, we wonder about these words.
+      It is forbidden, not to be happy. For, as it has been explained
+      to us, men are free and the earth belongs to them; and all things
+      on earth belong to all men; and the will of all men together is
+      good for all; and so all men must be happy.
+
+      Yet as we stand at night in the great hall, removing our garments
+      for sleep, we look upon our brothers and we wonder. The heads of
+      our brothers are bowed. The eyes of our brothers are dull, and
+      never do they look one another in the eyes. The shoulders of our
+      brothers are hunched, and their muscles are drawn, as if their
+      bodies were shrinking and wished to shrink out of sight. And a
+      word steals into our mind, as we look upon our brothers, and that
+      word is fear.
+
+      There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and in
+      the air of the streets. Fear walks through the City, fear without
+      name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak.
+
+      We feel it also, when we are in the Home of the Street Sweepers.
+      But here, in our tunnel, we feel it no longer. The air is pure
+      under the ground. There is no odor of men. And these three hours
+      give us strength for our hours above the ground.
+
+      Our body is betraying us, for the Council of the Home looks with
+      suspicion upon us. It is not good to feel too much joy nor to be
+      glad that our body lives. For we matter not and it must not
+      matter to us whether we live or die, which is to be as our
+      brothers will it. But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living.
+      If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.
+
+      Yet our brothers are not like us. All is not well with our
+      brothers. There are Fraternity 2-5503, a quiet boy with wise,
+      kind eyes, who cry suddenly, without reason, in the midst of day
+      or night, and their body shakes with sobs they cannot explain.
+      There are Solidarity 9-6347, who are a bright youth, without fear
+      in the day; but they scream in their sleep, and they scream:
+      “Help us! Help us! Help us!” into the night, in a voice which
+      chills our bones, but the Doctors cannot cure Solidarity 9-6347.
+
+      And as we all undress at night, in the dim light of the candles,
+      our brothers are silent, for they dare not speak the thoughts of
+      their minds. For all must agree with all, and they cannot know if
+      their thoughts are the thoughts of all, and so they fear to
+      speak. And they are glad when the candles are blown for the
+      night. But we, Equality 7-2521, look through the window upon the
+      sky, and there is peace in the sky, and cleanliness, and dignity.
+      And beyond the City there lies the plain, and beyond the plain,
+      black upon the black sky, there lies the Uncharted Forest.
+
+      We do not wish to look upon the Uncharted Forest. We do not wish
+      to think of it. But ever do our eyes return to that black patch
+      upon the sky. Men never enter the Uncharted Forest, for there is
+      no power to explore it and no path to lead among its ancient
+      trees which stand as guards of fearful secrets. It is whispered
+      that once or twice in a hundred years, one among the men of the
+      City escape alone and run to the Uncharted Forest, without call
+      or reason. These men do not return. They perish from hunger and
+      from the claws of the wild beasts which roam the Forest. But our
+      Councils say that this is only a legend. We have heard that there
+      are many Uncharted Forests over the land, among the Cities. And
+      it is whispered that they have grown over the ruins of many
+      cities of the Unmentionable Times. The trees have swallowed the
+      ruins, and the bones under the ruins, and all the things which
+      perished. And as we look upon the Uncharted Forest far in the
+      night, we think of the secrets of the Unmentionable Times. And we
+      wonder how it came to pass that these secrets were lost to the
+      world. We have heard the legends of the great fighting, in which
+      many men fought on one side and only a few on the other. These
+      few were the Evil Ones and they were conquered. Then great fires
+      raged over the land. And in these fires the Evil Ones and all the
+      things made by the Evil Ones were burned. And the fire which is
+      called the Dawn of the Great Rebirth, was the Script Fire where
+      all the scripts of the Evil Ones were burned, and with them all
+      the words of the Evil Ones. Great mountains of flame stood in the
+      squares of the Cities for three months. Then came the Great
+      Rebirth.
+
+      The words of the Evil Ones... The words of the Unmentionable
+      Times... What are the words which we have lost?
+
+      May the Council have mercy upon us! We had no wish to write such
+      a question, and we knew not what we were doing till we had
+      written it. We shall not ask this question and we shall not think
+      it. We shall not call death upon our head.
+
+      And yet... And yet... There is some word, one single word which
+      is not in the language of men, but which had been. And this is
+      the Unspeakable Word, which no men may speak nor hear. But
+      sometimes, and it is rare, sometimes, somewhere, one among men
+      finhat word. They find it upon scraps of old manuscripts or
+      cut into the fragments of ancient stones. But when they speak it
+      they are put to death. There is no crime punished by death in
+      this world, save this one crime of speaking the Unspeakable Word.
+
+      We have seen one of such men burned alive in the square of the
+      City. And it was a sight which has stayed with us through the
+      years, and it haunts us, and follows us, and it gives us no rest.
+      We were a child then, ten years old. And we stood in the great
+      square with all the children and all the men of the City, sent to
+      behold the burning. They brought the Transgressor out into the
+      square and they led them to the pyre. They had torn out the
+      tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer.
+      The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and
+      eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did
+      not falter. And of all the faces on that square, of all the faces
+      which shrieked and screamed and spat curses upon them, theirs was
+      the calmest and the happiest face.
+
+      As the chains were wound over their body at the stake, and a
+      flame set to the pyre, the Transgressor looked upon the City.
+      There was a thin thread of blood running from the corner of their
+      mouth, but their lips were smiling. And a monstrous thought came
+      to us then, which has never left us. We had heard of Saints.
+      There are the Saints of Labor, and the Saints of the Councils,
+      and the Saints of the Great Rebirth. But we had never seen a
+      Saint nor what the likeness of a Saint should be. And we thought
+      then, standing in the square, that the likeness of a Saint was
+      the face we saw before us in the flames, the face of the
+      Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word.
+
+      As the flames rose, a thing happened which no eyes saw but ours,
+      else we would not be living today. Perhaps it had only seemed to
+      us. But it seemed to us that the eyes of the Transgressor had
+      chosen us from the crowd and were looking straight upon us. There
+      was no pain in their eyes and no knowledge of the agony of their
+      body. There was only joy in them, and pride, a pride holier than
+      is fit for human pride to be. And it seemed as if these eyes were
+      trying to tell us something through the flames, to send into our
+      eyes some word without sound. And it seemed as if these eyes were
+      begging us to gather that word and not to let it go from us and
+      from the earth. But the flames rose and we could not guess the
+      word....
+
+      What—even if we have to burn for it like the Saint of the
+      Pyre—what is the Unspeakable Word?
+
+
+
+      PART THREE
+
+      We, Equality 7-2521, have discovered a new power of nature. And
+      we have discovered it alone, and we alone are to know it.
+
+      It is said. Now let us be lashed for it, if we must. The Council
+      of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and
+      therefore the things which are not known by all do not exist. But
+      we think that the Council of Scholars is blind. The secrets of
+      this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who
+      will seek them. We know, for we have found a secret unknown to
+      all our brothers.
+
+      We know not what this power is nor whence it comes. But we know
+      its nature, we have watched it and worked with it. We saw it
+      first two years ago. One night, we were cutting open the body of
+      a dead frog when we saw its leg jerking. It was dead, yet it
+      moved. Some power unknown to men was making it move. We could not
+      understand it. Then, after many tests, we found the answer. The
+      frog had been hanging on a wire of copper; and it had been the
+      metal of our knife which had sent the strange power to the copper
+      through the brine of the frog’s body. We put a piece of copper
+      and a piece of zinc into a jar of brine, we touched a wire to
+      them, and there, under our fingers, was a miracle which had never
+      occurred before, a new miracle and a new power.
+
+      This discovery haunted us. We followed it in preference to all
+      our studies. We worked with it, we tested it in more ways than we
+      can describe, and each step was as another miracle unveiling
+      before us. We came to know that we had found the greatest power
+      on earth. For it defies all the laws known to men. It makes the
+      needle move and turn on the compass which we stole from the Home
+      of the Scholars; but we had been taught, when still a child, that
+      the loadstone points to the north and that this is a law which
+      nothing can change; yet our new power defies all laws. We found
+      that it causes lightning, and never have men known what causes
+      lightning. In thunderstorms, we raised a tall rod of iron by the
+      side of our hole, and we watched it from below. We have seen the
+      lightning strike it again and again. And now we know that metal
+      draws the power of the sky, and that metal can be made to give it
+      forth.
+
+      We have built strange things with this discovery of ours. We used
+      for it the copper wires which we found here under the ground. We
+      have walked the length of our tunnel, with a candle lighting the
+      way. We could go no farther than half a mile, for earth and rock
+      had fallen at both ends. But we gathered all the things we found
+      and we brought them to our work place. We found strange boxes
+      with bars of metal inside, with many cords and strands and coils
+      of metal. We found wires that led to strange little globes of
+      glass on the walls; they contained threads of metal thinner than
+      a spider’s web.
+
+      These things help us in our work. We do not understand them, but
+      we think that the men of picoCTF{gr3p_15_@w3s0m3_4c479940}
+our
+      power of the sky, and these things had some relation to it. We do
+      not know, but we shall learn. We cannot stop now, even though it
+      frightens us that we are alone in our knowledge.
+
+      No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many Scholars
+      who are elected by all men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do.
+      We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not
+      care. We forget all men, all laws and all things save our metals
+      and our wires. So much is still to be learned! So long a road
+      lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!
+
+
+
+      PART FOUR
+
+      Many days passed before we could speak to the Golden One again.
+      But then came the day when the sky turned white, as if the sun
+      had burst and spread its flame in the air, and the fields lay
+      still without breath, and the dust of the road was white in the
+      glow. So the women of the field were weary, and they tarried over
+      their work, and they were far from the road when we came. But the
+      Golden One stood alone at the hedge, waiting. We stopped and we
+      saw that their eyes, so hard and scornful to the world, were
+      looking at us as if they would obey any word we might speak.
+
+      And we said:
+
+      “We have given you a name in our thoughts, Liberty 5-3000.”
+
+      “What is our name?” they asked.
+
+      “The Golden One.”
+
+      “Nor do we call you Equality 7-2521 when we think of you.”
+
+      “What name have you given us?” They looked straight into our eyes
+      and they held their head high and they answered:
+
+      “The Unconquered.”
+
+      For a long ti we could not speak. Then we said:
+
+      “Such thoughts as these are forbidden, Golden One.”
+
+      “But you think such thoughts as these and you wish us to think
+      them.”
+
+      We looked into their eyes and we could not lie.
+
+      “Yes,” we whispered, and they smiled, and then we said: “Our
+      dearest one, do not obey us.”
+
+      They stepped back, and their eyes were wide and still.
+
+      “Speak these words again,” they whispered.
+
+      “Which words?” we asked. But they did not answer, and we knew it.
+
+      “Our dearest one,” we whispered.
+
+      Never have men said this to women.
+
+      The head of the Golden One bowed slowly, and they stood still
+      before us, their arms at their sides, the palms of their hands
+      turned to us, as if their body were delivered in submission to
+      our eyes. And we could not speak.
+
+      Then they raised their head, and they spoke simply and gently, as
+      if they wished us to forget some anxiety of their own.
+
+      “The day is hot,” they said, “and you have worked for many hours
+      and you must be weary.”
+
+      “No,” we answered.
+
+      “It is cooler in the fields,” they said, “and there is water to
+      drink. Are you thirsty?”
+
+      “Yes,” we answered, “but we cannot cross the hedge.”
+
+      “We shall bring the water to you,” they said.
+
+      Then they knelt by the moat, they gathered water in their two
+      hands, they rose and they held the water out to our lips.
+
+      We do not know if we drank that water. We only knew suddenly that
+      their hands were empty, but we were still holding our lips to
+      their hands, and that they knew it, but did not move.
+
+      We raised our head and stepped back. For we did not understand
+      what had made us do this, and we were afraid to understand it.
+
+      And the Golden One stepped back, and stood looking upon their
+      hands in wonder. Then the Golden One moved away, even though no
+      others were coming, and they moved, stepping back, as if they
+      could not turn from us, their arms bent before them, as if they
+      could not lower their hands.
+
+
+
+      PART FIVE
+
+      We made it. We created it. We brought it forth from the night of
+      the ages. We alone. Our hands. Our mind. Ours alone and only.
+
+      We know not what we are saying. Our head is reeling. We look upon
+      the light which we have made. We shall be forgiven for anything
+      we say tonight....
+
+      Tonight, after more days and trials than we can count, we
+      finished building a strange thing, from the remains of the
+      Unmentionable Times, a box of glass, devised to give forth the
+      power of the sky of greater strength than we had ever achieved
+      before. And when we put our wires to this box, when we closed the
+      current—the wire glowed! It came to life, it turned red, and a
+      circle of light lay on the stone before us.
+
+      We stood, and we held our head in our hands. We could not
+      conceive of that which we had created. We had touched no flint,
+      made no fire. Yet here was light, light that came from nowhere,
+      light from the heart of metal.
+
+      We blew out the candle. Darkness swallowed us. There was nothing
+      left around us, nothing save night and a thin thread of flame in
+      it, as a crack in the wall of a prison. We stretched our hands to
+      the wire, and we saw our fingers in the red glow. We could not
+      see our body nor feel it, and in that moment nothing existed save
+      our two hands over a wire glowing in a black abyss.
+
+      Then we thought of the meaning of that which lay before us. We
+      can light our tunnel, and the City, and all the Cities of the
+      world with nothing save metal and wires. We can give our brothers
+      a new light, cleaner and brighter than any they have ever known.
+      The power of the sky can be made to do men’s bidding. There are
+      no limits to its secrets and its might, and it can be made to
+      grant us anything if we but choose to ask.
+
+      Then we knew what we must do. Our discovery is too great for us
+      to waste our time in sweeping the streets. We must not keep our
+      secret to ourselves, nor buried under the ground. We must bring
+      it into the sight of all men. We need all our time, we need the
+      work rooms of the Home of the Scholars, we want the help of our
+      brother Scholars and their wisdom joined to ours. There is so
+      much work ahead for all of us, for all the Scholars of the world.
+
+      In a month, the World Council of Scholars is to meet in our City.
+      It is a great Council, to which the wisest of all lands are
+      elected, and it meets once a year in the different Cities of the
+      earth. We shall go to this Council and we shall lay before them,
+      as our gift, this glass box with the power of the sky. We shall
+      confess everything to them. They will see, understand and
+      forgive. For our gift is greater than our transgression. They
+      will explain it to the Council of Vocations, and we shall be
+      assigned to the Home of the Scholars. This has never been done
+      before, but neither has a gift such as ours ever been offered to
+      men.
+
+      We must wait. We must guard our tunnel as we had never guarded it
+      before. For should any men save the Scholars learn of our secret,
+      they would not understand it, nor would they believe us. They
+      would see nothing, save our crime of working alone, and they
+      would destroy us and our light. We care not about our body, but
+      our light is...
+
+      Yes, we do care. For the first time do we care about our body.
+      For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us,
+      glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or
+      of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these
+      two?
+
+      We stretch out our arms. For the first time do we know how strong
+      our arms are. And a strange thought comes to us: we wonder, for
+      the first time in our life, what we look like. Men never see
+      their own faces and never ask their brothers about it, for it is
+      evil to have concern for their own faces or bodies. But tonight,
+      for a reason we cannot fathom, we wish it were possible to us to
+      know the likeness of our own person.
+
+
+
+      PART SIX
+
+      We have not written for thirty days. For thirty days we have not
+      been here, in our tunnel. We had been caught. It happened on that
+      night when we wrote last. We forgot, that night, to watch the
+      sand in the glass which tells us when three hours have passed and
+      it is time to return to the City Theatre. When we remembered it,
+      the sand had run out.
+
+      We hastened to the Theatre. But the big tent stood grey and
+      silent against the sky. The streets of the City lay before us,
+      dark and empty. If we went back to hide in our tunnel, we would
+      be found and our light found with us. So we walked to the Home of
+      the Street Sweepers.
+
+      When the Council of the Home questioned us, we looked upon the
+      faces of the Council, but there was no curiosity in those faces,
+      and no anger, and no mercy. So when the oldest of them asked us:
+      “Where have you been?” we thought of our glass box and of our
+      light, and we forgot all else. And we answered:
+
+      “We will not tell you.”
+
+      The oldest did not question us further. They turned to the two
+      youngest, and said, and their voice was bored:
+
+      “Take our brother Equality 7-2521 to the Palace of Corrective
+    Detention. Lash them until they tell.”
+
+      So we were taken to the Stone Room under the Palace of Corrective
+      Detention. This room has no windows and it is empty save for an
+      iron post. Two men stood by the post, naked but for leather
+      aprons and leather hoods over their faces. Those who had brought
+      us departed, leaving us to the two Judges who stood in a corner
+      of the room. The Judges were small, thin men, grey and bent. They
+      gave the signal to the two strong hooded ones.
+
+      They tore the clothes from our body, they threw us down upon our
+      knees and they tied our hands to the iron post. The first blow of
+      the lash felt as if our spine had been cut in two. The second
+      blow stopped the first, and for a second we felt nothing, then
+      the pain struck us in our throat and fire ran in our lungs
+      without air. But we did not cry out.
+
+      The lash whistled like a singing wind. We tried to count the
+      blows, but we lost count. We knew that the blows were falling
+      upon our back. Only we felt nothing upon our back any longer. A
+      flaming grill kept dancing before our eyes, and we thought of
+      nothing save that grill, a grill, a grill of red squares, and
+      then we knew that we were looking at the squares of the iron
+      grill in the door, and there were also the squares of stone on
+      the walls, and the squares which the lash was cutting upon our
+      back, crossing and re-crossing itself in our flesh.
+
+      Then we saw a fist before us. It knocked our chin up, and we saw
+      the red froth of our mouth on the withered fingers, and the Judge
+      asked:
+
+      “Where have you been?”
+
+      But we jerked our head away, hid our face upon our tied hands,
+      and bit our lips.
+
+      The lash whistled again. We wondered who was sprinkling burning
+      coal dust upon the floor, for we saw drops of red twinkling on
+      the stones around us.
+
+      Then we knew nothing, save two voices snarling steadily, one
+      after the other, even though we knew they were speaking many
+      minutes apart:
+
+      “Where have you been where have you been where have you been
+      where have you been?...”
+
+      And our lips moved, but the sound trickled back into our throat,
+      and the sound was only:
+
+      “The light... The light... The light....”
+
+      Then we knew nothing.
+
+      We opened our eyes, lying on our stomach on the brick floor of a
+      cell. We looked upon two hands lying far before us on the bricks,
+      and we moved them, and we knew that they were our hands. But we
+      could not move our body. Then we smiled, for we thought of the
+      light and that we had not betrayed it.
+
+      We lay in our cell for many days. The door opened twice each day,
+      once for the men who brought us bread and water, and once for the
+      Judges. Many Judges came to our cell, first the humblest and then
+      the most honored Judges of the City. They stood before us in
+      their white togas, and they asked:
+
+      “Are you ready to speak?”
+
+      But we shook our head, lying before them on the floor. And they
+      departed.
+
+      We counted each day and each night as it passed. Then, tonight,
+      we knew that we must escape. For tomorrow the World Council of
+      Scholars is to meet in our City.
+
+      It was easy to escape from the Palace of Corrective Detention.
+      The locks are old on the doors and there are no guards about.
+      There is no reason to have guards, for men have never defied the
+      Councils so far as to escape from whatever place they were
+      ordered to be. Our body is healthy and strength returns to it
+      speedily. We lunged against the door and it gave way. We stole
+      through the dark passages, and through the dark streets, and down
+      into our tunnel.
+
+      We lit the candle and we saw that our place had not been found
+      and nothing had been touched. And our glass box stood before us
+      on the cold oven, as we had left it. What matter they now, the
+      scars upon our back!
+
+      Tomorrow, in the full light of day, we shall take our box, and
+      leave our tunnel open, and walk through the streets to the Home
+      of the Scholars. We shall put before them the greatest gift ever
+      offered to men. We shall tell them the truth. We shall hand to
+      them, as our confession, these pages we have written. We shall
+      join our hands to theirs, and we shall work together, with the
+      power of the sky, for the glory of mankind. Our blessing upon
+      you, our brothers! Tomorrow, you will take us back into your fold
+      and we shall be an outcast no longer. Tomorrow we shall be one of
+      you again. Tomorrow...
+
+
+
+      PART SEVEN
+
+      It is dark here in the forest. The leaves rustle over our head,
+      black against the last gold of the sky. The moss is soft and
+      warm. We shall sleep on this moss for many nights, till the
+      beasts of the forest come to tear our body. We have no bed now,
+      save the moss, and no future, save the beasts.
+
+      We are old now, yet we were young this morning, when we carried
+      our glass box through the streets of the City to the Home of the
+      Scholars. No men stopped us, for there were none about from the
+      Palace of Corrective Detention, and the others knew nothing. No
+      men stopped us at the gate. We walked through empty passages and
+      into the great hall where the World Council of Scholars sat in
+      solemn meeting.
+
+      We saw nothing as we entered, save the sky in the great windows,
+      blue and glowing. Then we saw the Scholars who sat around a long
+      table; they were as shapeless clouds huddled at the rise of the
+      great sky. There were men whose famous names we knew, and others
+      from distant lands whose names we had not heard. We saw a great
+      painting on the wall over their heads, of the twenty illustrious
+      men who had invented the candle.
+
+      All the heads of the Council turned to us as we entered. These
+      great and wise of the earth did not know what to think of us, and
+      they looked upon us with wonder and curiosity, as if we were a
+      miracle. It is true that our tunic was torn and stained with
+      brown stains which had been blood. We raised our right arm and we
+      said:
+
+      “Our greeting to you, our honored brothers of the World Council
+      of Scholars!”
+
+      Then Collective 0-0009, the oldest and wisest of the Council,
+      spoke and asked:
+
+      “Who are you, our brother? For you do not look like a Scholar.”
+
+      “Our name is Equality 7-2521,” we answered, “and we are a Street
+      Sweeper of this City.”
+
+      Then it was as if a great wind had stricken the hall, for all the
+      Scholars spoke at once, and they were angry and frightened.
+
+      “A Street Sweeper! A Street Sweeper walking in upon the World
+      Council of Scholars! It is not to be believed! It is against all
+      the rules and all the laws!”
+
+      But we knew how to stop them.
+
+      “Our brothers!” we said. “We matter not, nor our transgression.
+      It is only our brother men who matter. Give no thought to us, for
+      we are nothing, but listen to our words, for we bring you a gift
+      such as had never been brought to men. Listen to us, for we hold
+      the future of mankind in our hands.”
+
+      Then they listened.
+
+      We placed our glass box upon the table before them. We spoke of
+      it, and of our long quest, and of our tunnel, and of our escape
+      from the Palace of Corrective Detention. Not a hand moved inhat
+      hall, as we spoke, nor an eye. Then we put the wires to the box,
+      and they all bent forward and sat still, watching. And we stood
+      still, our eyes upon the wire. And slowly, slowly as a flush of
+      blood, a red flame trembled in the wire. Then the wire glowed.
+
+      But terror struck the men of the Council. They leapt to their
+      feet, they ran from the table, and they stood pressed against the
+      wall, huddled together, seeking the warmth of one another’s
+      bodies to give them courage.
+
+      We looked upon them and we laughed and said:
+
+      “Fear nothing, our brothers. There is a great power in these
+      wires, but this power is tamed. It is yours. We give it to you.”
+
+      Still they would not move.
+
+      “We give you the power of the sky!” we cried. “We give you the
+      key to the earth! Take it, and let us be one of you, the humblest
+      among you. Let us all work together, and harness this power, and
+      make it ease the toil of men. Let us throw away our candles and
+      our torches. Let us flood our cities with light. Let us bring a
+      new light to men!”
+
+      But they looked upon us, and suddenly we were afraid. For their
+      eyes were still, and small, and evil.
+
+      “Our brothers!” we cried. “Have you nothing to say to us?”
+
+      Then Collective 0-0009 moved forward. They moved to the table and
+      the others followed.
+
+      “Yes,” spoke Collective 0-0009, “we have much to say to you.”
+
+      The sound of their voices brought silence to the hall and to beat
+      of our heart.
+
+      “Yes,” said Collective 0-0009, “we have much to say to a wretch
+      who have broken all the laws and who boast of their infamy!
+
+      “How dared you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the
+      minds of your brothers? And if the Councils had decreed that you
+      should be a Street Sweeper, how dared you think that you could be
+      of greater use to men than in sweeping the streets?”
+
+      “How dared you, gutter cleaner,” spoke Fraternity 9-3452, “to
+      hold yourself as one alone and with the thoughts of the one and
+      not of the many?”
+
+      “You shall be burned at the stake,” said Democracy 4-6998.
+
+      “No, they shall be lashed,” said Unanimity 7-3304, “till there is
+      nothing left under the lashes.”
+
+      “No,” said Collective 0-0009, “we cannot decide upon this, our
+      brothers. No such crime has ever been committed, and it is not
+      for us to judge. Nor for any small Council. We shall deliver this
+      creature to the World Council itself and let their will be done.”
+
+      We looked upon them and we pleaded:
+
+      “Our brothers! You are right. Let the will of the Council be done
+      upon our body. We do not care. But the light? What will you do
+      with the light?”
+
+      Collective 0-0009 looked upon us, and they smiled.
+
+      “So you think that you have found a new power,” said Collective
+      0-0009. “Do all your brothers think that?”
+
+      “No,” we answered.
+
+      “What is not thought by all men cannot be true,” said Collective
+      0-0009.
+
+      “You have worked on this alone?” asked International 1-5537.
+
+      “Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas
+      in the past,” said Solidarity 8-1164, “but when the majority of
+      their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their
+      ideas, as all men must.”
+
+      “This box is useless,” said Alliance 6-7349.
+
+      “Should it be what they claim of it,” said Harmony 9-2642, “then
+      it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The Candle is a
+      great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it
+      cannot be destroyed by the whim of one.”
+
+      “This would wreck the Plans of the World Council,” said Unanimity
+      2-9913, “and without the Plans of the World Council the sun
+      cannot rise. It took fifty years to secure the approval of all
+      the Councils for the Candle, and to dece upon the number
+      needed, and to re-fit the Plans so as to make candles instead of
+      torches. This touched upon thousands and thousands of men working
+      in scores of States. We cannot alter the Plans again so soon.”
+
+      “And if this should lighten the toil of men,” said Similarity
+      5-0306, “then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist
+      save in toiling for other men.”
+
+      Then Collective 0-0009 rose and pointed at our box.
+
+      “This thing,” they said, “must be destroyed.”
+
+      And all the others cried as one:
+
+      “It must be destroyed!”
+
+      Then we leapt to the table.
+
+      We seized our box, we shoved them aside, and we ran to the
+      window. We turned and we looked at them for the last time, and a
+      rage, such as it is not fit for humans to know, choked our voice
+      in our throat.
+
+      “You fools!” we cried. “You fools! You thrice-damned fools!”
+
+      We swung our fist through the windowpane, and we leapt out in a
+      ringing rain of glass.
+
+      We fell, but we never let the box fall from our hands. Then we
+      ran. We ran blindly, and men and houses streaked past us in a
+      torrent without shape. And the road seemed not to be flat before
+      us, but as if it were leaping up to meet us, and we waited for
+      the earth to rise and strike us in the face. But we ran. We knew
+      not where we were going. We knew only that we must run, run to
+      the end of the world, to the end of our days.
+
+      Then we knew suddenly that we were lying on a soft earth and that
+      we had stopped. Trees taller than we had ever seen before stood
+      over us in great silence. Then we knew. We were in the Uncharted
+      Forest. We had not thought of coming here, but our legs had
+      carried our wisdom, and our legs had brought us to the Uncharted
+      Forest against our will.
+
+      Our glass box lay beside us. We crawled to it, we fell upon it,
+      our face in our arms, and we lay still.
+
+      We lay thus for a long time. Then we rose, we took our box and
+      walked on into the forest.
+
+      It mattered not where we went. We knew that men would not follow
+      us, for they never enter the Uncharted Forest. We had nothing to
+      fear from them. The forest disposes of its own victims. This gave
+      us no fear either. Only we wished to be away, away from the City
+      and from the air that touches upon the air of the City. So we
+      walked on, our box in our arms, our heart empty.
+
+      We are doomed. Whatever days are left to us, we shall spend them
+      alone. And we have heard of the corruption to be found in
+      solitude. We have torn ourselves from the truth which is our
+      brother men, and there is no road back for us, and no redemption.
+
+      We know these things, but we do not care. We care for nothing on
+      earth. We are tired.
+
+      Only the glass box in our arms is like a living heart that gives
+      us strength. We have lied to ourselves. We have not built this
+      box for the good of our brothers. We built it for its own sake.
+      It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their
+      truth. Why wonder about this? We have not many days to live. We
+      are walking to the fangs awaiting us somewhere among the great,
+      silent trees. There is not a thing behind us to regret.
+
+      Then a blow of pain struck us, our first and our only. We thought
+      of the Golden One. We thought of the Golden One whom we shall
+      never see again. Then the pain passed. It is best. We are one of
+      the Damned. It is best if the Golden One forget our name and the
+      body which bore that name.
+
+
+
+      PART EIGHT
+
+      It has been a day of wonder, this, our first day in the forest.
+
+      We awoke when a ray of sunlight fell across our face. We wanted
+      to leap to our feet, as we have had to leap every morning of our
+      life, but we remembered suddenly that no bell had rung and that
+      there was no bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our back, we threw
+      our arms ou and we looked up at the sky. The leaves had edges
+      of silver that trembled and rippled like a river of green and
+      fire flowing high above us.
+
+      We did not wish to move. We thought suddenly that we could lie
+      thus as long as we wished, and we laughed aloud at the thought.
+      We could also rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again. We were
+      thinking that these were thoughts without sense, but before we
+      knew it our body had risen in one leap. Our arms stretched out of
+      their own will, and our body whirled and whirled, till it raised
+      a wind to rustle through the leaves of the bushes. Then our hands
+      seized a branch and swung us high into a tree, with no aim save
+      the wonder of learning the strength of our body. The branch
+      snapped under us and we fell upon the moss that was soft as a
+      cushion. Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on
+      the moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face. And
+      we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing
+      as if there were no power left in us save laughter.
+
+      Then we took our glass box, and we went on into the forest. We
+      went on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were
+      swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising
+      and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays
+      high to the treetops. The trees parted before us, calling us
+      forward. The forest seemed to welcome us. We went on, without
+      thought, without care, with nothing to feel save the song of our
+      body.
+
+      We stopped when we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree
+      branches, and flying from under our footsteps. We picked a stone
+      and we sent it as an arrow at a bird. It fell before us. We made
+      a fire, we cooked the bird, and we ate it, and no meal had ever
+      tasted better to us. And we thought suddenly that there was a
+      great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and
+      obtain by our own hand. And we wished to be hungry again and
+      soon, that we might know again this strange new pride in eating.
+
+      Then we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak
+      of glass among the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water
+      but only a cut in the earth, in which the trees grew down,
+      upturned, and the sky lay at the bottom. We knelt by the stream
+      and we bent down to drink. And then we stopped. For, upon the
+      blue of the sky below us, we saw our own face for the first time.
+
+      We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body
+      were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers,
+      for we felt not pity when looking upon it. Our body was not like
+      the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin
+      and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this
+      being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing
+      to fear with this being.
+
+      We walked on till the sun had set. When the shadows gathered
+      among the trees, we stopped in a hollow between the roots, where
+      we shall sleep tonight. And suddenly, for the first time this
+      day, we remembered that we are the Damned. We remembered it, and
+      we laughed.
+
+      We are writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic
+      together with the written pages we had brought for the World
+      Council of Scholars, but never given to them. We have much to
+      speak of to ourselves, and we hope we shall find the words for it
+      in the days to come. Now, we cannot speak, for we cannot
+      understand.
+
+
+
+      PART NINE
+
+      We have not written for many days. We did not wish to speak. For
+      we needed no words to remember that which has happened to us.
+
+      It was on our second day in the forest that we heard steps behind
+      us. We hid in the bushes, and we waited. The steps came closer.
+      And then we saw the fold of a white tunic among the trees, and a
+      gleam of gold.
+
+      We leapt forward, we ran to them, and we stood looking upon the
+      Golden One.
+
+      They saw us, and their hands closed into fists, and the fists
+      pulled their arms down, as if they wished their arms to hold
+      them, while their body swayed. And they could not speak.
+
+      We dared not come too close to them. We asked, and our voice
+      trembled:
+
+      “How did you come to be here, Golden One?”
+
+      But they whispered only:
+
+      “We have found you....”
+
+      “How did you come to be in the forest?” we asked.
+
+      They raised their head, and there was a great pride in their
+      voice; they answered:
+
+      “We have followed you.”
+
+      Then we could not speak, and they said:
+
+      “We heard that you had gone to the Uncharted Forest, for the
+      whole City is speaking of it. So on the night of the day when we
+      heard it, we ran away from the Home of the Peasants. We found the
+      marks of your feet across the plain where no men walk. So we
+      followed them, and we went into the forest, and we followed the
+      path where the branches were broken by your body.”
+
+      Their white tunic was torn, and the branches had cut the skin of
+      their arms, but they spoke as if they had never taken notice of
+      it, nor of weariness, nor of fear.
+
+      “We have followed you,” they said, “and we shall follow you
+      wherever you go. If danger threatens you, we shall face it also.
+      If it be death, we shall die with you. You are damned, and we
+      wish to share your damnation.”
+
+      They looked upon us, and their voice was low, but there was
+      bitterness and triumph in their voice.
+
+      “Your eyes are as a flame, but our brothers have neither hope nor
+      fire. Your mouth is cut of granite, but our brothers are soft and
+      humble. Your head is high, but our brothers cringe. You walk, but
+      our brothers crawl. We wish to be damned with you, rather than
+      blessed with all our brothers. Do as you please with us, but do
+      not send us away from you.”
+
+      Then they knelt, and bowed their golden head before us.
+
+      We had never thought of that which we did. We bent to raise the
+      Golden One to their feet, but when we touched them, it was as if
+      madness had stricken us. We seized their body and we pressed our
+      lips to theirs. The Golden One breathed once, and their breath
+      was a moan, and then their arms closed around us.
+
+      We stood together for a long time. And we were frightened that we
+      had lived for twenty-one years and had never known what joy is
+      possible to men.
+
+      Then we said:
+
+      “Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger
+      in solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their
+      good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are
+      together and that there is joy as a bond between us. Give us your
+      hand. Look ahead. It is our own world, Golden One, a strange,
+      unknown world, but our own.”
+
+      Then we walked on into the forest, their hand in ours.
+
+      And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms
+      is neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the
+      race of men.
+
+      We have walked for many days. The forest has no end, and we seek
+      no end. But each day added to the chain of days between us and
+      the City is like an added blessing.
+
+      We have made a bow and many arrows. We can kill more birds than
+      we need for our food; we find water and fruit it
+      night, we choose a clearing, and we build a ring of fires around
+      it. We sleep in the midst of that ring, and the beasts dare not
+      attack us. We can see their eyes, green and yellow as coals,
+      watching us from the tree branches beyond. The fires smoulder as
+      a crown of jewels around us, and smoke stands still in the air,
+      in columns made blue by the moonlight. We sleep together in the
+      midst of the ring, the arms of the Golden One around us, their
+      head upon our breast.
+
+      Some day, we shall stop and build a house, when we shall have
+      gone far enough. But we do not have to hasten. The days before us
+      are without end, like the forest.
+
+      We cannot understand this new life which we have found, yet it
+      seems so clear and so simple. When questions come to puzzle us,
+      we walk faster, then turn and forget all things as we watch the
+      Golden One following. The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms,
+      as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the
+      sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their
+      shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from
+      above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which
+      has fallen upon their shoulder, and it lies at the curve of their
+      neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel. They
+      approach us, and they stop, laughing, knowing what we think, and
+      they wait obediently, without questions, till it pleases us to
+      turn and go on.
+
+      We go on and we bless the earth under our feet. But questions
+      come to us again, as we walk in silence. If that which we have
+      found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for
+      save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, then
+      what is good and what is evil?
+
+      Everything which comes from the many is good. Everything which
+      comes from one is evil. This have we been taught with our first
+      breath. We have broken the law, but we have never doubted it. Yet
+      now, as we walk through the forest, we are learning to doubt.
+
+      There is no life for men, save in useful toil for the good of all
+      their brothers. But we lived not, when we toiled for our
+      brothers, we were only weary. There is no joy for men, save the
+      joy shared with all their brothers. But the only things which
+      taught us joy were the power we created in our wires, and the
+      Golden One. And both these joys belong to us alone, they come
+      from us alone, they bear no relation to all our brothers, and
+      they do not concern our brothers in any way. Thus do we wonder.
+
+      There is some error, one frightful error, in the thinking of men.
+      What is that error? We do not know, but the knowledge struggles
+      within us, struggles to be born. Today, the Golden One stopped
+      suddenly and said:
+
+      “We love you.”
+
+      But they frowned and shook their head and looked at us
+      helplessly.
+
+      “No,” they whispered, “that is not what we wished to say.”
+
+      They were silent, then they spoke slowly, and their words were
+      halting, like the words of a child learning to speak for the
+      first time:
+
+      “We are one... alone... and only... and we love you who are
+      one... alone... and only.”
+
+      We looked into each other’s eyes and we knew that the breath of a
+      miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly.
+
+      And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
+
+
+
+    We are sitting at a table and we are writing this upon paper made
+      thousands of years ago. The light is dim, and we cannot see the
+      Golden One, only one lock of gold on the pillow of an ancient
+      bed. This is our home.
+
+      We came upon it today, at sunrise. For many days we had been
+      crossing a chain of mountains. The forest rose among cliffs, and
+      whenever we walked out upon a barren stretch of rock we saw great
+      peaks before us in the west, and to the north of us, and to the
+      south, as far as our eyes could see. The peaks were red and
+      brown, with the green streaks of forests as veins upon them, with
+      blue mists as veils over their heads. We had never heard of these
+      mountains, nor seen them marked on any map. The Uncharted Forest
+      has protected them from the Cities and from the men of the
+      Cities.
+
+      We climbed paths where the wild goat dared not follow. Stones
+      rolled from under our feet, and we heard them striking the rocks
+      below, farther and farther down, and the mountains rang with each
+      stroke, and long after the strokes had died. But we went on, for
+      we knew that no men would ever follow our track nor reach us
+      here.
+
+      Then today, at sunrise, we saw a white flame among the trees,
+      high on a sheer peak before us. We thought that it was a fire and
+      stopped. But the flame was unmoving, yet blinding as liquid
+      metal. So we climbed toward it through the rocks. And there,
+      before us, on a broad summit, with the mountains rising behind
+      it, stood a house such as we had never seen, and the white fire
+      came from the sun on the glass of its windows.
+
+      The house had two stories and a strange roof flat as a floor.
+      There was more window than wall upon its walls, and the windows
+      went on straight around the corners, though how this kept the
+      house standing we could not guess. The walls were hard and
+      smooth, of that stone unlike stone which we had seen in our
+      tunnel.
+
+      We both knew it without words: this house was left from the
+      Unmentionable Times. The trees had protected it from time and
+      weather, and from men who have less pity than time and weather.
+      We turned to the Golden One and we asked:
+
+      “Are you afraid?”
+
+      But they shook their head. So we walked to the door, and we threw
+      it open, and we stepped together into the house of the
+      Unmentionable Times.
+
+      We shall need the days and the years ahead, to look, to learn,
+      and to understand the things of this house. Today, we could only
+      look and try to believe the sight of our eyes. We pulled the
+      heavy curtains from the windows and we saw that the rooms were
+      small, and we thought that not more than twelve men could have
+      lived here. We thought it strange that men had been permitted to
+      build a house for only twelve.
+
+      Never had we seen rooms so full of light. The sunrays danced upon
+      colors, colors, more colors than we thought possible, we who had
+      seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey.
+      There were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not
+      glass, for when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all
+      the things behind us, as on the face of a lake. There were
+      strange things which we had never seen and the use of which we do
+      not know. And there were globes of glass everywhere, in each
+      room, the globes with the metal cobwebs inside, such as we had
+      seen in our tunnel.
+
+      We found the sleeping hall and we stood in awe upon its
+      threshold. For it was a small room and there were only two beds
+      in it. We found no other beds in the house, and then we knew that
+      only two had lived here, and this passes understanding. What kind
+      of world did they have, the men of the Unmentionable Times?
+
+      We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of
+      them. For they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were
+      of all colors, no two of them alike. Some crumbled to dust as we
+      touched them. But others were of heavier cloth, and they felt
+      soft and new in our fingers.
+
+      We found a room with walls made of shelves, which held rows of
+      manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling. Never had we seen
+      such a number of them, nor of such strange shape. They were not
+      soft and rolled, they had hard shells of cloth and leather; and
+      the letters on their pages were so small and so even that we
+      wondered at the men who had such handwriting. We glanced through
+      the pages, and we saw that they were written in our language, but
+      we found many words which we could not understand. Tomorrow, we
+      shall begin to read these scripts.
+
+      When we had seen all the rooms of the house, we looked at the
+      Golden One and we both knew the thought in our minds.
+
+      “We shall never leave this house,” we said, “nor let it be taken
+      from us. This is our home and the end of our journey. This is
+      your house, Golden One, and ours, and it belongs to no other men
+      whatever as far as the earth may stretch. We shall not share it
+      with others, as we share not our joy with them, nor our love, nor
+      our hunger. So be it to the end of our days.”
+
+      “Your will be done,” they said.
+
+      Then we went out to gather wood for the great hearth of our home.
+      We brought water from the stream which runs among the trees under
+      our windows. We killed a mountain goat, and we brought its flesh
+      to be cooked in a strange copper pot we found in a place of
+      wonders, which must have been the cooking room of the house.
+
+      We did this work alone, for no words of ours could take the
+      Golden One away from the big glass which is not glass. They stood
+      before it and they looked and looked upon their own body.
+
+      When the sun sank beyond the mountains, the Golden One fell
+      asleep on the floor, amidst jewels, and bottles of crystal, and
+      flowers of silk. We lifted the Golden One in our arms and we
+      carried them to a bed, their head falling softly upon our
+      shoulder. Then we lit a candle, and we brought paper from the
+      room of the manuscripts, and we sat by the window, for we knew
+      that we could not sleep tonight.
+
+      And now we look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked rock
+      and peaks and moonlight is like a world ready to be born, a world
+      that waits. It seems to us it asks a sign from us, a spark, a
+      first commandment. We cannot know what word we are to give, nor
+      what great deed this earth expects to witness. We know it waits.
+      It seems to say it has great gifts to lay before us, but it
+      wishes a greater gift for us. We are to speak. We are to give its
+      goal, its highest meaning to all this glowing space of rock and
+      sky.
+
+      We look ahead, we beg our heart for guidance in answering this
+      call no voice has spoken, yet we have heard. We look upon our
+      hands. We see the dust of centuries, the dust which hid the great
+      secrets and perhaps great evils. And yet it stirs no fear within
+      our heart, but only silent reverence and pity.
+
+      May knowledge come to us! What is the secret our heart has
+      understood and yet will not reveal to us, although it seems to
+      beat as if it were endeavoring to tell it?
+
+
+
+      PART ELEVEN
+
+      I am. I think. I will.
+
+      My hands... My spirit... My sky... My forest... This earth of
+      mine.... What must Iy besides? These are the words. This is
+      the answer.
+
+      I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I
+      spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the
+      quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning.
+      I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for
+      being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant
+      and the sanction.
+
+      It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty
+      to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my
+      ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and
+      the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find
+      the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will
+      is the only edict I must respect.
+
+      Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are
+      false, but only three are holy: “I will it!”
+
+      Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding
+      star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one
+      direction. They point to me.
+
+      I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the
+      universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know
+      not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me
+      on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it.
+      My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is
+      its own goal. It is its own purpose.
+
+      Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish.
+      I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs.
+      I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on
+      their altars.
+
+      I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine
+      to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!
+
+      I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune
+      of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to
+      the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my
+      treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of
+      these is freedom.
+
+      I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I
+      ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no
+      man’s soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.
+
+      I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of
+      them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must
+      do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without
+      reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I
+      honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.
+
+      I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters.
+      And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love
+      and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our
+      hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the
+      temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his
+      temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with
+      others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold.
+
+      For the word “We” must never be spoken, save by one’s choice and
+      as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within
+      man’s soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils
+      on earth, the root of man’s torture by men, and of an unspeakable
+      lie.
+
+      The word “We” is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens
+      to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and
+      that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the
+      word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which
+      the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal
+      the wisdom of the sages.
+
+      What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it?
+      What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is
+      my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent,
+      are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and
+      to obey?
+
+      But I am done with this creed of corruption.
+
+      I am done with the monster of “We,” the word of serfdom, of
+      plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.
+
+      And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the
+      earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being,
+      this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.
+
+      This god, this one word:
+
+      “I.”
+
+
+      PART TWELVE
+
+      It was when I read the first of the books I found in my house
+      that I saw the word “I.” And when I understood this word, the
+      book fell from my hands, and I wept, I who had never known tears.
+      I wept in deliverance and in pity for all mankind.
+
+      I understood the blessed thing which I had called my curse. I
+      understood why the best in me had been my sins and my
+      transgressions; and why I had never felt guilt in my sins. I
+      understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the
+      spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.
+
+      I read many books for many days. Then I called the Golden One,
+      and I told her what I had read and what I had learned. She looked
+      at me and the first words she spoke were:
+
+      “I love you.”
+
+      Then I said:
+
+      “My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names.
+      There was a time when each man had a name of his own to
+      distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names. I
+      have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of
+      all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He
+      took the light of the gods and he brought it to men, and he
+      taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all
+      bearers of light must suffer. His name was Prometheus.”
+
+      “It shall be your name,” said the Golden One.
+
+      “And I have read of a goddess,” I said, “who was the mother of
+      the earth and of all the gods. Her name was Gaea. Let this be
+      your name, my Golden One, for you are to be the mother of a new
+      kind of gods.”
+
+      “It shall be my name,” said the Golden One.
+
+      Now I look ahead. My future is clear before me. The Saint of the
+      pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the
+      heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him
+      and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter
+      what name they gave to their cause and their truth.
+
+      I shall live here, in my own house. I shall take my food from the
+      earth by the toil of my own hands. I shall learn many secrets
+      from my books. Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild the
+      achievements of the past, and open the way to carry them further,
+      the achievements which are open to me, but closed forever to my
+      brothers, for their minds are shackled to the weakest and dullest
+      ones among them.
+
+      I have learned that my power of the sky was known to men long
+      ago; they called it Electricity. It was the power that moved
+      their greatest inventions. It lit this house with light which
+      came from those globes of glass on the walls. I have found the
+      engine which produced this light. I shall learn how to repair it
+      and how to make it work again. I shall learn how to use the wires
+      which carry this power. Then I shall build a barrier of wires
+      around my home, and across the paths which leato my home; a
+      barrier light as a cobweb, more impassable than a wall of
+      granite; a barrier my brothers will never be able to cross. For
+      they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their
+      numbers. I have my mind.
+
+      Then here, on this mountaintop, with the world below me and
+      nothing above me but the sun, I shall live my own truth. Gaea is
+      pregnant with my child. Our son will be raised as a man. He will
+      be taught to say “I” and to bear the pride of it. He will be
+      taught to walk straight and on his own feet. He will be taught
+      reverence for his own spirit.
+
+      When I shall have read all the books and learned my new way, when
+      my home will be ready and my earth tilled, I shall steal one day,
+      for the last time, into the cursed City of my birth. I shall call
+      to me my friend who has no name save International 4-8818, and
+      all those like him, Fraternity 2-5503, who cries without reason,
+      and Solidarity 9-6347 who calls for help in the night, and a few
+      others. I shall call to me all the men and the women whose spirit
+      has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of
+      their brothers. They will follow me and I shall lead them to my
+      fortress. And here, in this uncharted wilderness, I and they, my
+      chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the first chapter
+      in the new history of man.
+
+      These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door
+      of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the
+      history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I
+      wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was
+      the spirit of man’s freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from
+      what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him,
+      save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.
+      That is freedom. That and nothing else.
+
+      At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their
+      chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their
+      chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race.
+      But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a
+      man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take
+      away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right
+      of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he
+      stood on the threshold of the freedom for which the blood of the
+      centuries behind him had been spilled.
+
+      But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower than his
+      savage beginning.
+
+      What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away
+      from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and
+      submission? The worship of the word “We.”
+
+      When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries
+      collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come
+      from the thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages,
+      from the depth of some one spirit, such spirit as existed but for
+      its own sake. Those men who survived those eager to obey, eager
+      to live for one another, since they had nothing else to vindicate
+      them—those men could neither carry on, nor preserve what they had
+      received. Thus did all thought, all science, all wisdom perish on
+      earth. Thus did men—men with nothing to offer save their great
+      number—lost the steel towers, the flying ships, the power wires,
+      all the things they had not created and could never keep.
+      Perhaps, later, some men had been born with the mind and the
+      courage to recover these things which were lost; perhaps these
+      men came before the Councils of Scholars. They were answered as I
+      have been answered—and for the same reasons.
+
+      But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years
+      of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were
+      going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, toheir fate. I
+      wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the
+      word “I” could give it up and not know what they lost. But such
+      has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned,
+      and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them.
+
+      Perhaps, in those days, there were a few among men, a few of
+      clear sight and clean soul, who refused to surrender that word.
+      What agony must have been theirs before that which they saw
+      coming and could not stop! Perhaps they cried out in protest and
+      in warning. But men paid no heed to their warning. And they,
+      these few, fought a hopeless battle, and they perished with their
+      banners smeared by their own blood. And they chose to perish, for
+      they knew. To them, I send my salute across the centuries, and my
+      pity.
+
+      Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to
+      tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final,
+      and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost
+      can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never
+      perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which
+      men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this
+      earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but
+      it will break through. And man will go on. Man, not men.
+
+      Here on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall
+      build our new land and our fort. And it will become as the heart
+      of the earth, lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating
+      louder each day. And word of it will reach every corner of the
+      earth. And the roads of the world will become as veins which will
+      carry the best of the world’s blood to my threshold. And all my
+      brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but
+      they will be impotent against me. And the day will come when I
+      shall break all the chains of the earth, and raze the cities of
+      the enslaved, and my home will become the capital of a world
+      where each man will be free to exist for his own sake.
+
+      For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my
+      chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his
+      life. For his honor.
+
+      And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone
+      the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which
+      will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can
+      never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the
+      meaning and the glory.
+
+      The sacred word:
+
+      EGO
+
+
+
diff --git a/forensics/lookey_here/solve.sh b/forensics/lookey_here/solve.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..472b63d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/lookey_here/solve.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+grep -o "picoCTF{.*}" anthem.flag.txt
diff --git a/forensics/milkslap/concat_v.png b/forensics/milkslap/concat_v.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af5894c
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/milkslap/concat_v.png differ
diff --git a/forensics/milkslap/solve.sh b/forensics/milkslap/solve.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..1bc429b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/milkslap/solve.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell
+#!nix-shell -i bash -p bash zsteg
+
+export RUBY_THREAD_VM_STACK_SIZE=500000000
+zsteg concat_v.png
diff --git a/forensics/redaction_gone_wrong/Financial_Report_for_ABC_Labs.pdf b/forensics/redaction_gone_wrong/Financial_Report_for_ABC_Labs.pdf
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa87e0
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/redaction_gone_wrong/Financial_Report_for_ABC_Labs.pdf differ
diff --git a/forensics/redaction_gone_wrong/solve.sh b/forensics/redaction_gone_wrong/solve.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..89ab50d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/redaction_gone_wrong/solve.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell
+#!nix-shell -i bash -p bash poppler_utils
+
+pdftotext ./Financial_Report_for_ABC_Labs.pdf - | grep -o "picoCTF{.*}"
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/forensics/shark_on_wire_1/capture.pcap b/forensics/shark_on_wire_1/capture.pcap
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10056c0
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/shark_on_wire_1/capture.pcap differ
diff --git a/forensics/shark_on_wire_1/solution.md b/forensics/shark_on_wire_1/solution.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..65b7093
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/shark_on_wire_1/solution.md
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+Randomly found in udp stream 6 while going through all the data sent back and forth.
+
+```
+70
+69
+63
+6f
+43
+54
+46
+7b
+53
+74
+61
+54
+33
+31
+33
+35
+35
+5f
+36
+33
+36
+66
+36
+65
+36
+65
+7d
+```
+
+cyberchef says
+
+```
+picoCTF{StaT31355_636f6e6e}
+```
diff --git a/forensics/so_meta/pico_img.png b/forensics/so_meta/pico_img.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bce998a
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/so_meta/pico_img.png differ
diff --git a/forensics/so_meta/solve.sh b/forensics/so_meta/solve.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..930d9b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/so_meta/solve.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env nix-shell
+#!nix-shell -i bash -p bash exiftool
+
+exiftool ./pico_img.png | grep -o "picoCTF{.*}"
diff --git a/forensics/wireshark_doo_dooo_do_doo/shark1.pcapng b/forensics/wireshark_doo_dooo_do_doo/shark1.pcapng
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88d7de5
Binary files /dev/null and b/forensics/wireshark_doo_dooo_do_doo/shark1.pcapng differ
diff --git a/forensics/wireshark_doo_dooo_do_doo/solution.md b/forensics/wireshark_doo_dooo_do_doo/solution.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a46b052
--- /dev/null
+++ b/forensics/wireshark_doo_dooo_do_doo/solution.md
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+Found in tcp stream 5, packet 827 (the first unencrypted stream)
+
+`Gur synt vf cvpbPGS{c33xno00_1_f33_h_qrnqorrs}`
+
+Seems flaglike, maybe rot13 to protect against text search?
+
+**Output from cyberchef:**
+
+`The flag is picoCTF{p33kab00_1_s33_u_deadbeef}`
