EPHEMERA

From a speech by a masked Burner leader, given in the territory of America, 1789. Held strictly in the Black Archives.

You hesitate now to lift your hands and weapons against your oppressors? We have the eyes of nations upon us, all eager to see us break these chains and rise, stand firm, be free of this dire and smothering control that has, year by year, been laid upon us.

We have been told that paper in a binding, ink on a page, is worth more than the life of any man, woman, or child. We have been pressed into the service of this false idol we call Knowledge for far too long; we have forgotten how to be free of it, how to think for ourselves and believe we, in ourselves, are worth the breath we take, the land we walk.

I say it openly and plainly: the Library is a cruel and evil oppressor. For long have we pretended it is not so.

It is time, it is time, it is long past time to rise and take knowledge in our own hands, rather than have it dripped out in cautious doses by an institution long ago rendered moot and lame, cowering behind a wall of power.

We will prevail.

Rise! Though we die, though our stories are lost and never placed on the shelves of the Great Library, though we lose our lives and our very nation, we will never give up one great truth: a life is worth more than a book.

So be it, whatever may come.