ty 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 are required to 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