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08 - Anthem - Ayn Rand · Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight. It has been a day of wonder, this
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  Speaker 1: our first day in the forest. We awoke when a
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  Speaker 1: ray of sunlight fell across our face. We wanted to
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  Speaker 1: leap to our feet, as we have had to leap
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  Speaker 1: to our feet every morning of our life. But we
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  Speaker 1: remembered suddenly that no bell had rung, and there was
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  Speaker 1: no bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our back.
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  Speaker 1: We threw our arms out, and we looked up at
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  Speaker 1: the sky. The leaves had edges of silver that trembled
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  Speaker 1: and rippled like a river of green, and fire flowing
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  Speaker 1: high above us. We did not wish to move. We
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  Speaker 1: thought suddenly that we could lie thus as long as
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  Speaker 1: we wished, and we laughed loud at the thought. We
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  Speaker 1: could also rise, or run, or leap or fall down again.
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  Speaker 1: We were thinking that these were things without sense. But
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  Speaker 1: before we knew it, our body had risen in one leap.
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  Speaker 1: Our arms stretched out of their own will, and our
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  Speaker 1: body whirled and whirled till it raised a wind to
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  Speaker 1: rustle through the leaves of the bushes. Then our hands
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  Speaker 1: seized a branch and swung us high into a tree.
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  Speaker 1: With no aim save the wonder of learning the stretch
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  Speaker 1: of our body. The branch snapped under us, and we
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  Speaker 1: fell upon the moss that was soft as a cushion.
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  Speaker 1: Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over
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  Speaker 1: on the moss, dry leaves, and our tunic in our hair,
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  Speaker 1: in our face, and we heard suddenly that we were laughing,
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  Speaker 1: laughing aloud, laughing, as if there were no power left
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  Speaker 1: in us save laughter. Then we took our glass box
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  Speaker 1: and we went into the forest. We went on cutting
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  Speaker 1: through the branches, and it was if we were swimming
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  Speaker 1: through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves,
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  Speaker 1: rising and falling and rising around us, and flinging their
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  Speaker 1: green sprays high on the tree tops. The trees parted
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  Speaker 1: before us, calling us forward. The forest seemed to welcome us.
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  Speaker 1: We went on without thought, without care, with nothing to
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  Speaker 1: feel save the song of our body. We stopped when
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  Speaker 1: we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree branches
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  Speaker 1: and flying from under our footsteps. We picked a stone
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  Speaker 1: and scent it as an arrow at a bird. It
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  Speaker 1: fell before us. We made a fire, We cooked the bird.
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  Speaker 1: We ate it, and no meal had ever tasted better
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  Speaker 1: to us. And we thought suddenly that there was this
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  Speaker 1: great satisfaction to be found in the food which we
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  Speaker 1: need and obtained by our own hand. And we wished
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  Speaker 1: to be hungry again, and soon that we might know
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  Speaker 1: again the strange new eating. Then we walked on, and
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  Speaker 1: we came to a stream which lay as a streak
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  Speaker 1: of glass among the trees. It lay so still that
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  Speaker 1: we saw no water, but only a cut in the
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  Speaker 1: earth in which the trees grew down upturned, and the
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  Speaker 1: sky at the bottom. We knelt by the stream, and
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  Speaker 1: we bent down to drink. Then we stopped, for upon
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  Speaker 1: the blue of the sky below us, we saw our
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  Speaker 1: own face for the first time. We sat still, and
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  Speaker 1: we held our breath, for our face and our body
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  Speaker 1: were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of
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  Speaker 1: our brothers, for we felt no pity when we looked
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  Speaker 1: upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of
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  Speaker 1: our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin, and
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  Speaker 1: hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust
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  Speaker 1: this being who looked upon us from the stream, and
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  Speaker 1: that we had nothing to fear from this being. We
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  Speaker 1: walked on till the sun had set, when the shadows
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  Speaker 1: gathered among the trees, we stopped in a hollow between
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  Speaker 1: the roots, where we shall sleep tonight, and Suddenly, for
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  Speaker 1: the first time this day, we remembered that we are
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  Speaker 1: the damned. We remembered it, and we laughed. We are
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  Speaker 1: writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic,
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  Speaker 1: together with the written pages we had brought for the
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  Speaker 1: World Council of Scholars, but never given to them. We
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  Speaker 1: have much to speak of to ourselves, and we hope
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  Speaker 1: we shall find the words for it in the days
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  Speaker 1: to come. Now we cannot speak, for we cannot understand.
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  Speaker 1: End Chapter eight.