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"...'I will stop the
motor of the world.' Then he walked out. We never saw him again. We never heard what
became of him. But years later, when we saw the lights going out, one after another, in
the great factories that had stood solid like mountains for generations, when we saw the
gates closing and the conveyor belts turning still, when we saw the roads growing empty
and the steam of cars draining off, when it began to look as if some silent power were
stopping the generators of the world and the world was crumbling quietly, like a body when
its spirit is gone -- then we began to wonder and to ask questions about him. We began to
ask it of one another, those of us who had heard him say it. We began to think that he had
kept his word, that he, who had seen and known the truth we refused to know, was the
retribution we had called upon our heads, the avenger, the man of that justice which we
had defied. We began to think that he had damned us and there was no escape from his
verdict and we would never be able to get away from him -- and this was the more terrible
because he was not pursuing us, it was we who were suddenly looking for him and he had
merely gone without a trace. We found no answer about him anywhere. We wondered by what
sort of impossible power he could have done what he had promised to do. There was no
answer to that. We began to think of him whenever we saw another collapse in the world,
which nobody could explain, whenever we took another blow, whenever we lost another hope,
whenever we felt caught in this dead, gray fog that's descending all over the earth.
Perhaps people heard us crying that question and they did not know what we meant, but they
knew too well the feeling that made us cry it. They, too, felt that something had gone
from the world. Perhaps this was why they began to say it, whenever they felt that there
was no hope. I'd like to think that I am wrong, that those words mean nothing, that
there's no conscious intention and no avenger behind the ending of the human race. But
when I hear them repeating that question, I feel afraid. I think of the man who said the
he would stop the motor of the world. You see, his name was John Galt." Return to Ayn Rand. |