King Kur gave him the tour himself. It was a demonstration of power far more effective than any display of military might. The granaries were mathematical marvels, their ventilation and storage protocols eliminating spoilage with ruthless efficiency. The water system, a network of locked, glazed ceramic pipes and settling tanks, delivered clean water to every citizen with a reliability that was nothing short of miraculous for the age.
But Enki, with the eyes of the Witness, saw the cost etched between the perfect lines.
He saw a man beaten bloody by guards for dumping waste in the wrong channel, his crime a disruption of the sanitary code. He saw the naked terror in a potter's eyes when Kur himself pointed out a slight, almost imperceptible asymmetry in a batch of jars, condemning the entire lot to be smashed for their imperfection.
Then, a sound. A small, off-key melody. A young girl, no more than five, was hopping between sun-baked tiles, singing a simple, made-up rhyme to herself. "The little bird, the little stone, the little mouse all alone..."
A guard was on her in three swift strides. "Un-approved acoustic emissions are a violation of civic harmony," he stated, his voice flat. He scuffed his boot across a small, smiling face she had drawn in the dust. The song died in her throat. Her face went blank, all light extinguished.
Kur did not even look at the child. His gaze was on Enki. "Unstructured noise disrupts the cognitive focus required for the great work," he said. "We cultivate silence, so the disciplined mind may hear the true music: the music of order."
Enki said nothing. The sterility of the place chilled him to the bone. This was the path. This rigid, controlled order was the very soul of the world he had fled.
"You see the efficiency," Kur said, noting his silence. "The beauty of pure function. The end of suffering through control."
"I see a machine," Enki replied, his voice low, carrying the weight of his millennia of memory. "You have built a magnificent cage and called it a paradise. You have given them full bellies and sterile souls. You are building the world we fled, Kur. The Great Sterility does not begin with a cataclysm. It begins with the death of a single, un-approved song."