Rome, June 22, 1633
The chamber was ornate, a gilded cage. Galileo, old and broken, knelt on the cold marble. Enki stood among the gawking courtiers, his own soul screaming in silent solidarity.
"…I abjure, curse, and detest my errors," Galileo recited, the words ash in his mouth. His crime was not heresy, but data. He had looked through Sebastian's tool and seen the truth of the heavens, a truth that threatened the man-made cosmos of the Church.
As he rose, his eyes, still sharp with the memory of Jupiter's moons, scanned the crowd. They locked with Enki's. In that glance was a universe of shared understanding: You know. You have seen it too.
The system had won. It had forced the truth to its knees. But as Galileo shuffled out, a broken man, he was heard to whisper, a defiant spark in the darkness, "E pur si muove." And yet it moves.
Scrapbook Entry: "They would rather be the lords of a comforting lie than citizens of a terrifying truth. They have forced the universe itself to recant. But the stars do not care for our decrees. The truth moves, indifferent to the cages we build for it."