Oxygénia

questions, had doubts, didn't understand why it should be a sin not
to drink in their off time but to be interested in another science,
and who therefore – just like ORO – lived in permanent fear of the
examination checks which could mean their revealation. The worst
part was that they didn't knew who did those examinations and for
what reason. Should God need to use such a method to look into
their souls? And why should it be something godly to spend half of
their lives in a dull, intoxicated state? And why was it necessary to
have the functions of their brains directed? Why, why, why? Doubt
gives birth to doubt, thought to more thoughts; the slowed brain,
having become somewhat dull started to work...
In the cave, also the mothers who had managed to escape before
the separation from the children found shelter.
Some days in advance of the Grand Spring Festival, a panic-like
unrest grabbed hold of the women, as if they had somehow felt that
their children were to be taken from them and they be pushed back
into the realm of forgetting, to the Trunk Bearers. During this time,
ORO and some other doctors supervised the checking
measurements and examinations. ORO tagged some of the files as
"Deceased" and thus helped the mothers and their children to
escape from the hospital.
The registry machines did their job. No one pursued the fled
ones.
"Friends", Sunshine began to speak, "tonight we will be told
about wonders unheard of so far. Here is my mate and husband,
the father of my son, ON 711 314, who has returned from the city of
the Trunk Bearers. And here is a dear friend, Peter MacGulliver,
who has come from a far away world."
ORO jumped to his feet and hugged ON. The others stared silent,
with eyes wide open.
First, ON reported about their escape from the city of the Trunk
Bearers, about the map which he had seen in the forbidden book
and drawn from his memory. He also talked about the Cursed Path
in the pitch black dark night and from the starting point of their
escape at the Grand Spring Festival. He described the city of the
Trunk Bearers and how he had been able to protect his memory
with OROs aid. Then, he introduced Peter MacGulliver, the
inhabitant of a distant world and in possess of the secret of how to
produce oxygen. This would contradict with the doctrine in
Oxygénia, according to which oxygen was only donated by a
singular central source, the mercy of God, and the total amount of
oxygen could neither be decreased nor increased...
86