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With a clamor of bells that
set the swallows soaring,
the Festival of Summer
came to the city Omelas,
bright-towered by the sea.
The air of morning was so clear that
the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks
burned with white-gold fire
across the miles of sunlit air,
under the dark blue of the sky.
Omelas sounds in my words like a
city in a fairytale,
long ago and far away, once upon a time.
Do you believe?
Do you accept the festival?
the city?
the joy?
Let me describe one more thing.
There is a room.
In the room, a child is sitting.
The door is always locked, and nobody ever comes.
They all know it is there,
all the people of Omelas.
They all understand that their happiness,
the beauty of their city,
the tenderness of their friendships,
even the abundance of their harvests
and the kindly weathers of their skies
depend wholly
on this child's abominable misery.
To exchange all the goodness and grace
of every life in Omelas
for that single small improvement,
to throw away the happiness of thousands
for the chance
of the happiness of one,
that would be to let guilt
within the walls indeed.
But there is one more thing to tell,
and this
is quite incredible.
At times,
one of the girls or boys who go to see the child
does not go home to weep or rage,
does not, in fact, go home at all.
These people go out into the street,
and walk down the street alone.
They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas.
The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable
to most of us
than the city of happiness.
I cannot describe it at all.
It is possible that it does not exist.
But they seem to know where they are going.