Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,221

Rather than reach for another thunderbolt, he pointed at Egdod. “Long has this one held undeserved sway over the Land. He has shaped it according to his stunted and ill-formed recollections of the world from which we all sprang. I have just come from it with clearer memories than any other soul, and I say to you that it is not a world to which we should long to return, or that ought in any way to serve as the pattern of what we build to dwell in hereafter. To make such a world anew is to assume the burdens and the limitations of the old. Behold Egdod with his broken wing. Behold Thingor with his crippled leg and the Palace with its shattered roof. Why should any such evils be admitted here? And yet that is the world Egdod has made, first out of ignorance and next out of pride. He has obliged all other souls to obey him and to accept the limits he would impose upon what can be thought and done, and the manner in which souls may converse. He has punished with destruction those who dared imagine other states of affairs. I hereby banish Egdod and his Pantheon and all those loyal to him. I send them away to a place where they can suffer the pains and endure the confinements they themselves have chosen!”

A burst of light, of infinite brilliance, blinded Egdod for a moment. He felt his form wrapped in crushing force against which struggle was useless and sensed that he was being borne up off the rubble-strewn floor of the Palace. When he could see again he found himself gazing directly into the face of El, who had reached down with one hand and picked Egdod up as if he were of no more substance than a fallen leaf. The radiance of El’s face had not diminished, but Egdod’s faculty of vision had accustomed itself to its power and was no longer overwhelmed; he could now see things that he had not seen before: not only the details of El’s face, and other things near to hand, but indeed things that had been hidden from Egdod’s notice for the entire time that he had been dwelling in the Land.

He had long known that the bright light of the sun, shining down in the middle of the day, revealed small features and flaws in his creation that during the night were hidden from view. When he made it his practice to inspect the Land, or the fabric of the Palace, and ponder how they might be improved, he did so when the sun was at its zenith, showing him things that by the fainter light of the stars and the moon would escape his notice. He had always sensed, without knowing why, that the alternation of these two kinds of light was as it should be. The softer illumination of the nighttime brought relief from seeing and knowing so much, and made it so that even the most industrious souls could find a few hours’ relief from the intensity of their perceptions and the burdens thereof.

The brightness of midday had always seemed sufficient to Egdod. Never had it occurred to him, during all the years he had spent in the Land, that there was any need to place a second, or a third, sun in the sky to illuminate the world with greater intensity; no detail, or so he had assumed, was escaping his attention in the light of the single sun that he had put in the heavens. Now, though, in the grip of El, he was exposed to such a light as might have shone from a hundred suns at once. And just as the light of the one sun gave him the power of seeing and knowing things that were hidden in moonlight, the light of a hundred revealed to him many things that had lain hidden in the deep shadows of his mind from when he had first become conscious after his death.

He knew that he was Dodge and that Egdod had been a figment of Dodge’s fancy. He knew that he had come from Iowa, where there had been a town with a stone tower in its park like the one that Egdod had made here. He knew that he had lived in Seattle, where there were trees with red leaves in autumn, and apples, and friends and members of his family. He knew that Pluto was one