I closed my eyes, sat down on the steps which lead upwards to the Machine. I must have been running for my face was wet. From somewhere very far away cries were coming. But nobody heard them; nobody heard me crying: “Save me from it⁠—save me!”

If only I had a mother as the ancients had⁠—my mother, mine , for whom I should be not the Builder of the Integral and not D-530 , not a molecule of the United State but merely a living human piece, a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast-off piece.⁠ ⁠… And though I were driving the nails into the cross or being nailed to it (perhaps it is the same), she would hear what no one else could hear; her old grown-together wrinkled lips.⁠ ⁠…