Equality 7-2521 saw the word “I” in the first book he read in his house. As soon as he understood the word, the book fell from his hands and he wept, for the first time in his life, out of pity and the potential for deliverance for all men.

Now he understands that what he thought were his sins and his curse are actually his blessings. Now he knows why he never felt guilt for his transgressions and why centuries of bondage cannot kill the spirit or the truth.

Equality 7-2521 reads for many days before he explains what he has learned to the Golden One. He tells her it is not proper for men not to have names. The name he has chosen for himself is Prometheus, the god who brought the light of the gods to men and taught them to be gods. He suffered for this act, as all bearers of the light must suffer. Prometheus names the Golden One for the mother of the earth and all gods: he names her Gaea.

Prometheus will live here and toil to earn his living from the earth. He will learn secrets from reading his books and rebuild the achievements of the past. Although his brothers cannot do this because their minds are “shackled to the weakest and dullest ones among them,” he can.

He learns that his power from the sky is called electricity, and it powered man’s greatest creations; he has found the source of power for this house and will make it work again. Then Prometheus will use wires to build an electrical barrier around his house and erect a wall of granite that none of his brothers will be able to cross. He will make a fortress.

Gaea is pregnant, and their son will be raised as a man who will learn to say “I” proudly, to walk straight and tall, and to revere his own spirit. After Prometheus reads all the books and prepares his home, he will steal into the cursed City where he was born and call to the few who were his friends and to those whose spirits have not been crushed. They will follow him to his fortress and together they will “write the first chapter in the new history of man.”

The books reveal the long history of the spirit of man and his freedom. To be free, one must be free of his brothers. That, nothing else, is freedom. Man was first enslaved by the gods and then by kings, but he eventually broke those chains. Man was enslaved by birth, by family, and by race, but he broke free of those chains as well. Man proclaimed the rights that no other man can take from him, the primary right for which centuries of blood have been spilled. Then man gave up his freedom and became lower than a savage. The thing that caused this tragic fall into submission was “the worship of the word ‘We.’”

Once man accepted the worship of “we,” the structure of civilization crumbled. Those who still had the spirit could not maintain it, and all thought, wisdom, and science perished. Man lost everything but numbers; it lost things like steel towers, flying machines, and electricity.

Prometheus still wonders how it was possible, in the “graceless years of transition,” that man did not foresee his fate. He wonders how those who knew the word “I” could give it up without knowing what they lost. Yet it happened, and Prometheus has lived the results in the city of the damned. Perhaps some spoke in protest or warning, but no one would listen. Perhaps a few carried the banner for freedom but perished in a terrible battle.

Now Prometheus will carry that battered and bloody banner. He will tell his brothers that the despair of their hearts does not have to be final and that they do not have to live without hope. The battle can never be lost because even through centuries of darkness, “the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth.” Although it now sleeps, it will waken. Although it now wears chains, it will break through to freedom. Man, not men, will survive.

Prometheus will live here with his sons and his brothers, and they will build a new land and a new fort. It will become the heart of the earth, beating steadily and growing stronger, until it is heard across the entire earth. Through all the darkness and every shame of which man is capable, the spirit of man will thrive. The Councils will hear it, but they will be powerless to stop it. One day, the home Prometheus builds will be the capital of a world inhabited by free men.

Until then, Prometheus will fight for the freedom of Man—for his rights, his life, and his honor. Above the portal of his fort, he shall place his banner. It is a word that can never die because it is the heart, the meaning, and the glory of the battle. The one sacred word is EGO.