Everyman’s great appetites were of the heart. He tried to sate his hunger by devouring the philosophies and sciences he loved. He read the poems of the priests and mountain gods, but their verses seemed as rigid as the columns of their temples.

He read the woman’s scroll, but rejected all her rules and altar laws. And now in the upheaval that spread outward from the city’s walls, men everywhere rejoiced that the Singer had returned, and that the Golden Age had come.

Everyman was reading from a scroll called the REASON OF EMPTINESS while he lay on a grassy slope of summer.

“Hello!” called out a voice from somewhere behind him. “What do you read?”

Everyman looked up and then looked back upon his book. He said, “I read of reason.”

“What reason?” queried the approaching youth.

“The reason that teaches Terra made herself when there were civil wars among the stars.”

“And do you think it true?” the stranger asked when finally he reached his side a little out of breath.

“How can I tell? … Come now … let us not begin with our philosophies but with our names … I am Everyman.”

“And I am Sarkon!”

“And tell me, Sarkon, do you believe?”

“Yes,” said the handsome youth. “I believe in all I am and nothing else. I believe in eating when I hunger, loving when I lust and sleeping when I weary of the game.”

“But of the current madness that the Father-Spirit has a living Son who sings?”

Sarkon laughed. “It’s a myth for ignorance to feed upon. You surely do not seek to be unchained?” he asked sarcastically.

“A thousand were, they say, upon the third of Krios, when the Wind blew.”

“And do you think that you should feel guilty just because the Singer died?” asked Sarkon.

“No, of course I don’t. It’s just …”

“What?”

“Well, those unchained seem filled with what I lack somehow.”

“They are,” replied Sarkon. “They all are filled with madness! Be grateful that you lack what they are filled with.”

“Perhaps,” said Everyman, staring vacantly into the distant sky. “Do you believe the Singer came alive again?”

“No—not at all. I know the man who buried him, you see. His grave is in a country field …”

“Then let us go and dig him out and show the unchained men of Terra their great folly and absurdity.”

Sarkon blushed. “I … wh …” He stammered much before he finally spoke. “The grave, I must regret, lies far away. We have not time enough to travel there today,” he finally explained. He quickly changed the subject. “It’s just as well, believe me. Could you, good scientist, believe that Terra was created when the Singer sang in open space and let all matter out of nothingness?”

“No, no. I’ll trust the scholars there. The Singer did not sing to make the trees. Trees gathered up their being from the seas. I know that when we get the gods involved no scientific issues are resolved. But then why do I hunger for more than I am fed from all the scrolls of science?”