Papa raised it for us on a screen. There sat Cato Weeksbooth on his paper throne, at work on some device. His hands trembled, rolling the paper with precise but frantic speed, leaning low in the dim lights of emergency power. Suddenly he flinched, eyes flicking up to the door, as some sound from outside warned that enemies were about to pierce his sanctum. After a few seconds, he returned to his work, assembling… I think it was a blowpipe designed to shoot capsules of complexly folded paper. Another warning sound, keep working, keep working, his fingers flying with the steady desperation of a diver repairing her broken air tank, who hears the submarine crunching around her, and cannot know how many seconds she has left. Then, in an instant, light too pure and sudden to be fire ruptured the empty air, as if some rift in space had birthed suns out of nothing. A cluster of suns ringed Cato, and after some seconds the bodies showed themselves. I saw a coat of chrome and steel, a coat of ice, a coat of farmland, coats that made the walls of paper into dragonscales, into hydroponic rows, into the rib cage of some robot colossus, and two coats that showed seawater and the black shards of ghostly Ráðsviðr schooling in different patterns. Delians. He ran into their arms. Tears of fear and desperation turned to joy. They embraced him, soothed his shoulders with kind hands and his mind with words, though Papa’s techs had not restored sound yet. Some plans and gestures were exchanged, and four Delians set to gathering papers and creations, carefully selected from among the mass. The others faced Cato solemnly, and one produced his boots, still active, their Griffincloth showing the bones and muscles of the hands which held them. A second offered Cato a knife, and a third a data tablet, sleek and gold-plated like the entrails of a satellite. Tears of joy gave way to tears of something stronger. Trembling Cato took the knife and slashed the boots with a fierce intentionality, as when a man signs the contract he knows will forever guide his life. I did not need sound to know what words he spoke when he placed his hand upon the golden tablet through which all accumulated human knowledge raced as fast as thought:

“I hereby renounce the right to complacency, and vow lifelong to take only what minimum of leisure is necessary to my productivity, viewing health, happiness, rest, and play as means, not ends, and that, while Utopia provides my needs, I will commit the full produce of my labors to our collective effort to redirect the path of human life away from death and toward the stars.”

They threw the coat about his shoulders, and were gone.

We were silent. What could we have said, witnesses to something so hasty, so illegal, and so right.

“What’s CMSIJSS?”