All humanity lives at the bottom of a seven-story building shaped like a seven-stroked lightning bolt. This crooked building is made of unbreakable walls, and is without egress except at the top. Most of humanity occupies the bottom floor. Here the light is dim, because the only light at this lowest level is reflected, diminishing with each level, from eight mirrors. The top mirror on the roof catches the light from a sun that never sets. This light is strongly reflected through a blurred pane of glass, to the seventh floor. Another mirror on the seventh floor catches this light, and reflects it downward through another glass pane into the sixth floor, but this light is dimmer than the light hitting the roof. A similar mirror on the sixth floor reflects the light downward to the fifth floor, but this light, on reaching the fifth floor, is dimmer than the light on the sixth floor. And so it goes, level by level, to the bottom floor, where the light is very dim indeed.
Most people on this first, lowest floor deny there is any better light. They shuffle about and make do, and contrive comforting mythologies. They live and die on the lowest level and their bodies sink into the floor, vanishing into it, becoming part of it A few people on the first floor actively look for a way upward, and then find one. They cannot interest most of the others, who have fallen into a kind of trance, in that way upward. It’s rather hard to get through it and they deny it goes anywhere.
This small group on the bottom floor, who have found the entrance, climb with difficulty to the second floor. Here there is a little more light, and it helps them to look actively about, and after a long time, working together, they find the way up to the third floor. But the way upward from here is difficult, so some remain behind.
And so it goes, with fewer and fewer making their way upward, until at last two climbers reach the seventh floor. Here there seems no way to the top. But the light here is brighter than any they’ve known before, and this light encourages them, and nourishes them, and they wait.
When they die, they find they’ve risen to the roof, where they are bathed in the light of the sun that never sets, and are able to ascend from there, effortlessly levitating, in awe at what they see on this final journey to the solar level.
