And now, as the Chief Elder goes off on her errand, and the Receiver returns to the contemplation of wisdom; as Katharine listens distractedly to her Instruction, and Tomas paces fretfully about the Committee Hall; as Raymond and Charlotte, their souls full of mighty matters, yet Speak in lugubrious tones of quotidian infractions – as all this goes on, let us leave the Community for a time and look back and back and back, to an age when there were no Communities, but everyone did that which seemed right to himself. For it will not always do, if one would understand men and women, to look only at what they know of themselves; sometimes, the things that everyone has forgotten prove to be the things that matter most.

A young woman, only a few years past Twelve, ran along the walkway between a small dwelling and the much larger building where its resident worked. As she turned the corner, the whole air began to reverberate with the noise of a resonant metal being struck; the girl glanced up at the far end of the building, where a curious sort of elevated annex rose starkly from its roof, and bit her lip as she hurried on.

The resident of the dwelling was walking idly back and forth along the walkway near the front door, gazing down meditatively at a small row of cultivated plants. He was tall and lean, with a pale, sharp-featured face and a close-trimmed beard, and was clothed in a dark robe that reached almost to the ground. The people of the neighborhood called him "Father Martin", though in fact he had no assigned children, and, indeed, had never even sought a spouse.

As the girl came up to him, he raised his head and looked at her, and the expression in his dark eyes was at once deeply sorrowful and mysteriously peaceful – as though he had no expectation of good, and yet was sure that any ill would be only fleeting. "Well, Charity?" was all he said.

"It passed," replied the girl, with equal concision.

Father Martin nodded solemnly. "And your father?" he said. "How did he vote?"

"Oh, what does that matter?" Charity said plaintively. "The point is, it passed, and now it's going to happen!"

"It matters, Charity," said Father Martin. "You know that."

Charity met his gaze stubbornly for a moment, and then abruptly lowered her eyes and sighed. "Yeah, I do," she said. "All right, Dad voted Nay. He didn't cave."

"Good," said Father Martin.

"But what are we going to do, Father?" Charity insisted. "You've been saying for months that, if Sameness goes through, it's the end of everything – the desolating abomination, like you said in November. And now it's happened, so what do we do?"

"What we were told to do," said Father Martin, with the faintest hint of a smile. "Flee to the mountains."

"But there aren't going to be any mountains!" said Charity. "That's the whole point!"

"Oh, yes, there are," said Father Martin. "Just because people don't notice a thing, that doesn't mean it's not there." Then, as Charity started to protest, he added, "Look, you know how section 5 of the Act goes, don't you? You ought to; I'm sure it's been quoted in your home a hundred times."

"Sure, I know it," said Charity, and began to recite. "'Except as provided in subsection 19(c), all first-generation Community residents shall receive such psychic modifications as shall render them, and their descendants in perpetuity, free from all cognitive and physical impediments which accidental variations in key environmental factors (including, but not limited to, climate, topography, and surface coloration) might otherwise impose upon them.'"

She trailed off, and let out a frustrated little sob. "Impediments," she repeated. "Those turkeys think it's an impediment to see that grass is green. How can they… how can we have…" Her eyes began to glisten with tears, and she turned her head away to hide them.

Father Martin came up behind her, and put a hand on her shoulder. "It's not all their fault, Charity," he said. "Our world has been very tired for a very long time; after the Green Collapse and the Locust Wars…"

"I know, I know, Father," said Charity thickly. "It's not fair to expect them to care. I get it." She turned, and looked moistly and imploringly up at him. "But why do I have to, then?"

It seemed that Father Martin had no reply to that; after a moment's silence, he withdrew his hand and resumed the topic with which they had begun. "Anyway, you see the point," he said. "The modifications are to be made to us, not to the world. The real world will still be what it always was; the goal of Sameness is just to make us live in another one. And the Executive," he added grimly, "will make sure that we do; the old Hob-Lob days, when people could evade a law by not believing in it, died sixteen years ago when Wayne and Cody met in Millsboro."

A hoarse, rattling groan escaped Charity. "So what do we do, then?" she said. "Just join all our neighbors in their safely cushioned dream world? Forget our duty to the truth?"

A wry smile flashed over Father Martin's face; this last phrase was one that had been uniquely associated with himself over the course of the past year. "No, not our duty," he said. "Just our consolation."

He saw the girl's quizzical look, and elaborated. "Charity, if you lost your vision, couldn't you still cherish the beauty that you were unable to see? If you were locked in a dungeon, couldn't you still love sunshine and clouds and the wind in the trees? That's all that Sameness is: blindness, captivity, the subversion of the senses. And our job – once it's fully accomplished, and we're living in its brave new world – is to see to it that our hearts are elsewhere: that, however much they may have veiled our eyes, our souls still have the capacity to see beyond."

An uneasy expression came into Charity's eyes, as often happens to ordinary people suddenly faced with the summons to heroism. "Well… yeah, I suppose that's true," she said. "But how can I know that mine will? I'm not good at austerity, Father. I don't have the passion for pure truth like you do; I need pictures, and songs, and things to dip my fingers in. If I end up in a world where drabness is all that's real, sooner or later I'm bound to turn drab myself."

"In your own strength, yes," said Father Martin. "But you won't just be relying on your own strength. He who gives you the task will give you also the power to accomplish it."

"Yeah, but…"

Father Martin shook his head. "No buts," he said. "They're a luxury we can't afford now. If you'd been born in some other age, maybe you could have let yourself need visible things and still preserved your soul intact; as things are, you can't – which means you won't need to. Have faith, Charity; offer up your struggles, and don't fret over what may happen in the long run." He grinned. "After all, in the very long run, they can't really take anything away from you."

Charity sighed. "I know," she said, "but it's so hard to remember that when…" Words failed her, and she drooped her head helplessly.

Father Martin gazed at her for a long moment, and then reached out, placed his hands atop her head, and murmured four sentences in a language quite different from that in which he and she had hitherto been speaking. Charity appeared to recognize it, for she smiled and whispered a brief reply, and her pale eyes seemed to shine with new strength as she lifted her head again. "Thanks, Father," she said.

"My pleasure," said Father Martin. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I ought to go and see to certain other things. Preparations, you know."

"Sure," said Charity. "'Bye, Father."

Father Martin smiled softly. "Good-bye, Charity."

And he turned and went into his dwelling, shutting the door behind him.

Charity took her time over the walk back to her own dwelling, stopping every few meters to contemplate the trees that lined the walkway, or the small creatures that chased each other across the paving-stones, or the sky above her. Her eyes lingered over them all, with the wistful intensity of a convict about to be released – for she knew, as well as he might have, that the sight she had of them would not be hers for much longer.

And, indeed, when she arrived at the gates of her dwelling, she was met by two grim-faced Officers of the Executive. "Afternoon, miss," said the taller of them, stepping forward. "I suppose you know what we're here for?"

Charity nodded.

"Right," said the Officer. "Just one thing, then, before we take you along. As you may know, Section 31 of the Universal Equality Act allows for immediate relatives of Assembly Members to select their Community instead of being assigned one. Here's the list, and a pen; if you wouldn't mind just filling in the bubble next to your preference. You can't pick Knoxville – your father's reserved a position there, and of course we can't have prior attachments between Community members – but any of the others…"

Charity stared down at the sheet of typescript she'd been handed, on which some 200 familiar names were listed in precise alphabetical order, and with difficulty smothered the laughter that she felt welling up within her. How magnanimous of the Executive, she thought, to allow her one last choice – albeit a choice between places that it was their whole purpose to make indistinguishable.

And with that thought came another, and she felt a quiet smile curve her lips. Flee to the mountains, you said, Father? she thought. All right, then. I guess I will.

And she made her choice.

Here we may conclude our sojourn into the distant past. If it has been done well, and enriched the story as a whole, it is what I desired; if not, it must be pardoned me. But now let us go forth – and forth, and forth – and return to the Community as evening falls, and a certain young Speaker concludes the business of her day.