The Awakening
On the foundry floor below, the transformation was instantaneous and profound.
The laborers dropped their shovels and tongs, clutching their ears as the hypnotic harmonic lock shattered. Men who had not looked another human in the eye for five years blinked in the sudden brilliance of the forge fires, looking at their hands, at their fellow workers, and up toward the glass observatory.
"Where... where am I?" a voice cried out from the crucible pit—a rough, human voice breaking years of enforced silence.
"Tom? Is that you, Tom?" another called out.
The silence that had ruled the mountain for a decade evaporated, replaced by a swelling roar of two hundred human voices reclaiming their souls.
In the observatory, Mercer lay pinned under Eli’s grip, listening to the uprising below. For the first time in his life, the magnate’s eyes were wide with genuine, paralyzing horror.
"No... no... my empire... my machines..." Mercer stammered.
Eli looked down at the architect of his agony. He raised his fist, the knuckles bruised and scarred, but slowly unclenched his fingers.
May you like
He wrote on a scrap of paper from Mercer’s own desk and pressed it against the old man's chest:
You made us machines. But we are walking out as men.
