A parable of something that has happened
Many years ago a great city was built beside a river. Factories sprang forth, quickly growing from small buildings to the very backbone that kept the city wealthy and known. That power billowed over time, almost without limit, making it so the city itself lived in shadows of the factories that sat upon the river.
The people enjoyed free access to all that the factories produced. They need only show up, ask, and it would be given. They rarely questioned how the factories worked or what their goals were, but because their lives were so content, their days filled with food and drink, wine, sun, love and pleasantries, they had little reason to complain. Many even worked at the great factories; their loyalty was the strongest of all.
A growing few within the city felt a measure of unrest. They heard rumors that the factories had machines hidden deep within the sub floors. The purpose of these machines was unknown, but they were monstrous and powerful, and they hummed at night as if singing a song of success to themselves. These creations churned and ripped from the soil, air and sand, selling to neighboring cities and building hidden streams of wealth beyond imagination. They took from the river and from the city, these people said, far in excess of what they gave back, and both the citizens and the city would suffer.
Unrest in these people grew so great that a few stepped forward with new ideas. One among them was a builder, and he said he could create a factory that did none of the evil things the others did. His creation would produce what the people wanted, only what they wanted, and exactly what they wanted. Instead of gathering for free, they would directly exchange for these goods, and in paying the people would purchase a guarantee that no ill machines ran below the grounds of his factory.
The builder set about to creating, and before long his work was ready. He did not announce the factory's completion with fanfare, only quiet mumbling, but it was enough to get the right people to stand by and support him. Emboldened by this, he continued to build, saying We will not do what those others have done. We are Better and we are Right, and you are with us and we are with you. And the people believed him, for it seemed he was genuine and true.
But the builder was only the benefactor they sought in word, not in soul. He had a single idea that flowed with theirs, yet the rest of him was a heart forged beside the builders of the other factories. He quickly grew bitter in action and fiery of tongue. He wanted to build more, but the people were uninterested in his new inventions. They said his first factory was good, that it needed only improvements and it would stay strong and serve for generations. But he could not listen, for he was set upon building new, only new. He brought in more inventors who he tasked to create, release, create. New fruits poured from the factory doors, most of which were freely given. The people took these things with a shrug, realizing that the promises made to them were beginning to slip. They did not ask for these new things. What was the builder up to, and how far had he gone?
The people told the builder their fears, yet he was not swayed. He had a talent, you see. No matter the idea he had, it was always Right and Correct. People would say to him, this will not work, or you should repair what you have built, but with a flash of brilliance and a distraction made of straw and cloth, he would remember his Correctness and the other voices would disappear. Those that remained could forever be ignored, or educated to see his Correctness through.
He set a new vision to himself, his factory, and all of his workers. They would build a new Thing of the Future, unlike what any had ever seen before. It would shine with glittering brightness, fed by golden strands draped through the skies to the morning sun, powered by all the waters of the river. It would change how the people went about their days, taking them from their miserable lives into new lands others had rarely dared to dream. The builder did not tell the people of this, however. He chose to create in silence.
-*-
And so the factory churned on, slowly growing on the outskirts of the town, fed by occasional bursts of excitement when something new slipped through the doors, or when one of the rival factories stumbled and opened glimpses into the evils their no-longer-hidden machines were working on. It became ever clearer that the factories were indeed bent upon nefarious tasks. The builder always promised his factory was different, but the people grew uneasy when no proof of this was ever offered.
Beneath the factory's floors, the builder did have hidden machines, and they were sputtering unwatched and unseen, built with abandon and never maintained. Great wheels turned with a wobble, set right only by gears that happened to wobble the other way, all bound by belts and pulleys that swayed with every shifting of dust and debris. No one watched these machines, not the builder and none of his workers. So, as a garden once planted but abandoned to the sun and rain, weeds began to overtake the scene, and all that was good started a slow wither.
On a cool autumn morning, as the sun warmed the cobble streets and fogs turned to vapor, a machine deep within the factory started turning its wheels more quickly than before. One of the freely-offered things it had built was found by new people, and it was beloved. Countless citizens swarmed for their piece, and they took of it freely, as it was offered as such. A fever ran about the city, while the factory workers celebrated and the people cheered. It seemed a good day for the builder and his Wonderful Creations.
Soon, this one machine fed by cloth and coal became too noisy to ignore. The workers realized it was consuming more fuel than the rest of the factory, and if it were not ceased, the factory would lose power and shut down. Everyone roused from their stations and ran about trying to find exactly which cog, which flywheel was causing this. At last they found the culprit, then shut down the entire machine as a precaution. The people could no longer take what it made for free. There was angry shouting in the streets, and the goodwill the factory had earned turned to bile. It would go on, though, the builder knew. But perhaps he could no longer be the one to see it through.
Exhausted by the commotion, and drained by his pursuits building the New Thing, the builder realized he must step away from his beloved factory, if only by a single step, so it could build what would change the world. He did so without announcement, naming a successor from the ranks of his spawn on the same day. The new one was not a builder, but like the builder, a monster. He had a great skull that shined in the light, with puckered cheeks and a scowl that looked as if he gnawed upon sour candies, and his eyes were of curdled milk. As he marched about the factory rafters and walks, turning those formless eyes to the workers, he would clang into railings and stumble at steps. No one had the courage to tell him he could not see. And if they did, he could not hear, for his ears were so knotted and gnarled with flesh that not the noises of the machines nor the voices of the workers or citizens could reach him.
But the monster did not need to see or hear, for he carried with him a book of drawings he could feel by hand, most of which he had made himself, the rest of which came from the builder. These drawings told of all that was and would be, a complete world of knowing gripped tightly in his yellowing claws. He bade workers to write into these drawings their thoughts and plans, and he would judge those writings as worthless, for they were not his, and none were as clean, pristine, straight and defined as his. This was to be the way forward for all workers.
-*-
And so the blind, deaf, and noisy monster ordered the others about, directing them to build the future of all that the citizens would be taught to desire. But this new order was more than the workers could grip. They had endured the moods of the builder for years. Listened to his shouting, accepted his proclamations as inevitable and required. They stayed for the prestige they felt for working at this factory, the one that served the people. But as the monster took over and the builder pointed and gestured from afar, and as the hidden machines below loomed in their minds, the workers realized they had been broken many years before, that the hum of the ignored machines was growing loud, that the weeds were strangling the only flowers that could have grown from those gears, and none of this could continue as they once believed it could.
Many of the workers took their tools and left. Some were leaders of their peers, maintainers of machines and shepherds of materials. Some, like the ones who sang praises for the factory and the builder, departed as groups such that their spaces of the factory were entirely vacated. The monster did not flinch. He did not understand their function owing to his blindness and deafness, yet he knew they performed no vital duties because his drawings said so. He would find new workers with thin resolves, those who would follow without question. They, too, would break over time, but because the people of the city loved the factory so much, there would always be new hands to recruit to maintain the factory of illusions.
Many workers left, but their actions could only save their own hearts and minds. They could not pull down the cloth coverings that hid the machines from outside watchers, they could not unfog the windows so the city could see what coughed and spat behind the walls. The builder and the monster would hunt them if they did these things, and they were already so tired, so empty. And still, if they did tell the people of the city that these machines were clanking in the basement of the factory, they would not believe them. After all, the builder had promised against this many times over. The workers knew that when confronted with this truth, the builder would simply reinstate his Correctness and keep silent any dissenters, and the monster would gnash and drool at his side. So, the workers did nothing and the factory rumbled on, its cracks and crudeness hidden even as they spread by cover of shadow.
Nothing hidden remains so forever, and the seeds of the factory's demise were planted during its creation. They have been fed by ignorance over the years, bolstered by the fragile egos of the builders and the monsters. When the single machine signaled the flaw, it was covered and cleared and forgotten. But there are more machines there, larger and deadlier and still more neglected than the one. The people of the city do not know what lies and catastrophes await when these machines are discovered, or their functioning overtaken by glorious vines growing in the dark. They do not know that every act of apparent good was an evil disguised by coddling words spoken by fools. And it is likely they will never know.
But if just one eye sees through the grime-colored windows, spies the machines running unwatched, sees the great nests of roaches and thorns within, and if they can bring a clear vision of this to those in the city, perhaps the last to be taken by the builder's lies and the monster's shouts has already been born. The trail has been set, it simply requires the right citizen to follow it, to scatter the screeching nest of rats, letting them carry away key parts of the machines so they churn no more. And then the city's horizon can take back the skyline it is owed.