Page 122 - SurprisingTruthFinal

The Surprising Truth About Lying
Henry sank onto the concrete, his shoulders
shaking, realizing the final, crushing weight of his
arrogance. He had been so focused on proving the
moral necessity of truth, that he had never factored in
the biological necessity of illusion. Humanity was the
only species that could conceive of a lie, and that lie
was the only thing that gave it the courage to keep
breathing.
He looked up at the sky, which was a roiling,
chaotic mess of purple and violent orange, the
poisoned aftermath of the kinetic strikes and the failed
Project Helios. The air was heavy, the silence broken
only by the crackle of distant, uncontrolled fires.
And then, he saw it.
It wasn't a reflection. It wasn't a blast artifact. It was
an impossible light, burning with a cold, clear intensity
that cut through the apocalyptic haze.
High above the contamination, where the
atmosphere met the vacuum of space, a structure was
forming. It was immense, a vast, silent, three-
dimensional geometric pattern. It didn't flash or
explode; it assembled itself, shimmering into existence
with the silent precision of a cosmic equation being
solved.
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