What we have, when they have beaten us, when they have torn our skin away, gouged out our eyes, burned our minds in their infernal machines, taken from us all they can without taking that last—and that is what remains. When they take that last bit, they release us, don’t they? I think they do. They might tear everything else away, maybe even—will science go so far?—in the last, no, not the last, in the penultimate step, they might somehow trap our very souls into crystal tubes or diodes or something, trap us in an unreality of their own horrid invention; still, it is up to us, it is what they want, to either give ourselves away or not.
I am shattered. They have crushed me, ground me down to dust, but I am. My being, my existence, they will not have. In the end, in the last, they will fade, for they are nothing without all those which they have claimed, which have succumbed and given themselves away. I fight a dragon, but it is an ouroboros. Its ring tightens round my neck, but the more it tightens, the less it is. I may die, but I will be dead; when it dies, its end will be nothing.
Tale Told 