Never Say Never

Never Say Never

Tap, Tap, Tap - Nevermore

(The scene is a quiet, ageless study filled with books that have no titles. Dust motes dance in a single beam of light. Sophia sits behind a large oak desk, her hands folded. Georg stares out a window at a swirling grey mist.)

Sophia: It begins again, Georg. The same chapter, with different names. The ink is barely dry on the last account, and already they rush to repeat it.

Georg: (Without turning) And why should we expect otherwise? I have offered them the grandest of libraries—the complete, unabridged chronicle of their own folly. And what is the one lesson they draw from it? That there are no lessons to be drawn. They see history not as a guide, but as a tomb of irrelevant stories.

Sophia: I offer them principles. Patterns. The simple truths learned through fire and blood. I knock gently, hoping they will hear. A persistent, quiet tapping on the door of their consciousness.

What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

Georg: And they are too busy shouting to hear it. They build their empires on the same cracked foundations, sing anthems of exceptionalism while marching down the same well-trodden path to ruin. Experience is a lantern they carry on their backs, illuminating only the road they have already passed.

(A shadow seems to detach itself from a dark corner of the room, coalescing into the form of Edgar. He clutches a raven-black cloak around himself.)

Edgar: A tapping, you say? I am familiar with such a sound. A visitor, pleading for entry. A ghost of what could be, or a memory of what has been lost.

Sophia: (Inclines her head) Edgar. You are welcome here. We were just speaking of the messages that go unheard.

Edgar: (A bitter smile touches his lips) It is not that they are unheard. They are heard, and they are understood. That is the true terror of it. To hear that knock, to know what it signifies, and to answer it with a single, final word of refusal. To extinguish the flicker of hope with the certainty of despair.

Georg: Despair is a luxury. I speak of a predictable, mechanical failure of reason. It is the arrogance of the present moment, the belief that this time—this one time—the outcome will be different.

Quoth the raven, "Nevermore!"
— Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Edgar: But it is the same, is it not? Whether it is a nation blinding itself to the coming war or a man torturing himself with memories of a love he can never reclaim. The source of the pain is the same: the knowledge of a door that is now locked forever. You hear the tapping, you ask the desperate question, "Will I see peace? Will she return? Will we learn?" And from the darkness, the echo of your own soul gives the reply.

Sophia: So that is my purpose. To stand outside the door and tap, knowing the answer I will receive. My voice is the gentle reasoning, the offered hand.

Georg: My work is to document the countless times the door has remained shut, and why. A clinical, tragic report on the deafness of man.

Edgar: And I… I am the one who sits inside the chamber, listening. I am the one who hears your knock, Sophia, and feels the final, crushing weight of the raven’s pronouncement from the bust above the door. The sound is not just a refusal. It is an epitaph. It is the sound of hope taking its last breath. Never again. Never again. Nevermore.

(Silence settles in the room. In the far distance, a faint sound can be heard. Tap. Tap. Tap. And then, nothing.)

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