She left the city for the Rockies and buried herself in them for ten days, with little else except her music, her diary and a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, one of those books that called to her from a bookstore shelf a couple of days earlier. She rented a little cabin in Jasper, lit a fire, opened a bottle of Merlot and then finally exhaled. Solitude; she made all her best decisions this way - solitude and the serenity of the mountains,the silence, my God! There was an incredible and utter silence that was broken only by the soughing of the wind in the pines outside her window. Peace. For the first time in many months, she felt peace. She opened the book and began to read.
John Galt, the figure from the novel that called to her, and who predicted the demise of technical society, the crumbling and the dying of a world, who became an iconoclast, an outsider, warning people, warning the robber barons of industry, one that he had been himself, warning all of them that it was too late. The world was breaking down, technology couldn't save them now, and the material world had proved to be such a false god. It had betrayed them in a spectacular Faustian manner, but most people were still too blind to see and so they hurried and rushed, harried, anxious and afraid, straight into the depths of hell. Atlas tried to hold the weight of their sins; tried to keep them aloft for as long as he, a god, could do so, but in the end he crumbled too - the weight of malice, envy, greed were too much for even a god to handle. So he let go and shrugged off his burden - the burden of those who refused to see.
Jenna was shaken by the book. She wasn't sure if it was the solitude, the silence or the wind moaning through the mountains, but the echo of the book captivated her and drove its message deep into her heart. She couldn't shake it, not on the long road back out of the mountains, and not as she entered the city's gates. The words haunted her and swirled through her mind and heart with a knowing touch and with a whisper that told her that what she had just read was true.
John Galt, the figure from the novel that called to her, and who predicted the demise of technical society, the crumbling and the dying of a world, who became an iconoclast, an outsider, warning people, warning the robber barons of industry, one that he had been himself, warning all of them that it was too late. The world was breaking down, technology couldn't save them now, and the material world had proved to be such a false god. It had betrayed them in a spectacular Faustian manner, but most people were still too blind to see and so they hurried and rushed, harried, anxious and afraid, straight into the depths of hell. Atlas tried to hold the weight of their sins; tried to keep them aloft for as long as he, a god, could do so, but in the end he crumbled too - the weight of malice, envy, greed were too much for even a god to handle. So he let go and shrugged off his burden - the burden of those who refused to see.
Jenna was shaken by the book. She wasn't sure if it was the solitude, the silence or the wind moaning through the mountains, but the echo of the book captivated her and drove its message deep into her heart. She couldn't shake it, not on the long road back out of the mountains, and not as she entered the city's gates. The words haunted her and swirled through her mind and heart with a knowing touch and with a whisper that told her that what she had just read was true.