Off to the left, on the slope of a hill, you see the tense spectators who crowd the Grecian Theater for Euripides. You are standing in the observation gallery of the towering Bach Monument. It is awesome, it is overpowering, it is-everything.Īnd though few of its visitors know about this, or care, it is also haunted. The Center is colossal, spectacular and magnificent. It is a monumental summary of man's cultural heritage, and like a phoenix, it has emerged suddenly, inexplicably, at the end of the twenty-fourth century, from the corroded ashes of an appalling cultural decay. It is square miles of undulating American Middle West farm land, transfigured by ingenious planning and relentless labor and incredible expense.
It is the vacation land of the Solar System. From the babe in arms to the centenarian looking forward to retirement, everyone has been there, and plans to go again next year, and the year after that.
It isn't possible to explain the Center, and it isn't necessary. You can emerge from the rolling mists of the Amazon, or the cutting dry winds of the Sahara, or the lunar vacuum, elbow your way up to a bar, and begin, “When I was at the Center-” and every stranger within hearing will listen attentively. From Bombay to Lima, from Spitsbergen to the mines of Antarctica, from the solitary outpost on Pluto to that on Mercury, it is-the Center. It has another name, a long one, that gets listed in government appropriations and has its derivation analyzed in encyclopedias, but no one uses it.
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