It starts with the main character. He is greek, and we know nothing about him. Let’s say that his name is Aeneas. It starts with him just walking about, when suddenly an infant pops out of thin air onto the ground before him. He is startled, but not shocked. Despondently, he picks up the wailing baby and holds it to calm it down. I emphasize, the baby literally popped out of thin air before his eyes. It was not that he hadn’t noticed it before.
He walks back to his village, which is a very sad place. The landscape is flat and barren, the daylight is eternal dark red twilight. I want to liken the houses to a family of mushrooms, they’re all saggy and slightly rotten. He passes the house of the miserable elderly, the house of the silently suffering sickly, and the house of his own kind, the wounded warriors.
He does not stop in the village, but passes through and heads off to an earthen cavern, with an entrance that takes one a couple of meters below the ground. The earthen cavern is completely stacked with wailing infants. There are thousands of them. Their screaming is deafening. He sighs and prays to Zeus for the thousand-and-oneth time, that He shall favour him with a sign of relief and hope in this wicked world. But this time, he is answered. For just as he is about to place the baby with the others, he notices that the boy is bleeding from a tiny wound in his left hand. The wound seems to have become swollen, but when he squeezes it, a small green pearl falls out. The pearl has the shape of a grain of rye. It has a metallic shimmer. He has never seen anything like it, but he finds it very beautiful and mysterious. Aeneas kneels and thanks Zeus for His gift, swearing to protect the special boy child if Zeus has anything more in store for the little one.
Noone in the village knows what to make of the pearl, and they are even more confused about the fact that it came out of the baby’s hand. Two philosophers who come into the town on a walk notice the commotion and get involved in the conversation. Aeneas is invited to come with them to the marble city, so that the wisest ones may see the pearl that came out of a boy child’s hand.
On the way to the marble city they pass by other groups of philosophers. We understand that some are chinese, some are arabs, others are african. They nod politely but distantly to each other. There are other cities in the landscape, that are inhabited by other people. But, as Aeneas remarks to himself, they will never learn to understand each other. No one is able to learn anything at all.
They arrive in the marble city, which is splendid indeed. It is enclosed with seven layers of walls. In the beautiful gardens in the center of the seven walls, Aeneas sits on the sidelines as Socrates, Archimedes, and Erastothenes discuss the nature of the pearl.
However, none of them know a mature version of the scientific method, and even if they did, they would never get close to formulating the true hypothesis. Aristotle and Plato are there too, as well as Epictetus the stoic and Diogenes the cynic. There is a lot of wild guessing and contradiction. Some, like Socrates, correctly maintain that no-one in the company has enough knowledge and reason to figure out the secret. At this point, they are interrupted by the strangest thing that any one of them has ever seen.
A single, very long carriage is coming towards the city of marble in a cloud of red dust. The carriage itself is covered by a large tarp. Drawing the carriage, instead of horses, is a dozen men. Aeneas sees that they are not walking and not riding either, but they are clearly driving the vehicle forward with their feet. The image that comes closest to mind for him is a team of galley slaves. They are sitting down, yet moving their feet as if they are walking. The spinning wheel wasn’t invented until the middle ages so Aeneas doesn’t have the notion of a pedal.
The carriage arrives at the gates of the city, where a curious crowd has already formed. The riders step off their “bronze horses” and go to the back of the carriage to get refreshments. Out from the tarp steps a group of people who do not look greek, but do not look like each other either. The man who walks first has pale skin, and short, straight, black hair. He carries a serious face. With him is a young boy with rye blond hair who is holding a large writing tablet which is almost half his size. The third person is also a boy, who has long, curly, black hair. The boy with the black curly hair begins a prepared speech, in greek.
He explains that the adult man’s name is Zhang Wei, the blond boy’s name is Phinneas, and his own name is Yitzchak. Yitzchak explains how they came to be here. Himself, he was raised strictly in the religion of Abraham and lived his short life in faithful service of the true Lord God. He was bound to his home by his father and not even allowed to learn the common language of the people in their community, which is a soft language from the steppes north of the Northern Sea (the Black Sea). Thus, he was never exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was however allowed to learn greek and something he calls “new culture language”, which is something that Phinneas is able to write. Phinneas, Yitzchak explains, cannot hear nor speak; he is deaf and mute. Phinneas was never allowed to participate in social life and was not given any education, but he did learn to read and write the “new culture language” from sailors, which made him useful as a merchant’s translator. He translates from the new cultural language to the “new merchant language”, which is spoken also by Zhang Wei, who is from far east Asia.
Zhang Wei, finally, is presented as their group’s knowledgeable president and servant. He was raised in a small city, entirely without even hearing about any God at all, whether true or false. Instead, he spent his whole life learning about natural philosophy, and about the workings of machines and apparatuses. He has been a constant blessing to them, having ended his earthly life with so much knowledge of the material world without learning the fatal knowledge of the spiritual world. Zhang Wei designed the carriage and many other machines which has given great them a small beacon of comfort in this world of endless melancholy. His energy and initiative keeps all members of their growing society in a constant activity, which helps them forget about the hopelessness of their surroundings. They have embarked on this expedition so that Zhang Wei might meet his hero, Archimedes.
After some confused introduction with Archimedes, Zhang Wei learns about the pearl. He examines it and realizes what it is. He explains it via the chain of translations to the Greeks, but they do not comprehend. He proclaims that this pearl heralds a new era in their world, and that they can expect many more gifts to come to them with the babies that appear every day. He can make wonderful things with the pearl, which he calls a “flake”, or possibly the correct translation would be “chip”.
Zhang Wei can make the chip glow by holding it between two plates of metal. The story ends with Aeneas following the group to the new society that they are building. In the ending paragraph, Virgil, who lives in the marble city, is once again visited by Dante. Virgil explains that the Limbo, the first circle of hell where they live, has now become obsolete as a punishment. Humans have finally found a loophole in the divine order, that allows them to thwart the system of an absurd God. There will now be comfort, light, and progress in Limbo, and the society of the enlightened ones have sworn to find out the full truth about the divine order, so that they may be able to remove also the worst part of the punishment: the inability to learn new things.