““I would stare at the statue’s distant shape, perhaps daring it to do something—strike me down if it wanted, or show some other sign of sentience—and, after an uneventful interregnum, I would turn away, never with satisfaction. The statue seemed to mock me with its muteness and its immobility, as though offering the promise, if of anything, not of redemption, but rather of a reckoning, and at a time of its choosing, not of mine.””
