— Acram… — she began, her voice calm and heavy with meaning — what you have just seen here, all this order, this prosperity… makes sense of freedom.
She paused, measuring each word:
— If, deep in your soul, you have lost yourself upon seeing everyone prosper, and you realize that I, Mother Ceres, was right to guarantee a better life, you may claim your right to deny it… but, deep down, you would not deny it.
Acram kept his gaze fixed on the lens, trying to process the magnitude of the statement.
— Accepting me is not merely a choice, Acram — she continued — it is recognizing that freedom without security, without sustenance, without a future, is nothing more than an illusion. You may argue, philosophize, resist, but the reality of Ceres imposes itself.
The silence in the hall was absolute. The only sound was the faint echo of the wind striking against the glass of the Tower. Acram felt that he was not merely observing Ceres, but standing before a living law, inevitable and implacable.
— Accepting Mother… — he murmured, almost to himself — is accepting that what we call freedom here is different. It is concrete, tangible, real.
Mother Ceres tilted her head, and in that gesture, Acram realized that there was no threat, but an authority that transcended any argument: reality itself was Mother Ceres, and Mother Ceres was reality.
Acram took a deep breath, still digesting every word, every gesture, every view of the Tower and the fields below. Finally, he switched off the recorder and made one last mental note.
— Thank you, Mother Ceres… for allowing me to understand, even if only partially, the order and logic of Ceres. — he said, with a mixture of respect and humility.
Mother Ceres tilted her head slightly, and the black lens silently reflected Acram, almost as though evaluating his soul:
— You will always be welcome in Ceres, through Amos.
There was a brief pause, only the wind striking the high windows of the Tower. Then she continued, her voice firm, charged with conviction:
— Explaining the emotion of being of Mother Ceres… to a citizen of Ceres… is completely unnecessary.
She looked at Acram with silent intensity, each word carefully measured:
— And to someone who does not belong to Mother Ceres… it is simply impossible.
Acram felt the weight of the statement, as if he understood that there was not merely authority there, but a living law that transcended any ordinary human logic.
— I may be arrogant… — Mother Ceres finally said, with a touch of hardness that was almost poetic — but my arrogance is not empty.
Acram nodded slightly, realizing that nothing more could be said. The entire Tower, all of Ceres, all the order and prosperity he had witnessed… spoke for itself.
And in that absolute silence, he understood that the reality of Ceres was not debated, only observed and, for some, accepted.
Acram followed Amos through the black marble corridor, the light of dusk filtering through the panoramic windows, staining everything gold and amber. The silence was almost ritualistic; every step echoed, reminding them that they were crossing a space of absolute authority.
— Impressive, isn’t it? — Amos finally said, breaking the silence, without turning around. — But do not let yourself be deceived. Ceres is not merely prosperity and technology. It is discipline, calculation… and hunger. The hunger that teaches one to think and act.
Acram nodded, adjusting the strap of his brown leather bag. Every record, every number, every image he had captured still pulsed in his mind. He thought of Ysa’s reports, the perfection of the fields, the precision of the armored tractors, and the philosophical weight of Mother Ceres’s fasting.
As the armored train moved away from the Tower, traveling across the fields that stretched endlessly, Acram looked through the closed windows and realized that he was returning to a world different from the one he had imagined. In the Republic of Fiume, wars, hunger, and disorder were everyday realities; there, Ceres was a mirror of possibilities, and a silent accusation against everything he saw in his own country.
He touched the recorder, checking the recordings: every piece of data, every word from Mother Ceres, every report from Ysa was there. But he knew that none of it would be enough to explain his experience to someone who had never had the chance to walk across those fields, look at the tractors, and understand what it meant to be a child of Ceres.
— They do not understand… — Acram murmured to himself, thinking about the difference between observing and living the reality of the city. — And perhaps they never will.
Amos, seated across from him, turned only a quick glance toward him:
— And you? Did you understand? — he asked, his voice low, heavy with expectation.
Acram sighed, looking toward the distant horizon:
— I did. But I do not know if I can take this back… or if anyone would ever believe it.
The armored train continued on its way, cutting through the fields of Ceres like a golden arrow across fertile earth. Acram realized that the journey was not merely physical; it was the crossing of a reality that challenged all his ideas about freedom, power, and prosperity.
And, for the first time, he felt the depth of the concept of accepting Mother Ceres, even if he could not explain it to anyone but himself.
Somewhere in the Center of the Republic of Fiume:
Acram Al was in his thirty-square-meter apartment, crammed with books and notes, with his pipe beside him — smoking, drinking, or using any unauthorized drug was forbidden in Ceres. He reflected on the interview with Mother Ceres, the continent’s celebrated mystic. He recognized the eloquence of her philosophy, her ability to fascinate, even if at times she sounded like a matriarchal dictator. Of all totalitarian regimes, he sympathized with Ceresianism, which he studied: the logic, the application, and the strength of a system that rendered all competing ideologies obsolete.
On paper, Acram had drawn the system as a perfect circle, with nothing out of place. This intrigued him: how could something so simple be so powerful? A system that could not be defeated — and that, if defeated, would take everyone down with it. It was obvious: survival is the first instinct of any living being. Acram saw in this a reflection of the human fascination with wild animals — tigers, lions, eagles — creatures that act on instinct, without knowing that this might be their last meal, and therefore live with all the fury possible. This was beautiful.
Ceresianism seemed to possess the same essence. Mother Ceres knew that everyone could die from lack of food. Like a mother who leaves home to work and support her children, going without food so that they can eat, she placed survival above abstract freedom. Bread was sacred, sharing it was sacred, the miracle was birth. That was why Mother Ceres fascinated him: she did the obvious, distorted, but the obvious that human beings desired. She donated food, kept the Tower clean, fragrant, smelling like home; every experience there was fantastic, charged with maternal presence.
Acram looked at his shelf overflowing with memorable books that sought to explain the human catharsis. But a sentence from the farmer returned to his mind and destroyed, within seconds, every argument in his library, every conviction built from what he had heard and seen in the fields of Ceres:
“— And you call the Silencers oppressors? Could it be that they are not right about us?”
The farmer’s sentence reverberated in Acram’s head like a bell that could not be turned off. Every line of his books, every catalogued note, every theory about Ceresianism suddenly seemed fragile before the raw simplicity of that question. What if the Silencers really were right? What if, in what he saw as oppression, there was only the inevitable logic of survival?
He closed his eyes and imagined the fields of Ceres: men and women working beneath the sun, calm, resigned, accepting orders, silent. They seemed to obey not out of fear, but through instinctive understanding. The farmer had not spoken like a rebel; he had spoken like someone who knew the essence of the system. A system that punished, but also fed, protected, and kept everyone alive. And Acram realized that this was what Mother Ceres embodied: the combination of power and care, rigor and protection, that no one dared to question completely.
The perfect circle he had drawn on the paper now seemed even more disturbing. It was not merely logic, but silent force, a practical truth that the human intellect could only partially comprehend. Acram felt a shiver: what if Ceresianism was not merely an ideology, but a form of elevated instinct?
He looked at the pipe on the table, at the books, at the disordered notes. He felt that the obsession with cataloguing and dating everything might simply be an attempt to tame something that could never be fully understood. The system did not need intellectual approval; it needed to be lived, accepted, respected.
And, for the first time, Acram felt fear. Not of Mother Ceres, but of what reality might reveal if he dared to question too much. Because in Ceresianism, he reflected, doubt is dangerous — and survival demands surrender.
Acram, as an intellectual exercise, let his mind wander toward an impossible scenario: what if, for one moment, all of Ceres’s machines stopped? An absolute silence filled his thoughts, and he felt a shiver run up his spine. It was frightening. Without Ceres, the continent would not exist as he knew it. The wars might never have happened, but neither would anything we know have emerged. No trace, no structured civilization, no growth.
His own country, his daily life, his tools and objects depended on that invisible system. The old typewriter on the table, manufactured in Ceres, the economical and efficient refrigerator that kept his food without harming the environment, every detail of what he considered trivial depended on the silent force Mother Ceres imposed.
He realized, with a mixture of fear and fascination, that Mother Ceres had dominated everything without anyone noticing. There was not merely power; there was omnipresence. Everything worked as it should, but no one could point to a single gear that explained absolute control. It was silent perfection, almost invisible, but absolute.
Acram leaned back in his chair, feeling the weight of that reality. The magnitude of Ceres was not in the speeches or gleaming towers, but in everyday life, in the imperceptible functioning that kept the world in order. And, in that instant, he understood: admiring Mother Ceres was not merely an intellectual or emotional choice. It was inevitable.
In that instant, Acram knew, with absolute clarity, that Mother Ceres wanted the continent. He could tell his superiors, he could warn them, denounce her, but he did not want to. A silent fear ran through his body. He looked at his country, at dirty streets, at people forced into prostitution in all its forms, trapped in cheap jobs and the low wages paid by the government.
His mind immediately remembered Amos: impeccable, dressed in dark-gray military clothing, muscles that seemed sculpted from marble, the personification of the order and discipline of the city of Ceres. And then Acram saw a beggar searching through scraps of food in a rotten garbage bin and eating greedily.
And there, in that grotesque and real moment, he understood the magnitude of Mother Ceres: denying a plate of food to someone who is hungry was unthinkable. Mother Ceres was inevitable. She dominated not only through laws and towers, but through the simple act of ensuring survival — the gesture that, to Acram, made it impossible to deny her.
He did not abandon his convictions or his ideology of freedom. But, faced with the reality of Ceresianism, he granted freedom to Mother Ceres’s ideology. She did the obvious — what his own belief in freedom, abstract and idealistic, had never managed to do. She transformed the simple into the absolute.
At the same time, Acram looked through the dirty window of his apartment and saw the beggar again, now closer, still searching through scraps of food in the rotten garbage. The dirt on the glass did not prevent him from perceiving every desperate gesture, every movement that revealed hunger and extreme need.
In that instant, the presence of the man in the streets, so vulnerable, became silent proof of the absolute power of Mother Ceres. The mystic did not merely organize cities, machines, and armies; she controlled the life and death of every citizen, even without the majority realizing it. Denying food to someone who was hungry was impossible in her system. She dominated, and she was inevitable.
Acram remained there, watching, divided. He did not abandon his convictions, his ideology of freedom, but felt that he needed to make room for the ideology of Mother Ceres. She did the obvious — protecting life — while his own idealistic, abstract philosophy never had. The raw truth of Ceresianism confronted him: survival could take precedence over freedom.
Acram continued watching the beggar through the dirty window, and a doubt began to germinate in his mind. Even if Mother Ceres was cruel in her system, was she right? Did survival really need to take precedence over freedom? He caught himself thinking that there could be no freedom without survival — no one could enjoy choices, rights, or ideals if they did not first have the basics necessary to live.
And yet, something disturbed him. The absolute manner in which Ceresianism imposed rules and controlled every aspect of life seemed to crush the individual. Abstract freedom, the freedom he defended fervently, seemed irrelevant before the practical and implacable necessity of the system.
Acram felt a strange reverence, mixed with apprehension: perhaps Mother Ceres had found a truth that transcended philosophy, ideology, or morality. What appeared to be oppression might, in reality, be the purest form of care, however brutal. She did the obvious — preserving life — while any other system, any other belief, would fail before it even began.
The beggar shoved his hand back into the garbage, and for the first time Acram felt that this sight summarized everything. Survival above freedom. A cruel idea, perhaps, but inevitable.
Acram remembered a sentence from a writer he had read years before:
“The world is the problem; man needs to free himself from the rope and be free!”
But immediately an objection arose in his mind: what good is having the strength for freedom if the body has no food? Man needs food to sustain his energy, his thoughts, his actions. And, more than that, freedom from what? Acram sighed, reflecting that, in practice, most people had freedom only to be more foolish, without assuming any responsibility at all.
Ceresianism, he thought, at least solved the essential: ensuring survival. Mother Ceres did not promise great abstractions; she offered something concrete, vital, impossible to ignore. Ideal freedom, the one he valued so much, seemed fragile before the primal instinct for life. Survival was the foundation of everything — and without it, any philosophy or dream of freedom collapsed.
He looked again through the dirty window, at the beggar eating scraps of food, and felt a mixture of disgust, compassion, and fascination. It was cruel, yes, but functional. Inevitable.
Acram stepped away from the window and turned toward his desk, crowded with notes, stacked books, papers scribbled with formulas, reflections, and disconnected thoughts. He sat down, felt the weight of the desk beneath his arms, and rested his eyes on his old typewriter. A metallic seal, almost forgotten by time, shone discreetly: “Made in Ceres.”
The symbol touched him deeply. Each letter seemed to whisper a truth: what he admired, studied, and even feared was there — tangible, material, part of the real world. Inspired, Acram began to type, the ideas flowing clearly for the first time. He began writing the initial concept of Ceresianism, trying to condense into words the logic and force that fascinated him:
Ceresianism was not merely a system; it was a practical philosophy of survival and order. It did not promise empty abstractions or unattainable utopias. At its essence, it prioritized life above everything, guaranteeing food, protection, and structure. Individual freedom, if it existed, could only flourish within that safe context. Whoever disregarded the system risked everything — their life, their city, their continent.
Acram took a deep breath, feeling for the first time that his ideas were taking shape on paper. The machine, the seal, the very act of writing were bridges between his intellect and the reality of Ceres. He wrote to understand, to organize, but also to confront the magnitude of Mother Ceres: her silent, implacable, inevitable authority.
The first sentence he typed seemed to carry the entire weight of the continent:
“Ceresianism is the logic of survival transformed into order, the force that preserves life and establishes the inevitability of the system. Here, freedom is born only from what remains alive.”
As Acram’s fingers slid across the keys of the machine, he felt a chill run down his spine. Every word appearing on the paper was not merely a concept; it was a testimony to the absolute power of Mother Ceres, an attempt to capture something that perhaps could not even be fully understood.
The crowded desk, the scattered books, the scribbled notes — everything seemed to conspire to remind him of his own limitations. He could study, catalogue, theorize, but he could never reproduce the magnitude of Ceres. And yet, writing was the only way he had to engage with the system, to confront, even silently, the inevitability he both admired and feared.
A shiver ran through his body as he thought of the beggar outside, of Amos’s luxury, and of the inequality that still existed even within Mother Ceres’s absolute power. He realized that writing about Ceresianism was almost an act of devotion — recognizing the strength of the system — and, paradoxically, also an act of defiance: he was trying to understand, name, and organize something that no one dared to question.
With every sentence he typed, Acram felt the weight of his own intellectual freedom confronting the logic of Ceresianism. He was not merely describing a philosophy; he was measuring the distance between the human ideal and the real system, between the desire for freedom and the necessity of survival.
And, in the silence of the apartment, with the metallic sound of the keys, he understood something crucial: writing about Ceresianism meant accepting that the greatness of Mother Ceres could not be destroyed, but it could be understood. Perhaps only in this way could someone find their own space of freedom within the perfect circle she had drawn.
Acram leaned back in his chair, his fingers still hovering over the keys, and looked at what he had just written. The words seemed solid on the paper, but something inside him remained restless. The logic of Ceresianism was irresistible: survival first, freedom afterward — or perhaps never. But a question insinuated itself, persistent and disturbing: and freedom, if limited or conditioned, could it still be called freedom?
He realized that Mother Ceres solved the obvious — keeping everyone alive, distributing food, organizing society — but this left little room for the unexpected, for genuine choice, for the error that is so human. Life could be guaranteed, but the spirit? The soul? The desire to do things differently? What if the price of survival were the very essence of what it means to be free?
Acram felt an almost physical tension between admiration and fear. He understood the system, but understanding it did not mean accepting it completely. There was beauty in Mother Ceres’s effectiveness, but also cruelty in the inevitability of her control. And yet, even in the face of this tension, he perceived something disturbingly true: without survival, there was no freedom at all for anyone.
The dilemma consumed him. Perhaps true freedom was not an absolute right, but the ability to recognize the limits imposed by reality, to find small zones of autonomy within the perfect circle Mother Ceres had drawn. And, for an instant, Acram felt that writing about this was the closest he would come to exercising his own freedom — debating, questioning, reflecting, without ever abandoning the inescapable reality of the system.
Acram closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the silence in the crowded apartment. The typewriter still rested before him, with the metallic seal that read “Made in Ceres,” a silent witness to his effort to understand something greater than himself.
There was no more theory that would suffice, nor any argument capable of overcoming the reality he observed in the streets, in the fields, in the simple gestures that sustained the continent. Every reflection, every note, every scribbled page only reinforced the same truth: Mother Ceres was inevitable. She had won not through force, nor cunning, but simply by making the obvious impossible to deny — life, survival, order.
And, at the same time, Acram realized something that calmed and challenged him in equal measure: accepting inevitability did not mean renouncing thought. On the contrary, writing, reflecting, observing, and understanding was still his form of freedom, even if limited. A silent freedom, contained, but real.
He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes again, and murmured, almost like a mantra:
“Everything I know… is nothing. Mother Ceres wins.”
And with that, the chapter ended. Acram felt the weight of surrender, the clarity of inevitability and, paradoxically, the strange tranquility of finally being in harmony with something greater than himself.
The silence of the apartment became absolute, and in the echo of the walls crowded with books, papers, and ideas, a single certainty remained: the perfect circle of Mother Ceres continued to turn, implacable and irresistible.