The Radiant Wheel

Every chamber like this gets built twice. The first time by people who think they’ve discovered something. The second time by people who’ve been told they did.

The rays are real. The robes came later, and the singing, and the little brass bell somebody rings when the wheel turns a notch. It turns a notch every nine hundred years. Whole priesthoods live and die between clicks and write down that nothing happened.

Something happened. Each notch is one more universe’s worth of attention rerouted, filed and shipped. The wheel isn’t slow. The wheel is patient. There’s a difference, and you only learn it from the inside.