THE LIBRARY

The Unfinished Line

aka Axioms of the Endless Design, The Vyr Creed That Is Not a Creed

A set of Vyr axioms on the Endless Design — not a prayer, because the Vyr hold prayer in contempt, but the nearest thing they have to one: terse propositions a Vyr recites the way a human might steady a hand before precise work.

The world is a made thing. Therefore the world can be understood. What can be understood can be improved. What can be improved is, until improved, unfinished. A device that works is a prayer answered. A device that works better than it had to is devotion. A device left half-built is a blasphemy, and it does not matter who half-built it. The Design is never taught, only seen. You who read this and see nothing: no argument will open your eyes, and we will waste no breath on the attempt. You who read this and feel the diagram tighten behind them — build. The first draft is not sacred. The maker settled for good-enough and then was gone, and good-enough leans and rots and drowns, as you have seen. Do not mourn the draft. Complete the copy. And do not draw the last line. The design that is finished is a god that is dead. Leave always one line undrawn, and in the space of that one line, the Design goes on wanting — which is the only worship it has ever asked, or that we, seeing it, have ever been able to withhold.

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