Short Story - Those who lift in Omelas

The city of Omelas is one of unburdened joy. This is not a metaphor. The citizens move with a preternatural grace, their steps light, their bodies free from the sluggish pull of the earth that plagues other lands. They leap and pirouette in the sun-drenched squares, their laughter is as effortless as birdsong, and no one has ever known the dull, grinding ache of a weary muscle. They are a people without weight.

The feasts are splendid, the music is woven from gossamer harmonies, and the lovemaking is a tangle of floating limbs under silken sheets. All of this is possible, all this buoyant ecstasy, because of the city’s single, terrible bargain.

When they come of age, each citizen is taken from the bright, airy city and led down a series of spiraling stone steps into the city’s foundation. The air grows thick, heavy. At the very bottom, in a vast, circular chamber of bare rock, is the source of their bliss. It is not a wretched child in a closet. It is The Great Barbell.

It rests upon the shoulders of a single, colossal figure, known only as The Anchor. The bar is impossibly vast, forged from a metal that seems to devour the light. On its ends are not plates of iron, but crystalline spheres that shimmer with a terrible, condensed gravity. Within them is the collected weight of every potential sorrow, every sickness, every physical toil and exhaustion that the citizens above will never feel.

The Anchor. A role passed down through a silent lineage, stands on a groaning dais, muscles knotted like ancient tree roots, sweat carving rivers through the dust on their skin. Their face is a mask of eternal, agonizing effort. Every tremor of their thighs, every strained breath that rattles in their chest, is a force that pushes back against the crushing reality, allowing the city above to float in its perfect, weightless dream.

Most citizens see this and their hearts are pierced with a brief, sharp pity. Their minds cannot comprehend why someone would choose this life. To never see the sun again. To spend every day pushed to your limit. They feel the lightness in their own limbs, they remember the sweet air above, and they think they deserve this. “It is for the greater good,” they whisper. “One bears the weight so that thousands may fly.” They return to the sun, their joy now tinged with a fragile, guilty gratitude that they soon learn to ignore.

A few, as the stories tell, cannot bear it. They turn and walk back up the stairs and keep walking, right out of the city’s gates. They seek a world with normal gravity and normal grievances, where ah honest day’s work brings an honest ache. They are the Ones Who Walk Away.

But there is a third group. They are rarer still. They see The Anchor and the crushing, absolute weight. They feel the pity and the horror, but something else stirs within them. Not a desire to flee, nor a willingness to accept. It is a strange, unfamiliar impulse. A resonance. They look at the straining muscle and the clenched jaw, and they do not see a victim. They see a purpose.

These are the Ones Who Lift in Omelas.

Their decision is made in the silence of the stone chamber. They walk forward, not past The Anchor, but towards them. They strip off their silken tunics, revealing bodies that, for the first time, feel soft and inadequate. They approach the dais, and with a shared, unspoken understanding, they find a place beside The Anchor and get under the Great Barbell. The first contact is a shock that jolts them to their soul. The weight is not just heavy; it is crushing. It presses down, threatening to flatten them into the stone. A grunt, low and guttural, primordial. The first such sound they have ever made, the first sound that humans make then they’re born, is torn from their throat.

They do not leave Omelas. They stay there, in the deep, quiet foundation. Over time, they form their own community in the gloom. Their bodies change. Softness gives way to hardened sinew. They learn the language of effort: the sharp intake of breath, the shared groan of a great push, the quiet nod of respect. They have traded effortless joy for meaningful struggle. Their hands are rough and their backs ache, but their eyes hold a clarity the floating citizens can never know. For they have learned the ultimate truth of Omelas: that happiness is light, but strength has weight. And they would not trade their burden for all the sky in the world.

P.S. This is more or less a shitpost inspired by a Brennan Lee Mulligan throwaway comment about “Those who lift in Omelas”. Don’t read too much into it. Or do if you find it meaningful!