They all shared the same nightmare, but they never talked about it. Getting close to the black metal gate had taken them thirty years. Many times, they had been forced to retreat, leaving behind the old ones, the encampments and the covered wagons. They had always returned, better armed, more numerous than ever. Always, they had fought, won and resumed their journey. Until they arrived at the foot of the wall. Then they were seized by such a powerful joy that the scrupulously prepared Feast of Arrival quickly got out of hand. Drunken revellers started a riot. Terror-struck horses running wild set ablaze the Sacred Wagon, obliterating in a few minutes the books where had been sleeping undisturbed for so long the plans and calculations that meant freedom for a whole people. They woke up with aching joints and a momentous hangover, and saw the still burning butterflies dancing in the ashen sky. After that, fifteen more years were necessary to build again this lost corpus of science, and fifteen other yet to build the door-opening machines. Meanwhile, a entire generation had become extinct, the very one who first had a vision of the door and of what was behind. The few of them that were left were too weak and frail to go through. When the machines were ready, humming softly in the tall grass, the sixty-year old nightmare returned in full force. What if this thin blue crack in the wall was nothing but the