It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there and the door is locked and nobody will come. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.
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