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Music: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Lyrics: Neil Peart I FOUND WORK WITH A TRAVELING CARNIVAL, and for the Midsummer Festival in Crown City, our games and rides were set up right in the middle of the Square, beneath the Angels. One night, amid the noise and confusion of the crowded midway, I saw a man working with wires and wooden barrels. He stood and turned – the Anarchist! – holding a clockwork detonator in his hand. I called out to warn the crowd, then suddenly he threw the device at me, and I caught it automatically – just as the people turned to look my way. I escaped, but …

Music: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Lyrics: Neil Peart WALKING AMONG THE PEOPLE – who are so content, so blind – the Anarchist hears the pedlar’s call, and sneers derisively. “What do I lack? Ah … vengeance?” Will there be world enough and time for me to sing that song? A voice so silent for so long For all those years I had to get along, they told me I was wrong I never wanted to belong – I was so strong I lack their smiles and their diamonds; I lack their happiness and love I envy them for all those things, I never got my fair share of The …

Music: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Lyrics: Neil Peart THE PLACE I HAD MOST WANTED TO SEE – Chronos Square, at the heart of Crown City. I had seen many images of the city before, and Chronos Square, but nothing could convey its immensity – the heaven-reaching towers of the Cathedral of the Timekeepers, or the radiant glory of the Angels – Land, Sea, Sky, and Light – bathed in the brilliant glow of the floating globes. High above the city square Globes of light float in mid-air Higher still, against the night Clockwork angels bathed in light You promise every treasure, to the foolish and the wise Goddesses of …

Music: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Lyrics: Neil Peart WE WERE ALWAYS TAUGHT that we lived in “the best of all possible worlds.” The Watchmaker ruled from Crown City through the Regulators; the alchemist-priests gave us coldfire for power and light, and everything was well ordered. We accepted our various individual fates as inevitable, for we had also been taught, “Whatever happens to us must be what we deserve, for it could not happen to us if we did not deserve it.” None of it seemed right to me . . . I was brought up to believe The universe has a plan We are only human It’s not ours …

Music: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Lyrics: Neil Peart IT SEEMS LIKE A LIFETIME AGO – which of course it was, all that and more. For a boy, life on the farm was idyllic, but for the young man I became, that very peace and predictability were stifling, unbearable. I had big dreams, and needed a big place to explore them: the whole wide world. Near our village of Barrel Arbor, the steamliners touched down and traveled on rails along the Winding Pinion River toward Crown City. Watching them pass in the night, how I prayed to get away . . . None of it seemed right to me . …