4 years.
4 years now since I last saw the light of the sun, or smelled a sea breeze waft in from the bay of Sambar. 4 years since my ill fated voyage, 4 years since the sea swallowed me, and I died.
4 years since I woke up here. 4 years of enslavement under the Eye Tyrants.
4 years planning my escape.
In retrospect, it was quite elementary to accomplish, and well worth the many contusions and abrasions sufferred along the way. The natural tendency for objects to move towards the earth in fact did most of the work, although I suspect my instructors would marvel at the manner in which I made use of that force.
4 years. If I had been a better student, I might have done it in 4 months.
Morality, Ethics. I skipped more of those classes than any other, and yet one tenet above all others stayed with me throughout the entirety of my captivity; "Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something".
Strange what comes to you out of the aether. Stranger still how the meaning of those words are driven home in the face of utter, abject ... evil.
My life to this point has been ... wasted in pursuit of self gratification and slovenliness, selfishness and waste. I was given everything throughout my life, and I have given nothing in return. I scoffed at the many advances my classmates had conceived in agriculture, irrigation, public works.
Gond has seen fit to give me a second chance. My life ended when I was swallowed by the sea, and he has given it back to me here, in Sanctuary.
I am ill prepared for the duties I am taking upon myself. My education is piecemeal, but I have the intelligence, as well as a concept of what CAN be done with proper methodology and scientific inquisitiveness. With prayer, and much trial and error, I will reinvent many of the tools and artifacts that my peers before me were blessed with.
This journal, the first such book I have ever voluntarily penned will be my record of the journey of revelation I am going to undertake. Much of what will be documented here will be nonsense to a future reader. I simply do not know the proper names for many of the terms and fields I am going to delve into. I pray only that the principles behind the nonsensical terms will be solid, and equally relevant at some day in the future when a reader realises that the term I have used is the equivalent of another in mainstream science.
Through science I will make a difference. Through my journey, I will better the lives of those around me. Through invention, I will show everyone the light of the sun, and allow them to breath the salt air as I did.
4 years. I learnt a lesson in those 4 years that I never learnt in all my years before that, and I thank the Wonderbringer for the blessing of revelation he has given me.
I would have given 40.