With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea.
WELCOME TO
Omelas

Processions moved...one could hear the music winding through the city streets, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.

Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas...

BACK
...there is a room. In the room a child is sitting. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect.
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. They all know it has to be there. Their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children...depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.
Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.
At times some of the visitors who go to see the child do not go home. They walk straight out of the city of Omelas. Each one goes alone. It is possible that where they are going does not exist.
STAY
WALK AWAY

But they seem to know where they are going,

the ones who walk away from Omelas.