I pile up the scrolls on the table, feeling a little jolt with each one. The Great Wheel by Empedocles. Pythagoras’ Treatise on the Naming of Mountains. Ennoia and Chokmah by Simon Magus. Three, five, ten more from my belt and shirt. Another from each leg. I am paying for my son with a thousand years of knowledge, with books to benefit every person on earth. Apollonius’ secret Book of the Ogdoad joins the others. I feel the prick of the last scroll in the small of my back. I could keep it.