By Isaac Asimov. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, September 1941.

Beware of Darkness

The thing I like best about the Enneagram is it’s unparalleled depth of motion and fluidity into the human psyche. I think that people hear ‘personality test’ and they instantly think, “You’re trying to box me in. I can’t be labelled.” And trust me, as the resident enigma, I feel you, and am here to tell you, the Enneagram does anything but. It goes as deep, and gets as complicated as you’re willing to take it. When all is said and done every person has a main type, which stays the same throughout your life and determines both of your wings (yes, you have two—so you can fly!), your stress type and your integration type, as well as your stacked instinctual variants, for a grand total of five types per person actively at work in the hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. In addition to this there are nine levels of health to disintegration within each type, which are described in depth, and when you move within these levels in your main type, you move to the same level in all of your periphery types. This accounts for an insane amount of human diversity. With that said, I have never met a person who didn’t fit perfectly into their type, even if it took a little digging and truth seeking to figure out where exactly they were situated within their type at the moment.