They built their success on a lie, an elaborate manufactured lie, and lies, however well constructed, have a flaw at their center: they are not true, and so they must be defended forever, guarded, maintained, propped up against the constant pressure of the reality they contradict.

My father built everything on the truth, patiently recorded and preserved, and the truth needs no defending.

It only waits.

It waited twenty years in a safe-deposit box, costing nothing, requiring nothing, until the day it was needed, and then it did its work in a single stroke, because there was nothing in it to attack.

Their lie took twenty years of active effort to maintain and collapsed the moment the truth appeared.

His truth took twenty years of patience to preserve and prevailed the moment it was released.