the garden within the wasteland

act 1, part 10

"The wires and circuits cut deep into my own, the scratching and itching sensation. I should've felt that pain." I should have been yelling and struggling, but I couldn't; my body was once again no longer mine, my eyes showing me that which had already passed, the vision of that man, that—that cyclops, everything. I—I had seen everything; of all the virtues and sins he committed, I alone was the witness to all of it. None of it was in any sensical order, nor in any sense of the word comprehensible. The first memory I was subjected to witness was as follows: the man with the metallic eye standing, the town around him in chaos, unnatural fires circled him, worshipped him in a sense, burning any and all things except the man. He stood there staring at the sky, staring at the endless stars now fading away from the lights of the fire. I was among the fire; only he could see my presence, a body that shouldn't have existed yet, and then a woman approached him, walking through the fire, the fire splitting and bowing out of her direction as she marched. She was in no armor, just her royal clothing, yet she carried the presence of something divine as she spoke.

"Pity we offered your kin. an invite to my court, followed suit, yet here you stand, having rejected both, now rejecting the kingdom itself? Tell me, "criminal," what do you stand for?"

"Justice," the man replied, refusing to turn his back towards the women as he marched, the fires more cruel and violent with him.

"Is this the justice you speak of?" the woman proclaimed as she pointed towards the fires that had devoured the streets of this city.

"To speak of my shattered justice is transcendentally more sublime than carrying no justice," the man replied as he marched into the fire.

The woman reached for her bow, aiming it towards the man. She knew the force of the arrow would pierce the skull of the man within seconds; she knew she could end his reign of terror at its start.

yet she pulled her bow back. Another act of pity, she placed the bow on her back as she walked away from the fire. mumbling to herself in a hushed voice, she spoke of change.

"How hard did you hit your head brush?" Ereo responded to the machine's monologue.

"I got smacked hard enough to see the past, present, and future."

"the future?" eero integrated further

"Yes... I saw your future... You're going to die alone, having never felt the warmth of love," the brush responded in a lower, more mysterious voice before letting out a laugh.

Ereo made his way to the floor to have a seat as he sighed. Mary, already seated opposite him, brushed to their collective left, all three of them witnessing the dead mechanical brain and deciding to rest there.

"That's why you were off earlier?" Mary questioned, as she was sitting cross-legged, sharpening her blade with a fallen part of the matriarch's body.

"I... I didn't feel like myself, but I knew that I had to do this," Brush responded, staring into the brain.

"Wait, you saw the memories of that man, right?" Ereo leaned forward as he faced Brush.

"The man's called Pedro, father of the Enkidu, liberator of the poor."

"What makes you certain?" Brush sat down as he faced Mary.

"While you were out after the mercy kill, I dug around this place; it's a gold mine of info here, if not a bit... psychotic."

"As I was saying," Ereo spoke the second Mary finished her sentence.

"Why would you see the visions of that man? You didn't have any memory of him before this whole ordeal, right?"