Garden
Morning
The morning dawned, as it always did, though still mostly hidden in Garden. There were not many to see it, if any, and Seth Lord was not one of them.
The sun rose, not visible save as that which is a by product of all mornings such as this; a knowledge that no matter how dark it still was outside, you must still wake and face the dark day.
Seth, however, had not woken.
He lay, fully clothed on his sofa. He posture looked most uncomfortable, as his face was pushed into a cushion, and a little lower than the rest of his body.
He had markedly drooled a little during the night; there was a small pool under his cheek which seemed to originate from his open and whistling mouth.
He woke without preamble or warning. His manner of such was to leverage himself into a sitting position and survey, quite blindly, the surrounding area.
He gazed around himself, without noting anything for a while, before his eyes came slightly more into focus and he could cogently understand what was going on around him.
Seth first noticed the state of his room. It was exactly as he had left it the previous night.
The second thing was that of the clock in his room. He saw it, gestured violently and started to hurriedly change into his nominal uniform.
He was late and he didn't know what he could do about it now.
As he shoved his arms into his sweater, his absent gaze fell on something that had not been there the night before. There was a large notebook, and it was covered in names and poorly written sentences.
That's when he remembered his rather desparate ramblings of the night before.
It had been like a waking nightmare, he remembered. He had felt the rage of the storm that lay dormant in his head; It was no longer outside, in the midst of Garden's scenery. It had possessed him and brought to a fevered end where he had collapsed on his sofa after his mind had been brought peace by his frantic scribbles on his notepad.
He walked slowly over to it, tension held in every meagre step, and stopped in front of the table where it lay. He reached one hand out, mercifully not shaking and held the notebook up to read. He could not, for some reason or other, read it very well at all. The words were erratically put together and most outrageously spelled, but the theme was that of a meandering pen held in the hands of an over-eager infant and not that of a sharpened intellect at its most subtle ways.
Seth dropped the paper in disgust and started to walk away, his mind already on what lay ahead in the day.
That's when he remembered the second part of what had transpired last night: he had come to the decision to make his own path towards solving these crimes. He had had a number of ideas last night and he most definitely remembered writing them all down.
That's when he remembered that he also had been very tired, and that his note-taking last night must have resulted in the most random of ways, the notebook of gibberish he had found.
***No matter, ***he thought to himself, ***a start is a start...is a start.***
He finished dressing for he knew he must soon go out, but he didn't know where yet.
He sat back on the sofa and leaned back a little.
He also had had a vision of some sort, but this was not as important as trying to remember what the next part of his plan was.
He looked at the notebook again, and this time he noticed a phrase that was underlined.
***What about the answers that a couched safely in the past?*** He didn't attach any meaning to this at first, but as he read more of the random phrases the rest of the notebook contained, his mind kept returning to this one.
***What would Garden's past have to do with anything of this?*** He thought to himself finally. ***I was there....most of us were.....And I definitely don't remember anything about crimes like this. ***
He forced his mind back to his ramblings of the night before, but something kept snagging in his memory: the feeling that he had come upon a new, unsearched avenue the night before that might lead to a solution.
He shook his head, hoping to clear it from the streaky cobwebs that seemed entangled, but it didn't help except to throw in even more relief his long held memories of all those years ago.
***They were young then, not just young looking. Their minds were free from the tyranny of the past, and that's why they had been able to do it.
They weren't even sure what they had done, they just knew the end result had been an edenic community named Garden that featured a tree that could keep them younger for much longer.
Their courage had taken them to new heights, they had cried, we shall never have bear the responsibility of carrying a mortal load any longer. However, Seth remembered those who had held back from joining in the celebrations.
He himself had been one of those celebrating; he had felt more alive in those moments than he remembered ever being.
It was a very heady feeling, he remembered most clearly, the idea the community of Garden was actually going to happen. Most of the original denizens had joined in with the newcomers, but some had been apprehensive of the idea of meddling with the pattern of life. Their argument was that this was some attempt at a new creation; something that should be out of Man's hands.
Seth smiled as he remembered scoffing at those words all so long ago. The City, none-withstanding any complaints, had become the new community of Garden with all of its original citizens.
No one had moved away due to the change, but some had refused to partake of the Tree's fruit. Seth also had laughed at that; he could not understand at the time, turning away from something that would extend your life and give you something that had never been given before in this fashion, more time on the earth allotted to those who wanted it.
Some of the nay-sayers had grudgingly accepted the changes, and had partaken, but it was not many.
He remembered Pavloh refusing. He had said it was out of his hands to do anything more than accept the fate already graciously given to him. As far as Seth knew, he still hadn't partaken of the fruit. Pavloh didn't look that old yet, but he must be Seth knew. It had been a long time ago that Garden had been given the gift of the Tree.
Robinson was another who had been there at the time, but he was one who gladly accepted the change. Seth remembered that he had been all for it, but had asked some curious questions about the Tree and its fruit at the time. He had wanted to breed it and make more trees. When he learned that the Tree was barren, he had not dispaired at all. In fact, he had taken a job as butler with the local chemist and had done some experiements with him to determine more of what they could of the tree.
***************we should go back and change what the doctor describes himself as*******
Seth smiled, for he would wager that Robinson was still doing just that.
He also remembered Horten had been fairly hard to convince of the goodness of the change in Garden. Horton had not that it natural, and the forbodings in his mind were strong indeed. After a while though, he had worn down and accepted the change. It was much later though, and he had grown older, while those who had accepted faster, had not aged as much.
Seth thought it had been cruel at the time, watching Horten and his wife grow older, while he remained looking and feeling the same age. Seth regretted the time it had taken him to accept the Tree and what it offered, but he was still glad Horten had eventually done it. Seth felt more confident as the years went on that he had made the right choice in accepting the Tree's gift immediately. He had had his doubts over the years, but as more had accepted it, he had grown more confident.
A couple of the citizens that had shaken his confidence most in the past, had been Evelyn and the Doctor. Neither had fully accepted the Tree, either when Garden first had changed or any of the time since. He knew that Evelyn had been very set against the change at the time; her emotionally volatile speeches to the citizens had nearly reversed what eventually happened. When the City was changed anyway, she stayed. She had claimed that no one could force her out of her own city. He knew she loved Garden still, regardless of what she felt for the changes.
He remembered the Doctor had been against the Tree and those who supported it. He had claimed that his knowledge as a chemist and Doctor had not ever given him confidence in what the Tree promised. He claimed these were empty promises, taken on the flight of dreams and fools. He agreed with Pavloh at the time that the fate reserved for us was not be gainsaid, except in the case of systematic treatment, such as the sundry offerings he could prescribe.
Seth had thought that very convenient at the time, but he had not said anything.
He tried to stay out of most of those discussions, they had usually ended in shouting or dead silence, and he disliked the quality of both of those outcomes usually he found.
There had been a movement, a few years after Garden was changed, he remembered. Evelyn had led a group of concerned citizens into the idea that they should get the Tree taken away. She and her group had been vehementally opposed, but she had persisted.
That's when he remembered it.
It had been a small thing then; the sort of something said once, and then forgotten by everyone in the moment due to it being fairly normal in its use.
It had been a meeting of the Elders and the City Council. They had discussed whatever it was they did before allowing an open floor, and then Evelyn had gotten up to speak.
He remembered the speech fully now, he wondered how he could have ever forgotten it.
"Citizens of Garden, hear me now please!" She had started, and it was her tone that had made everone take instant notice of what was to come. It was both pleading and ringed in command. Her next words though was the root that really took hold Seth thought.
"I do not claim that I do not wonder at this Gift. How could I not? It is a gracious and bountiful giving, something I would normally be beholden to receive. About ***this*** gift, I am not though, and I will tell you why."
She paused and tried to catch everyones' eyes in turn.
"If I were to offer you a gift of life, in a life threatening situation, I think you would be foolish to not accept. This is not that case. If this was a case of a trade, my life for yours, I would gladly accept and trade in full honour. This is not that case. "
She paused again.
"This is a case of human folly dabbling in what we do not know, with repercussions we cannot possibly guess at, and no real sense of what boundaries are in place now."
She paused again, but it was shorte this time; and when she started again, it was even more forceful.
"Do any of you know why this gift is here? How it came to be here in Garden? I do not think so, or else there would be none of those tests currently being taken on the Tree as we speak, and there would be another of these Trees. This is a human tower of strength, what tower of this kind has not fallen eventually?"
She paused and then went on a little more slowly, her voice a little less commanding and a little more entreating.
"A Babel was once created, with the same sort of intentions I see now in play here in Garden. I cannot help but doubt in these indeavors now, how could I not? Just because the promise is great, does not mean the result will be.....Imagine if I were to promise I would grant everyone a wish, with no strings attached as it were. Just becaused I promised it, doesn't mean I would follow through. Even if I was able to, who knows what the possible result is of having our wishes answered? I for one do not, and I would not be looking forward to that eventuality."
She paused and once again tried to catch everyones' eyes.
"In conclusion, I am against this Tree and the changes to Garden. Evatt and I," She indicated the much younger Doctor sitting next to her at the table, "will not be accepting these changes in the ways we know how. I am not going to partake of the Tree and neither will he. We will continue to live in Garden and maintain our normal lifestyles. I hope that we will live to see ourselves proven wrong, but I don't think we will. I would rather die, and face that unknown, rather than see Garden come to the ruin of Babel. I would rather the Tree withered and died, rather than we die in quiet contemplation of the supposed blessed gifts it has given us. I hope you will soon see it as we do."
She sat down to a perfect silence in the meeting rooms.
He withdrew out of the recollection suddenly. He wished he had thought of those words of Evelyn's before. They seemed strangely prophetic in their far reaching implications of what lay in the present day.
His hands grew cold and clammy as he contemplated if he had just solved the mystery, or added to it.
***Could Evelyn be the fiend of Garden? The one who committed the crimes of murder and wanton destruction?***
He didn't know the answer to any of those questions, but Seth knew he had to find out today, the last day of the uncreation.
"By now the sun was crossing the horizon
of the meridian whose highest point
covers Jerusalem; and from the Ganges,
night, circling opposite the sun, was moving
together with the Scales that, when the length
of dark defeats the day, desert night's hands;
so that, above the shore that I had reached,
the fair Aurora's white and scarlet cheeks
were, as Aurora aged, becoming orange."
~Dante
No comments:
Post a Comment