X.
The faint sounds of insects and aquatic things blossomed into an orchestra of waterfowl and amphibian croaking as they tread tenderly the shoreline east. To Vagari’s surprise, the nature-reclaimed city opened right into the vast boglands between the surrounding deserts and the frontier. Even for him, it was somewhat hard to believe that only two-hundred years ago all of it had been but a single manmade lake a few miles wide. That far bank was all that was left of the romantic scenery of that fateful place. At some point in time the lake had flooded, Vagari theorized, and merged with the nearby algae farm, giving rise to the massive bog they now traveled. The farm had been a major source of renewable energy before the activation of the Dyson Grid, but never became obsolete. Instead, its purpose changed to food instead of power, a purpose that remained in present day in Eastend and nearby homesteads.
Bog farming was as profitable as it was dangerous. Even near the very edge of it, where most of the harvesting took place, people often went missing, being either lost to the treacherous waters or pulled in by whatever creature made such a place it’s home. “We must be extremely cautious here, BP,” Vagari warned as he scanned the horizon of the seemingly never-ending mire. “No one has ventured this far west in the bog before. We’re in uncharted territory.”
“Do… do you think there are creatures here?” BP asked in a squeak. “Like the ones in the inner city – the mean ones that broke all Aan’s cameras? They didn’t like being seen…”
“Undoubtably,” answered Vagari truthfully, “and probably worse. Aberrants, demons, and other horrors… These things are everywhere, but it’s really the unknown we must contend with. Uncharted territory contains unknowable possibilities. Maybe we just find algae. But all the same, we must be vigilant. I’m counting on you to assist me in that. Keep your eyes open and let me know if you… sense anything.”
BP was feeling nervous so far from the city A.I., Vagari could see it plainly. She had never been outside the city before, and the device had been her eyes, ears, and constant companion for however long she had been stuck there alone. Even now, with its uplink severed by the distance, she still held the tablet at the ready in the nook of her arm, waiting for any guidance it might offer. BP wrung her gnarled hands for a moment. She took a deep breath before giving him a firm nod while saying shakily, “I’ll do my best… I mean – yes, you can count on me.” Vagari smiled encouragingly and then said, “That’s all I ever ask.”
Their trek through the boglands were arduous and slow going, but over the following days, BP quickly proved to be an able companion. She told Vagari about the handful of times she had to brave the city to scavenge, but admitted she had never gone too far from the hospital and never anywhere the A.I. couldn’t scout for her. She had avoided the inner city for that exact reason. The one time she had, BP had discovered a curious trait, utilizing her most jarring feature – her many-many teeth. She hadn’t been attacked, but instead fell victim to an unseen pitfall where she narrowly managed to escape by using her teeth as pitons to climb out. They could be plucked out with almost no pain, she told him, and grew back within a few days even – so long as she had gotten enough to eat.
It was no wonder how her unfortunate sibling had managed to free their progenitor. Even if it had worn its teeth to the gums, they would have regrown readily enough – especially with the amount of biomass it managed to absorb. For what purpose someone would create such a thing, Vagari couldn’t even begin to put reason to. There were enough monsters in the world – aberrants, demons, anomalies; why create another one? She wasn’t a monster, but she had great potential to become one. BP was more like him than she realized: A simulacrum, a homunculus, a golem grown in a lab in the guise of true life. Vagari’s own origin wasn’t that much different, he thought.
“See?” BP announced, drawing away his attention. “I saw something like this in one of the books in Dr. Xu’s office.” It was a spear she held, fashioned from one of her larger teeth and a rusted piece of metal she found. BP offered it to him, but Vagari declined with a wave of his long-fingered hands. “Appreciated, but you keep it,” he told her. “You may need it before our time here is through.” Vagari smiled, though he doubted she could see much of him in the dark, even as froggish as her eyes were. “If you’re adamant in exploring the world you will need to learn how to defend yourself. This spear is a good start to that. Keep it close, and don’t be afraid to use it when you have to.”
The sun would rise and fall again, giving way to the shattered moon and dim stars. At some point in the night BP had crawled to his side and fell fast asleep. It was the smallest of kindnesses not to wake her. She had lived life alone until now, even when surrounded by others, so letting her rest there at his side and feel not quite so alone for once in her life was the least he could offer, Vagari thought. He wrapped an arm around her small frame and soon enough he too fell asleep, lured into it by the winding winds and aquatic crooning. While he desperately wished to dream of the days he held that long forgotten ‘Her’ that same way, of those bittersweet memories on the now distant shores, it was a wish that was never granted. No, instead and as always, Vagari dreamt of a world ablaze, of hellfire.
A heath of dancing gold laid out before him, pitted, and pocked with stray dunes of desert sand. It all flowed like water in the breeze; a current almost hot to the skin, and oh-so-hard not to get caught in and swept downstream. The fields flowed down from the mountains far in the distance, lit against the dusking day like the countless stars above. Even from that great distance Vagari could see it as clear as if it stood plain before him: the angel, the colossus, scouring the world with sword and flame. Its single cyclopean eye burned brightest amongst the stars, trailing like the tail of a comet as red as the blood it left in its wake.
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Vagari’s heart shook with each quaking step of the titan’s advance. He cried and wailed, digging his nails into his tormented flesh as the Angel’s slow march reverberated in his tortured soul. There was no stopping it, what he brought. GOD had heard his prayers and sent his angels and his wrath with them. His pleads for forgiveness, for redemption for his immortal soul had risen a flood from times diluvian. However, it was not one to wash clean the earth, no, but one of fire to immolate it, to sear shut the wound he had caused, and to burn away the infection he had become – that he always had been.
Man had always been a plague upon the earth since its very dawning. GOD had forgiven them time and time again, but there was a limit to all things, even a father’s forgiveness. How much death, how much destruction had they wrought before they finally learned to love their fellow man? Species lost, lands tainted to the very day of supposed enlightenment – a taint they aimed to spread to the stars and worlds beyond. They had put a cage around GOD’s kingdom and sought to become like gods themselves and now he was striking them down for the insolence. They were the bricks that made up the new Tower of Babel, all of them, and as in Shinar HE was to crush every stone.
In doing right by Mankind, had they truly wronged GOD so? It took them forever, yes, but they had finally achieved the destination: peace, sustainability, unity! Surely GOD wouldn’t have left them the blueprints, the means, if they hadn’t meant to be discovered. Were their past crimes so unforgivable that their future was forfeit?! Vagari stared in awe and despair as the wall of fire grew closer and closer to the new life he had built for himself – the false life, a life of peace he knew he didn’t deserve. He had tried to live right by GOD, as so many of those who survived the end had, but he never truly believed, even after all he had seen. He was a heretic to the end because he knew the truth of it, that it wasn’t GOD’s doing, or even mankind’s. It was his own. His crimes that day sowed the field of his despair, and this was just the harvest come to fruition. That was the life he deserved. You reap what you sow, Vagari told himself as he sunk to his knees, awaiting the wall of fire to consume him body and soul. After all the pain and suffering he had caused, it was time to face the flame.
The fire never reach him, but the scent of the world it left behind, a world turned to ash, crept deep within his soul. Vagari survived the flames of yesteryear once more, awaking with the dawn two lifetimes later. BP was still clung to his side, sleeping soundly. Vagari was glad the dream hadn’t proved so turbulent to force itself into the waken world – if only so that small peace would keep. After all she had been through, she had earned some peace. BP, Soprano, Alto, the Three-Eyed Girl, they all deserved peace from the troubles he had wrought – however how small and fleeting. “Don’t you deserve peace?” Called a soft voice from across the shadowed remains of a dead campfire. “Vagari?”
A ghost sat upon the crumbling wall of moss-coated brick, but for some reason Vagari wasn’t surprised or even the least bit afraid. The Three-Eyed Girl was exactly as he saw her last when her limp form rose up above the sands that fateful night of chaos and terror. Vagari stared into the voidic depths of that third eye, into the twirling lights of eternity shining bright against the twilit shadows and tried to remember her name. Had she ever told him? He didn’t think so. Was that nameless girl to be his Banquo, his ghost at the feast? Or his Virgil, his guide through the trials of Hell? “Apparently not,” Vagari replied at last with a nasal sigh, “considering here you are. I’m asleep… and this is another fever-dream. My wound must still be plaguing me.”
“You’re right,” the specter told him. “You’re not awake, and a wound still plagues you – just not the one you think.”
“Then tell me, ghost,” he returned with an exclamative toss of his free hand, “what one does?”
“Your faith,” she answered simply, “not in GOD, but in Mankind. It’s a wound you won’t let heal. You keep punishing yourself, even after all these years, for your small part in what happened to the world.”
“Small part?” Vagari echoed with a dour laugh. “I guess it is a small part, the trigger. I looked peace, unity, and everything good and loved right in the eye and then pulled it. I pulled the trigger and shot it all in the head.”
“There were a lot of triggers being pulled,” said the specter kindly. “Be it one or a thousand, the bullet was to be fired. It always would have been, your finger on the trigger or not. You had no choice – not really. No one did.”
“You saying that the world would always end up like this means nothing,” spat Vagari in a hiss. “What does that change? Does it change what I did? What I have to do to make it right? Does that ease the world’s pain and suffering? Not mine. It doesn’t ease my conscious in the least. It doesn’t change anything, prove anything! All you’ve convinced me of is that sickness speaks in riddles.”
Vagari blinked and the apparition was closer; no longer sitting upon the wall, but right across from him, prodding at the ground as if she were stoking a fire. The shadow of the hole in her chest danced upon the face of the wall lit by phantom flames. “I’m not trying to convince you,” uttered the revenant softly. “You’re closer than you think – to the truth. Can you feel it; so warm it’s scalding? You’ll find it in the East, what you’ve been looking for – really looking for – the proof you need. I’m just sorry for what happens before then.”
Vagari eyed the specter with obvious distrust, trying to piece together the mystery of her appearance. It felt like a dream and made about as much sense as one too. However, some part of him knew it was more than that; knew that she was more than that, more than a dream, more than a ghost. He could feel it – the warmth. It made him want to trust, to have faith. “What’s in the East?” Vagari asked warily, cautious of that intruding feeling. “What am I really looking for?”
She smiled, wide and kind – a sight that filled him to the brim with that warmth. But, in an instant it was replaced wholly by that invasive cold. That foreign dread washed over him in a flash as the blackness of her third eye bloomed, consuming the dreamscape around them. With the darkness came a vision – an image – one of cracked and frozen earth; a crater as long and far as the eye could see, with miles of dead metal at the heart of it: a heavenly sword fallen to Earth – a necropolis surrounded by the icy corpses of giants. The image seared itself into his mind, remaining bright in thought even as the waken world truly came to claim him – the image and the words that followed. “The gun, Seħgaino,” the Three-Eyed Girl uttered. “The gun.”