The Gardener (IV)

Understanding everything that led up to this, that one unfortunate day in the year 2084 that started this entire nightmare. It’s crazy to think one mistake led to an eons long battle for control of a single life, a single person's soul. The Void was found by mistake, by me, Alexi Mattersol lead scientist and captain of the FSS Rising Phoenix, an American Federation research vessel in orbit around the dying globe we call home. I graduated from MIT with more than one degree in more than one experimental field, and in 2078 I joined the Federation Armed Forces. The Sino-American War has been raging since 2075, and cost my family their lives when the Bombardment of California began. I joined to help advance experimental Federation weapons.

In 2082 the Berlin Ceasefire was agreed to, and well frankly my divisions research became useless. There was an understanding that underlying dimensions were now out of grasp, but we never got to the point where we could open rifts. April 22nd, 2084, it changed, in the blink of an eye…

The simple press of a button and a faulty wire overloaded the reactor aboard Rising Phoenix sending a surge into the beam director channeling energy on specific atom clusters. The explosion tore the ship to pieces, slicing cleanly through it like butter. Most of the crew was instantly killed as the vacuum of space filled the ships remains, while some died agonizing deaths as the air was sucked out of them and their bodies froze. I wasn’t there anymore.

I woke up in a black and white expanse, pieces of Rising Phoenix surrounding me suspended in static motion, shifting ever so lightly. I could hear the distant sounds of water… dripping. Ahead of me was a path, which I slowly followed somewhat lost and dumbfounded as I realized I was somewhere much more different than anywhere I had been before. A garden.

A garden right there in front of me, it had just appeared out of nowhere. I looked down and my hands were covered in dirt, and I realized I was back on Earth, in my home city of Montreal. I never left, I stayed there for days, for months, for years, for centuries. I forgot my name, and eventually I became an eternal gardener. I met you, I finally met someone else in the Void I called home. He asked me for my name, and I told him knowing nothing better I was the Gardener. Smiling he stretched out a blood covered hand and remarked.

“Call my Syndi.”
I’ve committed a fair share of destruction, lost in a rage wanting to know who I was. One day however, I had enough… I killed Syndi and once more I was alone. That was until after a couple more centuries of solitude I met a man called Soulscratcher, what a name right? He wasn’t that bad, until I realized it was just Syndi under a new mask. That’s when it dawned on me, I created this cycle of death. I tore a pinhole into the Void big enough for this to happen, and without realizing it, that pinhole was now a chasm.

I’ve been around for 3489 years and 242 days exactly. Soulscratcher left… he said he was sorry he hurt my feelings. I don’t have feelings anymore, but that day I cried because I knew I’d be alone again. I’m stuck here suspended forever, with no real way to actually get out, at least I think so. Soulscratcher left this here for me, said the way to solve it lay somewhere… in this broken timeline. 

The answer to this is rather c l e a r hidden amongst the countless stories of the countless victims of Alexi’s mistake. Perhaps you will discover the answer. I’ll get to writing a book if y’all don’t.

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