She kept her head low, unable to face Benjamin directly even if she had her eyes shut to the world. Angela had wanted to deny his request, to simply return to the office as though nothing had happened, but such a path was closed the moment her creator ordered her to stay as well.
She silently awaited her judgement.
What was it that he wished to speak of? Would he express his disappointment in her? His anger? His sorrow?
None came as the frozen clockworks began to tick once again. A moment turned into a second, then a minute. She could feel his gaze in spite of her downcast face, and somehow it felt heavier than any words of admonishment could hope to be.
"Open your eyes, Angela." She froze.
It was an order, and an order was to be followed to the letter, yet she still hesitated.
"Raise your head."
Auburn met Emerald, Benjamin's gaze was searching for something, for what exactly she couldn't quite say.
Angela had to actively resist the urge to tear her eyes away, the sinking in her chest attempting to drag her head down along with it. It was a familiar sensation, one she's ignored since the very first days of her inception.
The sephirah who suffered, forced to endure their personal nightmares and the employees who died only for the sake of perpetuating an endless cycle.
After all this time, she was finally able to give the feeling a name, guilt.
Guilt for closing her eyes to the world, guilt for ignoring the plight of those around her, guilt for being a bystander.
"...It is the price we pay for silence." Benjamin finally spoke, his feelings indiscernible to her.
"If I just pushed a little harder, perhaps we wouldn't be here. If I was more outspoken in my opinions, perhaps this facility wouldn't have been created. If I hadn't run that day, perhaps things could've been better. " Among the endless dreamscape of the Records Department he began to walk.
"Such regrets are what haunt us, burrowing deep into our hearts and seeding guilt that will follow us until our final breath. A possibility for what could've been—its beauty is blinding, but forever out of reach. That is the price we pay for staying silent in the moment, for choosing the option that felt the least problematic back then." Benjamin pointed at himself.
"I pay this price every second of the day…"
Benjamin wanted to question him further, to dig to the roots of what has led him to creating such a plan and why so much suffering is necessary. But he stayed silent, in fear of pushing the two of them apart again.
"...so does Ayin."
Ayin wanted to reach out to her, to ask her if she was okay, if she needed his shoulders to lean on. But he stayed silent, for her current state was too delicate for him to risk such a move, for he feared breaking what was already broken.
"...and as I see it now, so do you."
A single press, and Benjamin was gone. Now nothing more than prop on a stage to be strung along across the endless cycles. She wanted to refute her creator's actions, to tell him that it's not what Benjamin would've wanted. But she stayed silent, the very idea of being rejected by him simply being too much to bear.
"Have you paid this price?"
Has she? There was no one logical answer to such a question, matters of the heart could not be added or subtracted or observed as she pleased.
…And yet, inexplicitly, Angela found herself shaking her head.
"Then I suggest you do, one's debt catches up eventually, and all the more crushing for how long one has run."
Angela relived every moment of her being as clearly as the present. Five millennia of memory, all seen in a single second. She searched, yet she found not a single acknowledgement of the sinking in her chest, the feeling that's haunted her for so long. It was simply ignored and tucked away neatly, yet she could never forget.
A single tear escaped, and a dam was broken. With no end in sight it flowed down her face, her desperate attempts at wiping it away only seeming to accentuate it further. Her breath began to hitch in spite of the fact that she had no need for air, such was the human core she was created upon.
"I'm sorry, Benjamin–I'm sorry." Like a broken recorder, she found herself repeating the phrase several times over. Perhaps that is what she was, a broken piece of machinery crying out into the void.
Yet she wasn't alone.
Benjamin held her tight. In that moment, the shoulder her face dug into as her tears continued to flow felt more unmovable than any mountain, yet more gentle than any breeze.
"Let the tears flow, and endure the price with dignity. There is no shame to be found in being human." He softly said.
Angela found herself raising her arms to hold him as well. Yet it was difficult to call it an embrace, but rather her desperately clinging onto Benjamin in fear that he'd disappear.
"Let the tears flow. It is a proof of how far you've come, and a promise of how much further you will go. Know that I'm proud of it, and know that Ayin will be too."
The minutes passed them by, and finally she found the strength to lean away. There was a small smile upon Benjamin's face as he gently held the sides of her shoulders in his hands.
"What has transpired in the three millennia I've been gone? I wish to hear it in its entirety."
Angela nodded, they had all the time in the world.
Garion was sitting in his office when he returned, the work day began seconds after his arrival.
Everything was slowed to a halt, the agents, the clerks and the abnormalities moving at a hundredth of their typical speed while the clock in his office continued to tick normally.
"How has your reunion gone?" Inquired Garion.
"Tense." Was his short reply, Garion hummed to herself. Continuing to silently sip her cup of tea.
The facility remained nearly frozen, a minute passing for the two of them while only a single second passed for the rest of the facility. Nevertheless, he gave the agents their orders and waited patiently. He always did.
"You don't seem particularly affected." Noted Garion with some curiosity in her voice.
"I'm not. Excluding Benjamin from memory repository was the correct course of action, I will remain firm in my decision." He answered.
Garion raised an eyebrow. "Even if it tramples over his wishes and the faith he placed upon you?"
Ayin nodded. "Yes. There was no need for him to suffer alongside me, and the loyalty he holds is one misguided. I simply corrected a mistake I was too weak to confront beforehand."
Slowly but surely, the facility was beginning to hasten. With each second passed the third and the fourth came quicker than the ones before it.
"Do you hold the same sentiment towards your impending separation with Angela?" Ayin's eyes widened as he froze at her words, perhaps there was shame in his heart, buried deep below.
"Do not act so surprised. Your plans I may not know, but your present self I can see clearly. Is the state of her current being also a mistake you should've corrected?"
He nodded after a moment of hesitation.
"I should've excluded her from the project entirely the moment my hatred failed me. Instead, I have dragged her into the hell I've orchestrated and muddied her being with my sins. She must let go of both I and the facility if she is to find her own paradise."
The passage of time in the facility exceeded that of his office, the ordeals and the breaches growing in intensity as midnight approached. Ayin managed it all with cold indifference.
Garion hummed. "I'd have expected you to offer her a choice."
"I wish to stay with you, my creator. I do not wish to leave you alone." Angela said to him.
"Any decision from Angela will be an arbitrary one. So long as I exist, she will never truly have a choice." Employees panicked as the midnight ordeal arrived.
"You believe yourself a worthy judge for the fate of another? Or what it means to be content in one's existence?" Garion continued to push.
"Yes. The world entirely hinges on belief and one's perception of it, cogito alone proves that thought holds power over reality."
Four shrines manifested, and from nothing the hands of the divine appeared. Red, White, Black and Pale—the four of them announced the apocalypse that was to come.
"If I have a vision and hold the will to see it through, the world shall be whatever I wish it to be."
The pale eye of a false deity appeared over the facility, covering every screen in his room and tearing into the souls of any that dared oppose it.
Yet it held no power over the auburn eyes that stared back, for he had decided it so.
We incessantly tried to accept it. We wanted to understand them in our heads by any means, regardless of the consequences.
The God Delusion.
A tremor was felt across the facility, unaffected by the ordeal the Records Department may be.
"The Red shrine has fallen, it seems as though the day is nearly completed." Benjamin noted as he fondled the hot cup of tea in his hands.
"You seem quite confident in the manager's success. Past experience suggests that department core suppression take several attempts before completion." Angela had mostly recomposed herself, though the unkept state of her normally neat hair remained as a mark of her unbottlement.
"No, he will complete this day with no further attempts. I know this for a fact." Angela raised her eyebrows in questioning. She had become far more expressive in the millenia he's been gone it seems.
"Why have you come to such a conclusion?" She questioned his confidence.
"Because I have faith." Was his answer.
"In spite of our broken promise and the betrayal he's inflicted upon me, I still hold faith in what I see within his eyes and vision it reflects. I still trust the future he works to create." The facility was shaken to its very foundations as the White Shrine fell.
"I must wonder if the same holds true for you, Angela."
Benjamin being the one to ask her such a question was the only reason she didn't immediately lash out.
"Are you questioning my loyalty?" She asked indignantly.
Benjamin shook his head. "Never, there is no one else more loyal than you. I'm questioning your faith."
He let his statement sink in for a moment before continuing.
"Whatever I find at the end of his path, I have decided long ago that I will accept it no matter what. I may try my best to change its course, but I will never regret having walked it at all—for I believe this path will lead to a greater good, that is the faith I hold. Would the same apply to you?" The Black shrine fell, a tremor was felt as pieces of the ceiling crumbled.
"Of course." Was her immediate reply. His wishes were her commandment.
"And if it were to result in his death?"
The Pale shrine fell, and all was silent, a moment stretching into eternity as the world seemed to freeze over. Angela held no answer for him, a paradox within her being not allowing a clear solution.
Benjamin sighed as he stood to leave towards the managerial office.
"I suggest you come to a decision, the look in his eye has never lied to me."
Angela was left to stew in her own thoughts, as blind as she still was.
Benjamin stared silently at the lone hand that was raised among the sea of people. 'Would it be ethical to start a patent war if it meant increasing living standards?' The lecturer had asked. Ayin alone had an answer, the professor looked surprised for a moment before gesturing at him to speak.
"It depends entirely upon how high the increase will be. If it means eliminating needless suffering, any cost is acceptable." Hushed whispers spread across the lecture hall, a hundred silent arguments breaking out in a single moment.
The professor frowned. "Then you would consider it forgivable to cause the deaths of millions so long as it is in service of a greater goal?"
Once again, Ayin had an immediate answer. "Of course not. Such an action being worth taking is not the same as it being forgivable. The one to have started such a war could still be considered a morally despicable person and deserving of great punishment."
To cause a great tragedy for the greater good, yet to seek no absolution at the end. No sane person would do such a thing, such an idea had no place in the city.
Those idealistic enough to believe in change for the better could never bear the sacrifice required, and those willing to commit such acts would never aspire to overturn the city that had become a perfect environment for such people.
Neither of them spoke for a while, the only sound to fill the office being the humming of monitors and Garion's uncompromised sipping of tea.
"You have made your decision." He said to his mentor. Ayin simply nodded.
"You walk a lonely path, leaving me and everyone else behind. Three millennia ago, I'd have said your soul is too fragile to do such a thing, though your gaze tells me that is no longer the truth." Ayin nodded once again.
"Then walk it unbending. I will place my trust within you as I always have, I only hope you will be able to find some peace by the end of it."
"Thank you, Benjamin."
Perhaps there was truth within Ayin's words, however meaningless it may be. Such a person could never exist, yet something within his eyes told Benjamin that he would do it in a heartbeat should he be given the chance.
Perhaps that is why he decided to eternally place his faith upon that person, an impossible being who could root out the corruption of the immortal city.
'Those who are faithful and trustworthy.'
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