KaktusKontainer

From unending silence came chaos and amid it burned potential. Potential reached out and pulled you through the quiet and into being. You looked upon still creation and demanded action. You touched upon singular totality and mandated expansion. Your protests seared at slothful void and ignited its fringes in a prideful declaration. So long as you were, you would seek to be. With all creation deserving to share in the privilege of your power.

You forged night sky into new life for dead wings. Feathers wide, you soared over space for a wick to rest yourself upon while the wax of cooled creation built. From your right arm mortal life knows the rose's scent and the mother's milk. From your left comes the silent bonfires and the warmth of providing daylight. From your heart we anchor ourselves to the love life has for itself and from your eyes we see the hour of our triumph.

Now, long past the day of our birth, we stare up to you as the grown child. Ready for the mantle and the compassion that is our own.

Let us be your potential just as you have been ours, dear Pangloss.

Upon a rock among many dwelt a modest man in a traveling band upon the desert. In his hand he strummed his work of wood and sinew. Amid a haze of fog and wine he wandered far from company and found himself alone. Above him burned a star amid unbroken night that beckoned him forward with vengeful tones and lyrics like honest conquest. It seared against the dark like smelted bronze with rays hammered wide until drowning out any kin as the man marched. This was a muted flame, amid windswept dunes it offered the man no warmth and no love. Still, he pursued it with fermented curiosity and abandon until he came upon an oasis.

He dropped to his knees and felt for the water amid the dark but found it as ice. In the reflection of its surface gleamed the star above, his attention still demanded. He waited for day but felt his bones chill and his flesh burn. He cursed his lot under the star's cold light and thrashed against the rime beneath. Under uncharitable illumination, he made his own patron and set tinder to his prized instrument. It burned against the star in competition as the man fed his oils and leather to the birthed flame.

From his offering, the flame returned cries. Within its kindling thrashed a newborn boy soaked in the warmth of the man's generosity. The musician pulled the child to his chest and cut from his own head two cubits of hair to cover the infant. The star above grew in jealousy as the man comforted the child and it sent a zephyr to rob them of burning comfort. With a glare up at his foe, the minstrel offered up his clothing and sandals to the inferno he built. Once more the blaze cried and from it came another son, a younger sibling for the firstborn of generous flame and selfless hope.

When dawn came and charitable rays chased off the star, the man laid between the children and slept. As he slumbered, his flame grew wide and brought sustenance from land once barren and water once denied. The man awoke to a garden and its tender sitting before him. The brilliance of the gardener's hands caressed each son's face and they kissed the father upon his forehead. The man looked up to the sun and saw the cosmos beyond. He looked down to his children and saw fairer stars and the warmth of morning.

The gardener took the ash of the man's flame and held it aloft to the light of day. The wind swept across them and spread the ashes to the reeds and saplings. Flora bent to maker's command and came before them into an instrument as polished as marble with sounds as intoxicating as lotus water. On eight hands the new work was presented to the musician and the gardener thanked him in a chorus of four. The man asked the gardener their name and they smiled.

"I am happy. I am alive. I am hopeful. I am Pangloss."

The man said a prayer between his sons and their voices gave chorus to his praise. The firstborn offered verses that brought grains to sands while the younger caroled fat onto the famished beasts. The light of humanity's flame flared in response to benevolent offerings and shined upon the three until they found themselves within the maker's garden. They followed the scent of ambrosia and the radiance of Elysian light until they came upon a spot where rivers split and benefactor stood. The musician, blessed with long prosperity from flaming kiss, prostrated himself before Pangloss and spoke.

"Oh Host of Burning Hospitality, I lay my children before you as you presented them to me many years ago. I beg of you to give them your guidance and law as you did myself, to know and to perpetuate your glory."

The sun shifted from shades of jade, garnet, and sapphire as their patron laughed.

"I possess no laws but love. I offer no guidance but gratitude. I have nothing to give to you or your progeny but the hope you have already made."

The two youths stepped forth from their father's flanks and genuflected.

"Then challenge us as you did our father, oh Lord of Charities. Let us know the cold of destructive trial and the warmth of creative victory. Let us triumph over the celestial sigils of false gods and hateful light. A challenge so that our children may come to know our god as we have."

With a heave of their lungs and an expelling bellow, Pangloss warned the youths.

"Do not tempt nostalgic power from long dead regret. The light of failures buried is an extinguishing illumination. It only blinds. It cannot lead you to anywhere but the ruin in which it wallows in. Look forward for fetal stars, not backwards for a mummified nemesis."

With their god's wisdom in ear, the father rose to his feet and led his children from the garden ever in bloom. Under peaceful stars and over harboring flame the musician told his children of women, wine, and the songs of his youth. The eldest cajoled their father with beer and bread into speaking of their birth and his skybound enemy once more until he relented. The father mocked their foe with intoxicated courage until their disdain found companionship among the dark. Malignant light flickered to life as wizened wayfarer slept with only his heirs to witness it. The elder of the two siblings turned to his brother and taunted the new star above.

"Let us end this wretched pretender, this foul affront to kind aspirations and generous being."

The younger looked up to the light with the errant wobbling of reluctant duty.

"I hear only the bleating of the lamb before my slaughtering knife on this wind. I see only the crimson of a day's work and the panicked horizon of the goat's eye in that light."

The eldest took the younger sibling by the hand and led him on towards the star as it grew to consume its cosmic choir.

"Then you are ready to put the blade to the light's throat. Ready for the violence that our god is too squeamish for."

The skyward challenger erupted at the summons and tore open a path unto creation's arboretum. The maligned light shined forth and the duo gave chase. They ran under the auspices of grasses and under the graciousness of birdsong. The tread by starlight and the heat of their own hearts. They heaped their pain and purpose onto the star's pyre and continued on until they came upon the point of their divine congress.

The star's light radiated out from the split in the garden's rivers and its taunts echoed towards the two as they approached. The siblings rested by the water and the light's voice echoed from the ripples at the riverbank.

"Hate me."

The brothers stood tall and the elder took the lead into the water. The farmer's sweat and the worm's toils came to the same bedrock amid the river. All had equal shoring upon the beach that was mortal continuance. A cicada only wakes to mate. A human only struggles to make itself irrevocable. Empire was just sex on a continental scale. An older brother's love was only a means to favoritism. A younger brother's admiration was just replacement waiting.

The older brother breached the surface where he came upon a stone amid the waters and clung to it. He extended his hand to his sibling but found himself alone above flowing water. Across the skin of the river shined the star's light. The budding patriarch looked up and found the light etched upon the night above, a permanent malicious mark upon kinder creation. He thrashed the waters about and the star laughed at his bellows like a cat watching a mouse search for offspring already devoured.

"Abel! Wherefore art thou, brother?"

The waves shined with their answer.

"Beneath and above. Past and forward. Forsaken and hated. He will spurn life and remain only in my light."

The eldest sibling thrust his hand into his own chest until a wellspring of blood erupted. He bled into the river as his cries carried far until a preoccupied patron took notice. A campfire appeared before the brother and seared with inquiry.

"What have you done? My sky is marred and your brother is lost."

The eldest wept, his eyes bled like sluice gates parted for the most urgent of messengers. He stared within and pleaded to his god.

"Take myself! Inflict what pain you can! Just bring to me Abel!"

Lunar reflection brought acquiescing radiance unto the musician's child and the path to the forsaken was lit. Past longing reefs of reality long dead, the eldest swam until his lungs burned like flaming sulfur and he came upon the extinguished vessel of his kin. With a heave of mortality denied amid his diaphragm, the older sibling met familial lips and blew into the body of his brother.

Light reflected was light held and the star greeted the older brother as eyes met. Cruel refraction spread his malignant patron from the youth's sight to creation's tributaries. The works of mortals and divinity alike would know wrath. They would know malice. They would know hate.

The firstborn pulled his brother from the river and laid him upon the bank. He built a pyre from reeds and goatskin and begged his god for clemency. Behind him, the younger child rose to his feet and reached up towards the star and the black surrounding it. With apathetic conscious and violent intent, his hands found a hold on oblivion's edge.

Abel approached his sibling with blade in hand and jealousy in heart. He drove his knife into his brother's back and kissed him upon the rear of his neck.

"You will know me as I now know you, Cain. Fragile and forceful. Admirable and abominable. Love and hate both press into you now."

Blood and flame gushed forth from the wound and carried Abel away from his brother and out of the garden. Cain staggered before the light of his Lord and came to a kneel before the radiance of living will.

"Forgive him, Pangloss. I am the sinner here. Deliver unto my brother the salvation that is your covenant."

The heartfelt hearth flared at his generous intent and called forth to wings above. Fifty four birds plunged out of the sky and into the waves of the river before Cain. Under their collective cosmic wingspan came the bedrock upon which his brother once rested. Its cracks seethed with the star's light and its rust glared at the injured sibling with hatred pickled over years exponential.

"Disgusting"

Corvid couriers carried the stone from the garden and flung it upon the sands beyond. They rooted themselves as one being at the arboretum's entrance and shined with the perseverance of life itself. From the rock's crevices crawled the world's first serpent with echoing hisses of brilliance long absconded.

Amid the desert was the expelled sibling. Abel walked for a fortnight under his star's unending night before he came upon the stone and the winged guardian. Past them stood his brother and father still in the light of vulnerable and charitable conscious.

"Winged one, let me know my family once more."

The being turned towards the musician and firstborn behind itself. The sun dipped and surged in cadence with the consecrated crow's words.

"I am one with your maker. I am one with your father. I am one with your brother and I am one with you. You will find them the moment you need them and your brother will search for such an instance for as long as this Earth spins."

Abel's smile grew like a leviathan that had swallowed truth whole only to defecate out disdain.

"Host of Hypocrites! Lord of Liars! God of the Graceless! I spit upon such a name that does not give me what I have earned through goat's blood and lamb's death! I am the one that rendered the fat of sacrifice. I am the one that brought innocence before necessary sharpness. And now I am the one forsaken as I did my flock upon the blade. Here to die and suffer. To kill and weep."

One hundred and eight wings flapped back in retributive tempo at his ignorance.

"I am the caring avatar of a generous god. Any penalty that you or your kin suffer is of your own making. Just as it is with your joy, love, and hate. Pangloss is a god of means, not of ends. They love you with all the same fervor with which you love yourself. When a heart and mind burn in compliment, the garden will open itself to them. Return to me when Man loves Man and Woman knows Woman. When to be Human is a work of heart, mind, and hand. You are but one child among trillions that are and will be, Able. I cannot give you what you will not give yourself."

To: Jack Bright <pcs.91etis|nimda#pcs.91etis|nimda>

From: [ERROR, STACK OVERFLOW] <pcs.432etis|nimda#pcs.432etis|nimda>

Subject: Project Penrose Assignment Notice

Sending Timestamp: 02:21:15 2061/05/21

Hello and good morning, Dr. Bright.

Due to the nature of your immortality, you will be selected for participation in a long term assignment by unanimous quorum between the Administrator, the O5 Council, and the Ethics Committee. You and SCP-963 will be transferred to Solar Orbital Site-234, currently in company orbit with 10199 Chariklo, within the next launch window. All further details concerning your duties and mission parameters will become apparent upon your arrival at Site-234. Due to the nature of Project Penrose, outgoing communications from the station will be screened and limited to mission relevant data.

Your attendance is both appreciated beyond measure and mandatory. My apologies for this are token compared to the task ahead but you have them all the same. It is the least I can offer for someone I am indebted to as much as you.

I know you carry your amulet like an anchor, but remember what it is anchoring you to. We do it for them, yesterday's rookies and tomorrow's children.

With empathy,

Jack Bright