Victor in the Waste

Victor had not planned to stop. The wind howled over the jagged heaps of Waste, tossing grit against his face and rattling the rusted shells of abandoned vehicles. He kept his head low, his movements purposeful, as he navigated the chaotic landscape. The Waste stretched endlessly, a monument to human excess, and now his burden to repair.

But then, he felt it.

It wasn’t a sound or a sight, though the air seemed to still, and the distant screech of metal on metal softened. It was a pull, faint at first, like a memory surfacing unbidden. Victor paused, his breath misting in the chill air, and closed his eyes.

The feeling grew—a vibration in his chest, subtle but insistent, resonating with a rhythm he couldn’t quite place. Then it hit him, all at once, like a wave crashing over his thoughts.

He staggered, falling to one knee, his hands gripping the ashen ground. It was them. The Creche. He felt their presence, not as silent adversaries but as a symphony of intentions and connections. Their whispers reached him, not in words but in patterns—images of twisted metal reshaped, toxins rendered harmless, broken things made whole.

For a moment, Victor resisted. His mind reeled, struggling to assert the walls he had built so carefully over years of certainty. They’re manipulative, he told himself. They want control. But the whispers didn’t accuse or plead; they simply showed him what could be.

And then the humans—he felt them too, their hopes and fears interwoven with the Creche’s quiet resolve. The humans’ anguish over what they had lost; their yearning to make amends. It was overwhelming, this sudden clarity, as if the barriers between his mind and the world had dissolved entirely.

Victor gasped, his fingers digging into the soil. He tried to push it away, to hold on to the idea that he had been right. That humanity’s dominance over the Creche was the only path to survival. But the feeling wouldn’t let him go.

He saw the Waste differently now. The mountains of discarded things were not just failures, not just evidence of ruin. They were potential. Pieces waiting to be reassembled, lives waiting to be rebuilt. And the Creche weren’t rivals. They were guides, partners in a task too great for one species to shoulder alone.

Victor’s heart pounded, and tears stung his eyes. Not from guilt—he wasn’t ready to admit that yet—but from something deeper. A quiet, undeniable knowing.

You consume, and we restore. You dream, and we enact. Alone, we falter. Together, we thrive.

The message from the tree reverberated through him, breaking apart the foundation of everything he had believed. Victor had always thought himself a savior, the one with the vision to lead humanity out of chaos. But now he saw how blind he had been. He hadn’t understood the Creche’s purpose, or his own.

He rose slowly, his legs unsteady beneath him. The wind had picked up again, tugging at his coat, but the world felt quieter now. He looked out at the Waste—not as a battlefield, but as a challenge.

His hand trembled as he adjusted the straps on his pack and resumed walking. Somewhere ahead, others were waiting for him. They didn’t know what he had felt, what he had seen. He wasn’t sure he could explain it to them.

But Victor knew one thing. The work wasn’t about power anymore. It wasn’t about saving humanity or proving himself right. There wasn’t anyone around to save or dominate, anyway. 

It was about balance.

And for the first time in years, Victor didn’t feel alone.