In Lily’s Garden.

Riding the Arrow of Time

I found another translator hidden in the mysterious moonlight through the study window. I crafted the moon into a necklace and wore it around my neck, then leaped out the window. The translator knows the way. Wherever I go, a flow forms, and once created, it never fades. Following the path to her, I stretched a curved flow behind me like a bow and fashioned it into an arrow in the shape of a scale. Sitting atop the arrow, I shot it, arriving in an instant at her location. On her phone screen, I imprinted the path I took, the flow, and the ripple of movement.

Her gaze traced the path, following the ink of the vertical city within countless texts and images, and finally aligned with mine. She tried to interpret the event with her mind, but it’s beyond understanding. Yet, her effort wasn’t in vain. Following the path I showed her, she discovered many things, weaving the path together. I captured the translator from my garden and left it hidden for her. She reads the translator, and the translator reads my garden. So, she knows me better than I do.

In the priest’s study, a tall man gazed at an apple tree. In a large room filled with towering bookshelves, he pulled the cord on a curtain. When he tugged the blue cord, hidden books with shades of blue glowed with a blue light. Next, he pulled the yellow cord, and scattered, seemingly unorganized yellow books briefly glowed before returning to ancient texts. She watched the man from afar, wondering if there was a pattern. Books lay scattered without any clear organization. There was only one pattern she found pull a cord, and the corresponding color lights up.

Can you find a different narrator in the same sentence? The one coloring my flow…

Who is it? Christine, answer me.

Pattern, cord, flow. Pattern, cord, flow. Your pattern is me. Christine.

A man’s voice overlaps.

“Pattern, cord, flow. Pattern, cord, flow. Your pattern is me. Christine.”

Somewhere in this enormous study is a book by the man who once mechanized this place. I’ll find his records and pass them to a professor here at this university who once did the same work as me. But first, I need to find the book containing his records, travel to the Land of Translation and the Land of Legacy, entrust the translation to Christine, and then return to publish in the Book of Dolls.

I don’t know where his record is, but I know who has it.

Yes. Christine. It’s you. You have it.

“Yes. Christine. It’s you. You have it.”

Do you understand what that means? I said I’d give you the translation, but since you’re a translator, there’s no need for you to translate. Just write; that’s your ability. If I’m the woman’s natural enemy, it means that if she lives, I am inevitably the evil.

But I bear her no malice.

•

Watch what I do closely. I’m helping the woman, bringing her the professors she’ll need, bringing you the books, bringing in faculty. Yes, I am you. I heard this phrase once: deliver us from evil. Solve the riddle of the question I present. This university is now yours, Christine. You’re me this semester. I’ll give you an assignment. Explore the neural pathways from the time this study was mechanized. Analyze them and solve the path mathematically. The title of the book is Temporal Symphony. It’s the foundation for future textbooks at this university. – A mechanician of Euclid View University.