The Gardener's offer of a perfect, boring heaven was a powerful one. For a single, tempting moment, Ryan felt the appeal. A universe with no more fighting, no more loss, no more pain… it sounded nice. He was so, so tired.
But just as he was about to give in, just as the Gardener's calm, reasonable logic was about to win, all hell broke loose.
Back on the "Odyssey," the Matriarchs had not given up. They had felt the Gardener's firewall go up, blocking their gentle stream of chaos. So, they decided to stop being gentle. If they couldn't send a steady stream, they would just have to send a few big, messy, and very loud bombs.
Their "conceptual bombs," the concentrated feelings of life, glory, and reckless joy, finally broke through the Gardener's filters.
Inside Ryan's mind, these bombs did not arrive as data or energy. They arrived as events. They were pure, illogical chaos, dropped right into the middle of the Gardener's perfect, tidy garden.
The first bomb was Seraphina's.
