He took a drink and the ale soothed his soddy thirst, and his parched manner, much like the milk of a mother's milken breast soothes a distressed babe, thus letting it sleep. But Brook could not sleep.
Brook waited for the moon and he finally welcomed its cool radiance at midnight when he saw it rise over the junipers. Its silvery light reflected its beauty off the scanty layers of the farming terraces.
Brook's eyes were fixed on the view outside his window. He tried to envision himself living a thousand years ago gazing out of the same window, marvelling at the sights that may have been there. In his heart, he recited a badly remembered poem that was written just prior to the War of Wars:
A torn heart dying within the mind
A failure to the reckonings —
Yesterdays, todays and tomorrows."
He lifted the palms of his hands to his sweaty face desperately trying to keep from screaming out his tortured agonies. He believed that he couldn't tell a soul about the truth concerning the past. He knew that the Law was explicit:
"The Past is non-existent. This is never to be questioned, and no investigation is permitted to be conducted, in pursuit of the question of history. History begins with "ONE". Only that which, henceforth, occurs from the year ONE will be recognised as history. Death, by torture, is the punishment for this Law's transgression." (CANON 3:18)
He turned his eyes away from the window and rose out of his chair. He slowly paced to a large cabinet beside the huge entrance doors. From around his neck, he brought forth a key and placed it into the slot of the cabinet door then slowly opened it. Inside this cabinet Brook kept, what he liked to call, "his gadgets." There were rows of buttons glowing like coloured embers. Brook applied pressure to several of the buttons.
Quickly, long drapes on the far wall rolled away and revealed a blank, white, wall that soon began to produce pictures that moved like life itself.
The images were of fire and of raging destruction. There were scenes of huge cities that stood majestically on the horizon one moment, then falling into mountainous piles of rubble, the next. More pictures showed fat people, conspiracies, death and misunderstandings. Every kind of unimaginable horror played upon the wall.
Brook sighed to himself, as he remembered the rest of the poem: