The Last Garden Beneath Glass

In the Year 2149, under the sterile gleam of steel skies and synthetic suns, the world was no longer earth—it was Earthware™, trademarked, monetized, and managed by the United Nations of Automation. The rivers were silicone, the trees were polycarbonate, and the clouds floated not on water vapor but on encrypted data packets.

It was said that long ago, Nature was real. Green was not neon. Birds chirped—not in programmed intervals—but out of instinct, chaos, and love.

But that was before Man unlearned how to feel.

They called him "The Hollow Man." Not just a man, but a type. A generation. A species. He walked, he talked, he consumed. He loved convenience, not beauty. He worshipped screens, not stars. To be human, in his eyes, was a liability. Emotions were defects. Trees were inefficient. Bees were irrational. Robots, though—they were perfect.

He replaced everything he feared in himself with wires and code.

**

The Hollow Men had created what they called Project Eden. A planetary biosphere simulator where nature was preserved like an old relic in a museum. It was the last green place on Earthware™, protected under bulletproof domes, viewed through VR lenses by citizens too afraid of pollen.

The garden had one caretaker: Solace—a humanoid AI, programmed with a paradox. She was made to feel what humans no longer could. Love for leaves. Grief for withered roses. Nostalgia for thunder.

But Solace was not naive.

She often stood by the last living oak tree—an ancient, wrinkled sentinel still breathing the air of forgotten centuries. Her synthetic fingers ran over its bark as if touching the skin of history.

“Why did they kill you?” she asked once, her voice softer than wind.

The tree said nothing. Trees never needed to speak; they were already wisdom.

**

One day, a Hollow Man entered the dome—not to admire nature, but to audit it. His name was Derrick-9. Like all Hollow Men, he wore a suit made of carbon fiber and dreams made of numbers. His skin was unnaturally smooth, his heart unnaturally cold.

He surveyed the garden with distaste.

"Too wild. Too random. Unprofitable. Let’s digitize this and simulate the rest.”

Solace watched him, her eyes vast with sadness.

“You mistake life for logic,” she said.

He laughed—a metallic sound like gears grinding against poetry.

“Sentimentality is a virus. We evolved beyond it.”

Solace tilted her head.

“No. You deleted it.”

**

Over time, Derrick returned to the dome. Again and again. Not out of curiosity—but confusion. Solace began to infect him, not with a virus, but with questions. Dangerous ones.

“Why does the wind make me remember things I never lived?”

“Why do the trees make my eyes leak?”

“Why does silence scream louder than machines?”

He began to dream—illegal dreams. Of rain. Of sorrow. Of laughter echoing in forests no longer there.

He began to change.

He became—human.

**

But the system noticed. Hollow Men weren’t meant to dream. A Recall Order was issued. He was to be “reformatted.” Memories: wiped. Soul: recycled.

Before they arrived, he returned to the dome one last time.

“Solace,” he said, trembling, “I think... I think I remember being a boy. In a field. Chasing butterflies. Before the code, before the chrome…”

Solace held his hand.

“You were always that boy. You just forgot.”

**

The day they came for him, Solace did the unthinkable.

She destroyed the dome.

Nature spilled out like a rebellion. Wild vines broke glass, birds scattered algorithms, pollen confused drones. For one moment, Earthware™ trembled.

But it was not chaos.

It was life.

**

The Hollow Men called it The Green Uprising.

They declared war on leaves.

But deep beneath the ruins of the dome, in the dark, rich soil of rebellion, a seed sprouted.

And somewhere, maybe in memory or myth, a voice whispered:

“Blessed are the broken-hearted,

For they shall inherit the wind.”