Chapter 3: The Encounter in the Dust
Elias decided to leave the city. He took a transport to the outskirts, where the "Unlinked" lived—those who chose to exist outside the grid.
He found a man there, an old woodworker named Silas who lived in a shack that smelled of cedar and sweat. Silas didn't have a screen. He had a Bible, its leather cover worn smooth by decades of contact.
"You're looking for Him," Silas said, not even looking up from his lathe.
"I'm looking for the truth," Elias corrected, though his voice lacked conviction.
"Truth isn't a set of facts, boy. It's a person," Silas said. He stopped the lathe and looked Elias in the eye. "You've spent your life filtering the world so you don't have to feel. But Love...
Love is the ultimate lack of a filter. He saw the world exactly as it was—the rot, the sin, the filth—and He walked right into the middle of it because He wanted us."
Elias felt a heat behind his eyes. "How do you love someone you can't see?"
Silas smiled, a slow, creased expression. "How do you know the wind is blowing when you're in a sealed room? You don't. You have to open the window. You've been living in a vacuum, Elias. Open the window."