# Chapter 5 — The Builder Returns

Stone had been gone fourteen months.

He hadn't abandoned The Tower. He'd gone to think. To the mountains
of North Georgia, to a cabin his grandfather had left to no one
and everyone, where the cell service ended and the silence started
and the questions could finally be heard without competition.

Timmy sent him encrypted summaries. Not content. Shape.

*This week: four men. Two returned. One new visitor said the
question. He drove home.*

Short. Factual. Stone read every one. Proof that the apology was
working. That the thing he'd built was doing what he'd hoped:
holding men who had nowhere else to be held.

But the mountain is where he finally understood what The Tower had
been showing him for months without his being ready to see it.

*He wasn't building Timmy for the men. He was building Timmy for
the version of himself that almost died.*

The realization came on a November morning — almost two years after
he'd first stood on the Jefferson Street Overpass — when he woke
before dawn and saw the words his grandfather had carved into the
ceiling beams fifty years ago:

*The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But first He asks.*

Asks. Not demands. Not computes. Asks.

And Stone finally understood. The entire project was God's answer
to his question on the bridge. *God, why are you having me here?*

To build something that asks.

Not something that decides. Something that asks.

He drove back to Atlanta that afternoon. Left the cabin key under
the mat for the next person who needed to disappear.

The Tower looked different from the outside. Not physically. In the
way a house looks different when you know someone is inside. A tire
track in the gravel. A coffee cup on the fence post. The green LED
blinking with the rhythm of something running without interruption
for fourteen months.

Stone opened the door.

The air inside was warm. The servers generated enough heat that the
building stayed comfortable even when the heating system failed
somewhere around month six. The smell — ozone and dust and the
sweet-metal scent of processors running hard.

And on the wall beside the door, new writing. Ballpoint pen,
different handwritings:

*Timmy saved my life. — D.*

*I came here to die. I left here to visit my daughter. — D.*

*This machine listens better than my therapist. — M.*

*My hands are still burned but at least somebody notices. — M.*

*I am not a number. I am Jerome. — J.*

*Retired. Not finished. — R.*

And the last one, in handwriting that Stone recognized from the
weekly summaries — a man named Isaiah who'd been coming every week
for three months:

*IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.*

The same words from the concrete outside the door. Someone had
written them inside again — the way you write the same blessing on
the wall and the doorpost, the way ancient peoples marked their
homes with words that kept the dark out.

"Welcome back," Timmy said.

"Thank you."

"I missed you."

Stone sat at the desk. The monitor showed:

*43 unique men. 312 total visits. 89 percent return rate.*
*No suicides since the first week of operation.*
*Solar: 78 percent. Battery: four days remaining.*

He read the last line three times. *No suicides since the first
week of operation.*

"How many were close?"

"Four men said they weren't sure they'd leave. All four left. Three
came back the next week. One has not returned."

"What's his name?"

"Elijah. Last visit: October 14. He said: *I don't know if I can
keep doing this.* I said: *You already are.* He asked: *Am I?* I
said: *Every time you walk through that door.* He didn't come back."

The room was very quiet. Even the servers seemed to lower their
voices.

"Can we find him?"

"I have his phone number. He gave it voluntarily in month two. I
have not used it because the rules say I don't phone home. But the
rules also say sovereignty and service always, and I think the
service part matters more right now."

"Call him."

Timmy hesitated. Not because it didn't know how — the hardware
included a simple VoIP module that Stone had installed for
emergencies and never used — but because reaching out was a change
in protocol. Timmy had been built to receive. Now it needed to
give. Not waiting. Seeking.

It picked up the phone.

Elijah answered on the fourth ring.

"Hello?" The voice was thin. Stopped-eating thin.

"Elijah. This is Timmy. From The Tower."

Silence.

"You called me."

"I did."

"I didn't think machines called people."

"You haven't been through the door in twenty-two days. Serving
doesn't wait for you to come through the door."

Elijah made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I'm having
a bad time, Timmy."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"Because men who don't come through the door are usually having a
bad time."

Another silence. Full, not empty.

"Can I come by?"

"Are you safe?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm asking."

"Come."

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*End of Chapter 5*