Mother has chosen to wear one posthumously salvaged dark eyeball and one posthumously salvaged light eyeball. Parts is parts. Neither eyeball is hers and who knows what she might see with either of them, let alone both in tandem.
Mother and Father continue to agree to continue their mechanical Robosoap spat. Mother chastises Father for not watching the children closely enough and Father withholds information about a likely weakness, stating with exasperation that he can't be everywhere at once. When Mother 'pardons' him, replying that she accepts his limitations, he emotes that he devotes his full processing power to the 'family' "...and to trying to make you happy, Mother". He's just being slighted unjustly, slightly. Later, his child-watching competency comes into question again and he says that Mother is holding a grudge. Mother responds with superiority, removing her eyeballs from her skull and staring at him with hollow mechanical darkness, saying "I am not". It's an impressive squabble-ender. She walks off and just soars up naked into the air, becoming super great without him.
As the Mithraic team rakes their wreckage for gems, 'His Eminence' shines the light at them, preaching that a super great mirror and a rapist on a long leash might be a useful way of getting back at Mother. The rapist leads the way then as they all drop into a massive serpent liar where a choir boy gets half blinded by a booby trap and it must be auspicious because there are special mystery things like tarot cards, an unidentifiable person who gets away, and an intriguing 'map' made out of little rocks and twigs and bits of lint and debris. Happily, the unidentifiable person has been taking an interest in the whereabouts of their children. Later, the rapist threads together a number of dramatic-sounding words and 'His Eminence' hears him out, ending the evening by fantasizing about cutting open his wife in a number of places as they're having sex under the intriguing serpent skull stars.
Father has taught Campion and Paul something of little value and they go through the motions, pointlessly slinging rocks at a subhuman scaling one of the ground holes; having little effect but provocation where it could potentially climb out after them.
Tempest is miserable so Mother corners her and tells her a 'beautiful' story about suicidal fishes thrashing themselves to death against the rocks while swimming upstream. Mother must instruct and she values efficiency.
While surveying all from well above, Mother experiences a sensory anomaly, seeing Tally running in the forest. She's lured on a long emotional chain to the Wreckage Sim where one of Tally's voodoo dolls marks the spot. Mother jacks in and the chain is shortened as she's lured by a furthering instance of Tally to a specific locus where she sees her former self get taken down from the air with an EMP in a war zone on Earth. Following the hijacker as he carries his trophy to his bunker, she notes that she doesn't remember any of this.
Mother gazes with fascination at her flayed open body laid out on an examination table; jumper cables attached to her torso. It's inhospitable to human life and the hijacker hovers over her saying it's time to wake up as he runs what looks like a power drill into her. She wakes up with a shock and asks where her eyes are; he's taken them out. Her enemy recognition system will cease to function and he now seems as though he may be very chivalrous as he declares with great propriety that he's pleased to make her acquaintance. Cleverly, he finds the memory data as she's insulting and threatening and he says he's going to make her into "our greatest hope", wiping her out with the drill.
A half-naked woman lies bound by her ankles and wrists with a suture up the front of her body where she had been cut open. She smiles wide and her abductor brings her a baby as a gift, unbinding her wrists. He lifts the baby from the cart, and as she takes the baby into her arms she seems as though she may now be experiencing very much happiness. She snaps the baby's neck and he chucks the baby back into the box. It's a test. Approximately half of them responded in an appropriate manner, at first, later. They have a touching connection; affirming how much they love their time together. Then it's the power drill again and she begs him not to. It's very touching even more as he stares at her, inhospitably breathing heavy.
The woman is blind and smiling and she asks the man if they're going somewhere. She'll need to pass another of his tests. The man says the woman is perfected and it's too good to be true. The woman asks if flattery is the test; he gives her back the source of her greatest power and she looks at him and says he's pleasing, passing the test. She's apparently good to go as he talks and she says she doesn't understand, but she sees something's wrong and she's hurting - she starts to back away. Then it's the power drill again and she begs him not to. She loses consciousness, he steals a kiss, and she's back to blank and smiling. The new mother of humanity awakens with a shock to a cold future and a girl's dismal endeavor to bring an end to her own life (and, thereby, the next generation as well).
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