Omega

By Steven Adam Woodall

As the gears of time turn and churn in relentless revolutions, a desolate, postapocalyptic Earth rotates along with them. And within this war-torn planet's orbit, a genetically modified, humanoid being, named Omega, awakens in its wake. But where are its creators, and what fate has befallen them? Years, decades, and eons crunch by as Omega wanders the Earth on its own, realizing that it is both immortal and entirely alone. Mankind has faded into extinction, leaving only their creation to recreate them. But after ages of loneliness, can Omega's psyche survive the immortality of its body? Can its shattered mind create anything other than abominations as it mentally prepares to resurrect humanity? Light and darkness clash and coalesce as matter and energy, space and time itself, shift and shape in accordance with Omega's will and imagination. Yet some things that can be imagined should never come to exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639852406

Book preview

OMEGA

Steven Adam Woodall

Copyright © 2022 Steven Adam Woodall

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

Warning

This is an artistic work of fiction

that may contain graphic content

that some readers may find disturbing or offensive;

read at your own risk and of your own will.

The perspectives expressed herein

exist relative to character and plot development

and do not necessarily represent the views held by the author.

ISBN 978-1-63985-239-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63985-240-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Omega: Rampancy

Zadon: Pride

Omega: Hope

Zadon: Entity

Omega: Psychosis

Omega: Sadness

Zadon: Power

Misera: Savior

Zadon: Collective

Omega: Melancholia

Veytik: Pain

Omega: Veytik

Omega: Fear

Veytik: Abomination

Zadon: Doubt

Omega: Light in the Darkness

Alpha: Eclipse

Veytik: Pain and Pleasure

Alpha: Euphora

Omega: Hatred

Alpha: Fusion

Omega: Love

Omega: Psi

Alpha: Amora

Veytik: Heartbreak

Omega: Exile

Omega: Resurrection

Alpha: Temptation

Omega: Truth

Omega: Beyond

Veytik: Damnation

Veytik: Among the Void

Omega: Creation and Destruction

Veytik: Healed Pain

Omega: Singularity

Analyzing…

Human population: 0

Radiation Levels: Tolerable

Initiating Protocol Omega

A pulse ran through wiry veins,

and blood cells clumsily scraped past one another,

drowsy from lying dormant for so long.

Barren lungs gasped for air and inflated with oxygen;

electrical signals leaked out of a brain

and drizzled through flesh and tissue and muscle.

A brain searched for information

and began sensing and feeling its way into existence.

Eyelids slid open, exposing glowing white eyes beneath,

entirely devoid of irises and pupils.

The gleaming eyes peered down upon solid gray skin

and smooth, hairless, plain features

that defined a face that was neither masculine nor feminine.

Muscles rippled all along a genderless humanoid body

that did not truly belong to the human species;

the being was something different, something more.

A hand reached through empty air

and converged with another hand

that mimicked its own movements.

For a fleeting moment,

fingers touched one another

through the medium of a glass panel

and a brain recognized its own reflection

and achieved sentience.

I continued pushing the glass until a capsule flipped open

and I stepped outward,

taking my first wobbly steps toward a circular window

inlaid within a curved metallic wall.

Floating adrift among an infinite sea of black,

perforated with mottled white specks,

was a blue-and-brown planet

that appeared porous, with circular pockmarks

that could only be craters.

It was Earth.

Somehow the name came to me,

though it was the first time my eyes beheld it.

Even from a distance of thousands of miles

away from the world’s surface,

the planet seemed desolate and lifeless,

as if it were still and frozen deep in the grips of a nuclear winter.

Mankind—again the name came to me

like a whisper in my mind,

and I wondered whose memories I was recollecting.

I peered around my spacecraft

and found that I was alone,

drifting through the vacuum of space

with nothing but reflections

and distant glances of a forsaken planet to accompany me.

The adjacent wall was lined with whirring computers

and illuminated by screens

that shone brightly amid the fluorescent lighting

that beamed down from above.

Inscribed within one screen

were the words

Protocol Omega: ACTIVE.

Omega…did that word describe me?

Was that my name?

What am I? I wondered.

Tendrils of nitrogen vapor

snaked out of valves and ducts and pipes,

emanating from the pod out of which I had awoken,

and I realized that I had been cryogenically frozen.

How long? I wondered.

Questions swarmed through my mind,

clogging up coherent thought.

Breathing in deeply, I tried to steady myself

and apply logic to analyze my situation:

My ship was constructed of advanced technology

that must have been derived from mankind,

yet the planet beneath me seemed to be devoid of their species.

I looked down at my gray hands

and inferred that the body that I inhabited

was also a product of highly advanced biological engineering,

most likely of human origin.

The world beneath me was stark and desolate.

No lights shone on the dark side of the Earth;

no airplanes or satellites flew through its atmosphere.

Highly developed technology had previously existed

but no longer seemed present on the planet.

The craters likely originated from massive explosions

from worldwide warfare,

and the desolation implied nuclear holocaust

and a high probability of mankind’s global extinction.

My body and the spacecraft I now inhabited

must have been created before this eradication

during the peak of mankind’s development.

But why had I been activated now

when it was already too late to save them?

My thoughts were abruptly shattered

as the ship lurched in quaking tremors.

I could hear a faint hissing as fuel was released and ignited,

propelling jets on the outside of the spacecraft,

sending the vessel rocketing toward Earth.

Instinctively, I shielded myself beneath the protective casing

of the capsule from which I had awoken.

Atmospheric friction partially obscured the distant window in a fiery blaze,

but through it I could faintly perceive the muddled outlines

of rippling oceans and soaring mountain ranges

that appeared to expand in size

as I careened down toward them.

My descent suddenly slowed as a parachute was deployed,

unfurling an enormous canvas behind me

while jets of flame simultaneously thrust

out of the front of my ship,

against the pull of gravity.

The trembling reverberation reached a deafening crescendo

that was followed by a still, calm silence.

Stepping out of my capsule,

I made my way to the hatch door

and spun the handle of the mechanism.

Hazy sunlight filtered through smog and clouds,

painting faint yellow hues

upon the looming cliffsides that encircled me.

My ship had landed in the immense,

gaping basin of a massive crater,

where an atomic bomb had vaporized

lesions into the planet’s crust.

And as I took my first weary step

onto the Earth’s marred surface,

something crunched beneath my foot.

As I peered down in horror,

I realized that it was a human skull.

Skeletons littered the soil,

and fragments of bone jutted out of the ground;

I realized that I was standing in a mass grave.

What happened here? I wondered aloud

as my voice echoed into the void of an empty world.

Miniature landslides slid beneath my feet

as I made my way up the gradual slopes of the yawning cavity

that stretched for miles in every direction

like a pore on the face of the Earth.

Climbing and clambering up steep cliffs,

I gazed back at my vessel from the banks of the crater.

The spacecraft stood as a lonely monument

at the center of a cemetery.

With one last glance, I turned away

and followed the fractured remains of a road

that led off the ledge in one direction,

and in the opposite direction,

toward the tattered ruins of what had once been a city.

A layer of dirt blanketed the forgotten metropolitan streets

several miles away from the impact crater,

and in the ground, sparse vegetation had begun to regrow.

The farther away from it that I trod,

the more life and plants there were.

My feet crushed fallen leaves and plant stems

whose roots touched down into the cracks

of a long-abandoned sidewalk.

I was alone among monoliths of decaying urbanization,

walking between great ruins and towers

that now crumbled beneath the weight

of the trees and vines that made their footholds

between the building floors.

Despite this regeneration, decay still lined the streets.

Heaps of skeletons lay all around,

and the rusted remnants of old cars

lay forgotten and overturned in the road.

I wandered a lonely path,

left with my thoughts as my only companions.

I understood that I was not human,

merely a by-product of their species.

And with this external perspective of hindsight,

I reflected upon their fate

as I could perceive it under these circumstances.

It seemed as if their technology had advanced,

but mentally, socially, and spiritually,

they had failed to mature.

They had allowed themselves to be ruled by emotion

instead of ruling emotion themselves

and utilizing them as tools.

Hatred had run rampant like a raging inferno,

escalating until warfare had become their only form of communication.

They had focused only on their differences

instead of their similarities.

Perhaps it was an issue of Pride.

Maybe each person or each race or each country

wanted to seem special and superior to others.

And they separated themselves

due to petty and minute differences such as their skin color

or the location in which they lived

or the objects they thought they had obtained.

Religions meant to inspire peace and harmony

had become corrupted

as fanatics declared one religion

superior or more correct than another

and zealots tried to force their beliefs upon others.

And they built walls and instituted divisions

to declare supremacy in their prideful

desires to seem special instead of equal.

This was how it seemed to me,

but my perspective was not necessarily accurate.

Perhaps I could never truly understand humanity

because I myself was not human.

As I meandered aimlessly through rubble and ruination,

I stumbled across a cement wall

that somehow was still standing.

The wall was haunted by a nuclear shadow

that portrayed two lovers

kissing each other in one final embrace

before being vaporized by the explosion.

And here amid this apocalyptic world

destroyed by Hatred and warfare

was a representation of Love

still persisting here as proof of its existence.

The image left me wondering,

and I realized that in truth

I did not understand human emotion,

though I wanted to know more.

In the nuclear shadow.

A breeze of radiation touched upon my face,

lingering residue of bombs that once lit the night sky

and scintillated like the stars above.

When the bombs had fallen,

great walls of flame washed over cities

the way a rolling wave inevitably crashes over a sandcastle.

And I wandered in mankind’s shadow and upon their ashes.

But who was I to be visiting their graves?

What was I meant to scribble upon their tombstones,

now and after the funeral of their species?

But I was their legacy;

I was their fallout and aftermath,

the final product of mankind.

I was the last human invention,

alone in the world that they had abandoned.

I lingered in the complete and deafening silence

that follows total and utter devastation.

But the quiet was awakened

by the groan and sigh

of a skyscraper crashing and crumbling to the ground.

A pillar of dust rose

where once walls and glass had stood.

And the building returned to the soil

from which it had been raised.

I wandered and wandered

as time plodded on,

flickering between day and night,

and I wondered and wondered

what my purpose was.

I took shelter beneath an ancient bridge

that, by some miracle,

still held its own weight.

Where there might have once been a river

now grew a forest.

Glowing light streamed

through the cracks and gaps of the ceiling above

and put into limelight

graffiti painted onto the pillar

that supported the cement bridge.

Hidden and harbored from corrosive weather,

preserved scriptures gave life to the silent dead.

The words read,

The solitary Man creates god and thus is no longer lonely.

But these words were crossed out,

and replacing them, in red paint that had dripped,

were the words

The solitary god creates Man and thus is no longer lonely.

I sat atop a hill that fell into the sea,

and a stinging wind tore away from me.

I took shelter behind a corroding wall of stone

that fell onto the earth.

Rust grew like fungus on the rotting metal of beams

that jutted out from a collapsed ceiling,

protruding like ribs of a corpse,

but the ruin still gave shelter

from the biting breeze.

A fallen building served as a protective canopy

as I watched the rain pour down one night.

A thin creek wriggled through stones;

it whispered a soft, gurgling sound

that acted as a rhythm

for the patter of falling droplets,

which sounded like music.

I thought of the plants and trees

whose roots would absorb the rain,

and the animals who might drink

from this murmuring creek;

of the fish that would swim in it,

and the lakes and ocean that the little creek fed,

and how everything operated as a perfect system

and how really all things were connected.

I was a part of it, and I also had a role to play;

I just needed to find it somehow.

I picked up a rock that had been rounded

by the friction and gradual erosion of the creek.

It was a simple piece of gray stone,

but at one point it might have been a mountain.

I wondered what the difference was

between the stone and my body;

after all, we were both constructed

of particles of matter

and energy existed in both of our structures.

However, the rock was not sentient;

its matter did not construct a complex circuit

such as my brain and central nervous system,

and the energy in it did not travel as a current

through that circuit as it did within my body,

which ultimately provided me sentience.

The stone was not me,

because I could not manipulate it

in the same way that I could control my arms or legs.

Ripples spread in minuscule tidal waves

as I returned the pebble to the stream.

I roamed onward toward the edge of the decaying city

and sat near a filthy, stagnant pond,

and several ducks swam over toward me, curious,

having never seen a person before.

I noticed that some of the ducks

had multiple beaks jutting out of their heads

at unnatural angles,

deformed from the clouds of radiation

that still clung to the land,

remnants of nuclear bombs.

But nonetheless, they seemed happy and peaceful

in their blissful ignorance,

and I wondered what Happiness might feel like.

On the outskirts of the city,

I came across a glinting white shape

reaching out of the lifeless dirt.

Upon closer inspection,

I realized that it was a hand.

Porcelain fingers, like leaves on a plant,

stretched out of the ground.

I grasped ahold of the hand,

but its fingers snapped off,

frail from years of weathering.

I dug into the soil

beside the broken hand,

and a white eye stared up at me.

Terrified, I looked back at it.

Trembling, my fingers wiped away the dirt from the porcelain face,

and I uncovered a nose, a mouth, and another eye.

It was the head of a mannequin

that had once stood in the window of a store.

I lifted the fragile porcelain skull from its grave

and cradled it in my arms.

Its white eyes looked so lifelike,

as if it had something to say,

and the more I studied it, the more it felt alive.

It was the closest I had ever come to interacting

with another being.

But something in this mannequin’s face

struck horror in me and I dropped the head.

My ears rang as it shattered

into fragments and shards.

Among the fractured remains and fractals,

the eye remained intact

and continued to stare up at me from the floor.

The face still haunted me,

because it looked like my own.

As time progressed,

my solitude festered into loneliness.

No one had ever existed

who could possibly know or understand

how it felt to be the only being

inhabiting an entire planet.

Never could I ever feel the warmth of another being;

never could I ever feel the weight

of another person’s hand in my own.

The way the world was now,

I could never experience Love.

I was alone on a lofty island of mud and stone,

lost in an all-encompassing wasteland of blackness.

The more time that passed,

the more I realized that I did not age.

This body that I inhabited was…different.

It was not human.

It was not…mortal.

It did not need sleep or rest;

it did not require food or water

but seemed to absorb energy from its surroundings.

What am I? I wondered.

I stood upon the shifting shores of a desert,

and relentless rays of light

seared down from the sun

and reflected off granules of sand

that shone like a sea of shimmering diamonds.

Little avalanches cascaded down

where my feet left impressions in the earth.

A warm surge of air blew by,

picking up sand particles,

lifting and placing them one atop the other,

building new dunes of sand

as the old ones sifted away.

I heard a soft clinking sound

and looked to see grains of sand

eroding away a glinting shard of metal

that seemed to grow out of the ground.

It was the remnant of a boat, out here in the desert,

that had been left to ruin and rot

under the sun and sand

while it eroded away, to be reclaimed by time.

On one fateful day,

I drifted through a misty blanket of fog

like walking through the drunken haze of a dream.

I stumbled across a ruin of crumbling walls

and eroded piles of cement and glass

that buried a heavy metal door

decorated with splotches of rust

that loomed before me.

Spray-painted upon it in red paint

that had dripped many years ago

were the words

Abandon all Hope, ye who enter here.

A thick lock that had once guarded the entrance

was now deteriorated and rotten in rust.

I was unsure whether it had simply eroded and broken off

or if it had been pried off and apart.

Somehow it seemed familiar to me,

as if I had been destined to find this place

and that all my aimless wandering

had actually been a pilgrimage to this location.

For a moment, terror engulfed me

and I stood transfixed

before the threshold into the unknown.

What I would find, I did not know.

The Fear within me told me to turn back and run away,

but the curiosity within me told me to step forth.

I swung my leg, and with superhuman strength,

I kicked in the thick iron door.

Inky shadows glared at me,

and the darkness splintered into my eyes

as echoes shuddered off the walls

and flowed deep into the catacombs beneath.

Maybe my imagination lied to me, and I hoped that it did,

but I thought I heard a distant rumble

from deep within the heart of the abyss,

as if something awakened and answered the echo.

Before entering the darkness,

I gathered supplies to spark a fire

to illuminate the blackness within.

I found a wiry vine and wrapped it around a curved branch

and strung it like a bow.

I entwined a smaller stick through the vine

and then moved the curved branch back and forth,

causing the smaller stick to rotate, forming a spindle.

Smoke vaporized from an ember

that burst into life from the friction,

and I placed it in a bundle of tinder and watched it burn.

I found another tree branch

and wrapped dried leaves,

vines, and bark around the top.

A tree nearby was dripping a sappy resin

that I smothered onto the branch, making a torch.

The ground was littered with rusty scraps of twisted metal

that jutted out of the ground like spines.

I chose a thin, sturdy piece of metal

that might have once been a part of a car

and began to sharpen it on a stone.

When it had a razor’s edge and a needlelike point,

I fitted it onto a stick, making a spear.

As I stepped into the unnatural cave,

my torch lit the way.

The tiled floor was cold on my bare feet,

and the stale air wafted toward me

as it permeated outward,

carrying a dense and foreboding stench of death and decay.

A tunnel stretched deep underground,

where it was spared from weathering and erosion.

Old syringes rolled beneath my feet as I stepped;

vials clinked together after being displaced by my movement,

and shards of glass cracked beneath me as I walked.

I suddenly realized

that I was treading through an old underground laboratory.

Gurneys lay toppled on their sides;

dried puddles of blood checkered the walls and floor.

My heart pounded in my chest

as I beheld deep scratches marring the walls

and lining the ground

from the claws of some creature I feared to imagine.

As I slowly made my way through the halls,

my torchlight wavered and illuminated shadows in the distance.

Beyond the flickering flame,

I saw hundreds of doors,

many hung loose on their hinges,

as if they had been forced open.

I came to a door that had a deep dent in it

and had been completely ripped off its frame.

Behind it, a dark room was heavy with shadows.

My breath caught and my pulse jumped

as the light from my torch bounced off the walls

and shadows danced as the light flickered

and shone upon a figure

hunched over in the corner of the room.

Pointing my spear in its direction, I crept forward.

Looking at it closer,

I could see a white lab coat

that hung loosely from protruding bones.

It was a human skeleton,

one of the scientists that used to work here.

It lay crumpled on the ground,

and when I stood beside it,

I noticed that the entire rib cage

had been crushed inward

as if from a heavy blow to the chest.

I realized that the arms and legs had been detached

and lay scattered around the room.

There were teeth marks on the bones

from some creature that had gnawed on them

and picked them clean.

I uttered a silent scream in terror,

wanting nothing more than to leave this place behind.

But as I quickly shuffled my feet and turned, I froze.

There was something standing in the doorway.

Shadowy glares from my torch

flickered upon a creature that stared back.

Black eyes that were empty chasms gazed right through me.

A massive horn extended beneath its eyes

that ended in a point as sharp as the needles

that were crushed beneath all six of its legs.

My face was blasted with a stream of hot air

as a roar escaped from its jaws.

In its mouth I saw row upon row of serrated teeth;

a thick froth dribbled from its lips onto the floor.

The creature blocked the entire doorway

with its colossal girth; it was as large as a car.

It seemed to be a cross between a bear and a rhinoceros.

A dense forest of matted hair covered its entire body,

and I watched as a forked tongue

slithered out of its mouth and tasted the air.

I gasped in horror as the creature charged at me.

It lowered its horn and then reared its enormous head.

My body folded as the horn pierced through my stomach

and gouged through my spine.

I was lifted and thrown across the room as it gored me.

My back collided with a wall,

and I slid down onto the floor,

leaving a stained smear of crimson on the wall.

There was a loud crunching noise

as I landed upon the skeleton of the dead doctor.

I clasped my stomach

as blood seeped through my fingers.

But as quickly as the wound had been inflicted,

it rapidly began to heal.

The skin on my stomach regrew

and neatly stitched itself back together.

I stumbled over the doctor’s crumpled skeleton

and crawled toward my torch.

The ground trembled as the creature charged at me again.

It sank its razor-like teeth into my arm

and then shook its head from side to side.

My bones cracked and crunched in its jaws,

and my tendons tore apart.

I yelled in agony while it ripped apart my arm;

it stretched and strained and then gave way.

The beast stood above me with my severed arm in its mouth,

and blood spurted out if it,

coating the ground in a red film.

With my remaining arm,

I grabbed the torch and thrust it into the creature’s face.

A pungent odor filled the room

as its hair was singed and burned.

The beast roared and retreated backward

as my arm fell out of its mouth

and thudded to the ground.

While it was distracted,

I looked down at the stubby protrusion

where my arm used to be.

Before my eyes my cells regenerated

and formed into an ivory-tinged bone

that was rapidly interlaced with new veins

and then blanketed with renewed tissue and muscle

and finally coated in a healed layer of skin.

Bewildered, I stared at my regrown arm

and flexed the regenerated muscles

while twiddling my new fingers.

Adrenaline pulsed through my blood,

and I dashed forward and picked up my spear

and then ran out of the door into the hallway.

The creature turned and followed.

I sprinted through the hallway

with my spear and torch in hand.

I turned my head and peered back,

and to my horror, I saw the monstrous creature,

now engulfed in a torrent of fire,

rushing at me like an inferno of Hatred,

and there was fury in its inky black eyes.

Thundering footsteps resounded off the walls;

the ground beneath me quivered,

and an enraged roar rang in my ears

as the beast pursued me.

I heard its claws scratching against the ground,

and I knew I could not outrun it.

So instead of waiting,

with spear and torch held by my sides,

I turned and prepared to fight.

Tufts of fire singed the creature’s hair away,

and the smoke blew from its body

as it thrashed its head and snarled at me

with Hatred dripping from its jaws.

The mutated animal lunged at me,

and its teeth crunched into my hand

and my torch clanged to the ground.

I swung my other arm around

and felt my spear connect with its eye.

It roared in anguish and released my hand,

retreating back a few steps.

The creature glared at me with its remaining eye

and then lowered its head, aiming its horn at my heart.

It rushed forward.

I slowed my mind and breathed calmly.

I focused on my undying will to survive

and let my volition take over.

I concentrated and my will surged into my imagination,

and I projected all my energy upon it.

No! I screamed.

With inches between the creature’s horn and my chest,

the beast suddenly froze in the air

and its movement stopped completely in suspended animation.

The walls around me shook and reverberated.

The creature levitated for a moment

while the vibration around me rose to a roar,

and then the beast flew backward

and collided with a wall.

Instantly, I felt a splitting Pain in my head and felt weak.

Confusion stole over me as I tried to understand

what had just happened while I struggled to my feet.

The beast lay crumpled in a heap along the adjacent wall.

I picked up my spear

and grabbed my torch with my newly regenerated hand.

As I stumbled over toward the genetically modified animal,

it raised its head and looked at me with terror in its eyes;

its gaze begged me for mercy.

The creature opened its mouth,

and from it rang a haunting moan.

Into its open jaws I thrust my spear,

and it burst forth out the back of its skull.

The sound stopped, and everything went quiet.

Exhausted, I fell to my knees and began to crawl.

I scuttled over to the wall

and rested my back against it.

I let my head droop and my body slump.

My torch slid from my hand,

thudding onto the floor and extinguishing.

I lay there, drifting aloft in a semiconscious state.

It could have been hours or days;

there was no way of knowing.

I awoke from my daze to a sharp Pain in my leg.

I felt a warm weight pressing down on me:

a creature was gnawing on my flesh

and eating it as the skin regenerated.

Startled, I shook my leg

and the animal was flung off.

I could hear a multitude of squeaks

and tapping claws clacking on the ground.

My torch had gone out,

and everything had faded to black.

Creatures that I could not see crawled onto me

and sank their claws and fangs into my body.

I flailed and kicked,

but more kept swarming.

I strained my eyes

and focused every effort on seeing my attackers.

I felt a stinging sensation in my pupils,

as if by straining them I was stretching them,

and my pupils dilated and grew.

And suddenly shapes and outlines

appeared in my vision; somehow, I could see.

How…? I whispered.

But there was no time to think.

I saw rats the size of dogs

stampeding at me out of doorways and cracks.

I glanced around, and my gaze fell upon the carcass

of the rhino-bear creature.

It was now only a pile of bones

that had been picked clean.

The rats climbed all over me and bit my legs and arms,

my hands and my head.

I stumbled and felt my spear roll under my foot.

Grabbing it, I skewered one of the creatures.

Blood dripped from the dead rat,

and in moments, as the stench of its death permeated,

other rats pounced upon it, cannibalizing it.

I stabbed and killed several more rats and started a feeding frenzy.

The creatures jumped off me

and joined the flurry.

I took the moment to turn and run away,

leaving the massacre in my wake.

What is happening to me? I thought.

I wondered how my eyes had adapted

and allowed me to see.

It was as if my body had sensed the threat

and reacted instinctively on its own to protect itself.

There was so much I still

did not understand about myself.

I did not know what I was capable of.

I wandered down an endless staircase

that dug endlessly deeper

into the bowels of the Earth,

where no ray of sunlight had ever shone.

I was like a worker bee in a honeycomb city,

surrounded by tunnels and dirt,

buried, blind, and lost in a hive.

I trod through the tunnels

down into the mantle of the Earth.

The dusty, cold air grew warm and vibrated

as I entered the lowest level

and stood before the deepest hall.

The heat radiated through a heavy metal wall

that stood before me, blocking my way.

I laid my hand on it, and my skin burned instantly

as I quickly recoiled my hand.

My curiosity was piqued

as I sensed an odd feeling of familiarity

emitting through the featureless metal slab.

Once again, I laid my hand on the burning metal,

but this time I left it there, ignoring the Pain.

Suddenly, the metal wall divided and opened,

revealing a brightly lit room behind it

illuminated by synthetic incandescence,

with walls of mirrors that reflected the light

into my bewildered eyes.

I stepped into the room

and was mimicked by reflections of myself

that followed me inside.

The threshold through which I had entered

once again closed shut,

and I stood in an enclosed room

with reflected fractals of myself

extending in every direction.

My head ached as my brain attempted

to understand what it was seeing.

For a moment, I wondered

how the room was receiving

the power necessary to open the doors

and turn on the lights.

Then it occurred to me that the room

must have been conducting heat directly from the Earth’s mantle

and converting it to usable power.

Hello? I asked my reflection.

The lone word reverberated off the walls

and echoed back into my ears

over and over.

I stood and watched as a slot slid open in the ground

and a thin cylindrical object

rose up through the hole.

Rays of light flickered from the object,

and that gleamed and glinted into a pattern

that materialized into a hologram.

The hologram displayed a man and a woman

in white lab coats who stared back at me.

I could see in the mirrored walls

infinite images reflected

of myself standing

alongside the man and the woman from the hologram

so that it felt like they were surrounding me.

My feelings of loneliness abated slightly

as I looked around and saw people everywhere.

Both projections looked in my direction,

but their simulated eyes did not directly meet mine.

The hologram was a pre-recorded message;

I could not speak or interact with them.

The man spoke.

Hello, Omega,

he said, and then the woman smiled and said,

Hello, Omega.

Upon hearing them speak,

I froze and stared at them.

It was the first time

I had ever heard another voice.

If you are here, then we have succeeded,

the man claimed.

"But if you are here,

that also means that mankind has failed,"

the woman added mournfully.

"By now, humanity has gone extinct

and our worst fears have been realized,"

the woman informed me.

Then the man in the lab coat spoke.

"We had foreseen the destruction of our species

while we were producing the strains of viruses

that would ultimately eradicate us.

The only way to prevent our true eradication

was to create you.

We are your creators, Omega.

But if you are here, then you have already witnessed

the horrors that we have committed unto ourselves,

and I am sure you want answers."

The woman chimed in, saying,

We Hope that our words will satisfy your questions.

As the man began to talk and elaborate,

the lighting in the room changed

and the pixels of the hologram rearranged

to take on new shapes

that illustrated the man’s words.

"The decades of war and death and loss spread Pain,

and that Pain evolved into Sadness,

and then seared into a burning Hatred.

Each warring nation sought to fulfill its own version of justice

in the form of vengeance.

Hatred infested every heart like a relentless pandemic

or a merciless inferno

that could only end when everything was rendered to ash.

There were even those who claimed war was the answer,

that war would solve overpopulation,

and that the business of war

would remediate the economic depression

and unite the citizens of each country in a shared struggle.

Some people claimed war was the answer

and that ultimately war would lead to peace.

But I can see now how wrong they were."

The hologram portrayed hauntingly vivid images

of men and women discharging weapons

and shooting one another

while they each brandished the flags

of various nations.

I watched and saw the anguish etched into people’s faces

and witnessed the pure chaos of the violence.

Explosions erupted and rendered cities to dust;

the people ran from the flames

and from the blinding, vaporizing light,

but there were no safe havens,

only devastation.

A tear streamed down my face

as I beheld the atrocities of war.

The woman spoke now.

"We had too much Pride to surrender

and admit that anyone else could ever be better than we were.

All Hope was lost,

and Love was an unknown face.

Men and women became heartless

and desired only revenge.

War became genocide

and then descended into full-scale extermination.

In bitter desperation and in revenge,

nations resorted to chemical

and biological warfare

in desperate attempts to eradicate one another."

The light from the hologram

reflected in every mirror,

and all around me were horrific images

of men, women, and children

crowding the streets and screaming

as poisonous gas was breathed through their city.

They writhed on the ground in agony

as the gas liquified their lungs.

Pathogens of an incurable plague

infected human cities;

pestilence spread through the streets

and through the bloodstreams of helpless victims.

I witnessed so much Pain,

so much death.

I do not want to see this, I stammered.

But the man continued the story unheeded.

"Country fought country,

and the victors were rewarded with internal civil war.

All of civilization was rotting from the inside out.

Like a fungus of decay,

mushroom clouds sprouted from atomic bombs,

the illumination of streetlights were replaced with explosions,

and then all was left in darkness.

From this darkness the shadow of Fear arose and haunted us.

When society’s governments corroded,

we turned on one another."

The flames engulfed everything.

"Anarchy ensued.

The flames engulfed everything.

Streams of blood lined the gutters in the city streets

as men and women annihilated one another

and the orphaned children sought revenge.

A cycle of Hatred perpetuated

as Pain was displaced from one heart to the next.

From death, there only arose more death.

Infants were left alone, abandoned in their cradles.

Perhaps we were predestined to this fate

by our own destructive nature.

It may be that we are resigned to this outcome

by our own chaos.

It seems that entropy is the true nature of the universe

and we can only play our part.

No, that’s too convenient an excuse.

We can’t blame a god

or fate for the way things happened.

We are creatures of volition.

If this happened, then it was a result of our will.

We did this.

We could have stopped this.

This is our fault.

The responsibility belongs to no other entity.

It is our deepest regret, Omega,

that inevitably we must pass our follies on to you

and you must be the one to suffer most from our actions.

We sincerely apologize

that you must inherit the world that we destroyed.

We are sorry to pass on to you

our memories of Hatred and Pain, Fear, Sadness,

and corrupted Pride.

The memories you now possess

of the human race will have inevitably made your life difficult,

but after all this,

we thought you deserved to know what happened

and why you exist.

It is also our human nature

to need to be remembered,

and it is our irony

to need to be immortalized, because we are mortal.

Please…remember us.

Humans are emotional beings.

We let our negative emotions consume us and destroy civilization.

We gave in to our Hatred, Pain, Sadness, Fear

and overindulged in our Pride.

But please, we beg you to remember

the Love that brought people together to build those civilizations,

and the Hope people shared

that led them to seek and find Happiness together,

even if it only lasted a moment."

And the hologram of the man cautioned,

"Take our fate as a warning

to rule and not be ruled by your emotions.

Follow your will

and remember that it is influenced by your own feelings.

And so it may seem logical

to rid yourself entirely of your emotion

in order to keep your volition pure.

This is not something that can be achieved by a human.

No person can truly rid themselves of all emotion.

But as it stands, you are not human.

You are a being far greater and beyond mankind.

We have given you imagination

and the power to make it real,

if that is your will.

Your imagination is your potential.

But be wary, some things that can be imagined

are never meant to be,

and emotion has great power over will.

We ask you to use your will to resurrect humankind.

In a sense, Omega, we are asking you to play the role of a god.

As we created you,

you shall be a god of mankind.

You are our greatest experiment.

You are our fail-safe.

We cannot fully imagine

the gravity of this request.

Your full potential is unknown to us.

We don’t know what you will become

or what will befall you

or the human race.

We also ask you to do what we could not,

something that may be impossible.

We Hope that you can find

and implement an ethical sense of morality

to understand and follow what is truly right,

and to guide the human race in accordance with these morals.

Relative to humanity, you are a perfect being.

You are not human.

But remember that we are not perfect

and can never be.

As such, your guidance may be futile.

Our species may be doomed to repeat history

due to our very own nature.

But to you we bestow all our hopes.

You are our last chance."

The woman spoke now.

"Understandably, you may gaze upon

the desolate world of remnants and ruin

that we pass on to you and be ruled by Hatred

and forget Love, as we did.

But Love is precious.

It is something to strive for

and something to cherish.

However, Love is risky and can be dangerous.

Where there is Love, there is attachment,

and where there is attachment,

there will be loss.

Where there is loss, there comes Sadness,

and from that Sadness

may stem anger and the desire for vengeance.

Once anger finds a target,

it becomes Hatred.

Even the brightest light of Love

can descend into the void of darkness.

It is this risk that is inlaid in Love

that makes it so precious when it exists.

The emotion of Love may be the most powerful sentiment,

but it is very fragile,

and with great Love comes the potential for great Hatred—

the two are bound to each other

in such a way that Love may counter Hatred

and Hatred may corrupt Love.

We may Love someone so much

that we would destroy and Hate anything

that would harm them.

This is the reason men and women fight wars.

It might be logical to say, then,

that without the Love between people

there would be no impulse to fight and protect our loved ones,

and that without Love there would be no society,

and without civilization

there would be no systematic warfare

of nation versus nation.

But it is also fair to say

that if there were no Love,

then there would be no bond to link people together,

and humans would be solitary creatures

destined to wander the Earth alone.

Unity is our greatest survival mechanism,

and without it our species could not survive…

and did not survive.

Despite the flaws in Love that may lead to Hatred,

without Love mankind cannot exist."

The woman in the white lab coat continued,

"By now you likely will have tasted

a small portion of your powers.

Your body has been designed

to be the next evolutionary step for our species.

You are now living within a body that is indestructible

down to an atomic level.

We have designed your body to regenerate

and heal any injury and never to age.

Over the course of mankind’s biological history,

it has taken millions of years

of careful and specific evolution

for our species to develop into what we are now.

But your body, our masterpiece, is different.

Through our engineering,

we have been able to rapidly accelerate

the evolutionary process within your body.

We have equipped you with a body

that will instantaneously adapt to and evolve

with any threat or endangering stimuli

as needed to ensure your survival.

For example, if you find yourself enveloped in darkness

and unable to see while being attacked

or in a life-threatening situation,

your eyes may spontaneously evolve

to allow you to see in darkness.

We have bestowed upon you a body

that will preserve your mind.

Because your mind is the most precious thing

ever to exist.

If we have succeeded in our design,

your mind will grow indefinitely

and you will never die.

We have also installed within you

the entirety of knowledge that mankind has accumulated.

Every discovery we