Erasing Mistakes Chapter 2
By SonicBlade
6078 Anno Domini.
‘A Method of Gene Restructuring Using Molecular
Machines’.
It was my best work. I
edited it at least a dozen times over, taking out every single word that
looked the least bit unfitting or unnecessary, the paper was bleeding from
red ink when I was done. The
theory worked, it really did.
We could have had nanotechnological
pseudolife. All we needed was
the right equipment.
But they didn’t like it.
‘Oh, the theory works, the paper is perfect, but the public
won’t accept it. Humans
creating life? That goes against
all the precepts of our religion.
Let’s throw away the only hope for saving our civilization, because
some old men in white robes don’t agree with the
science.’ And they expelled
me from the Academy for
it.
Even then, Kim had known that Zeboim hadn’t
much time left. In the year
before, poverty and crime rates were spiraling upwards and it seemed that
the quality of life was going in the opposite
direction. But that seemed like
nothing compared to what was happening
now. Kim flicked on the television
set and prepared himself for more bad news, trying to draw himself out of
his thoughts.
“And now to Betty Sims for the latest on the Zeboim Crisis,”
spoke the machine. The camera
panned to a lady who looked to be around thirty, dressed in a respectable
business suit. She had curled
brown hair that fell to her shoulders and narrow eyes of the same
color. A pert nose and small
lips. She reminded Kim of one
of the students he had shared classes with back at the
Academy. Before they kicked
him out.
“We have some alarming news from the local medical facilities,”
she said, looking appropriately grim.
“Due to the effects of Ignas’s biochemical destablizer,
which was recently unleashed upon our country, the life expectancy of the
common citizen has considerably
dropped. This is due to a certain ‘enzyme’ which attacks
the cells of a person and significantly weakens
them. Affected persons are expected
to live no longer than thirty years of age.
“Unfortunately, that is not
all. Radioactive fallout from
Ignas’s nuclear missile, which was formerly thought to be dissipated
by our radiation removal systems, has now been found lingering in Zeboim.
This excess radiation is reportedly causing infertility
in women everywhere. The total
effects are not known, but…some scientists fear that the Zeboim people
are in danger of extinction.”
Kim stared. He’d known about the nuclear bomb, and heard a little
about the destabilizer. Most
of the details had been kept secret by the government for a short
while. But…the radiation
was supposed to have been totally
removed! This could mean…that
none of us have a future.
He stared at the television for a little while,
lost in his own thoughts. When
he saw one of his old professors on the air talking about how there was no
hope for the future, he decided it wasn’t going to help him
any. He stabbed the off button on its remote
control.
He knew what he had to do.
He’d been trying to put it out of his head for over a year, but
it was staying with him anyway. The decline of civilization meant only one
thing: He’d have to restart
his research.
The young scientist rose from the couch and walked into his study
room. It was moderately cluttered,
small, but suitable to his personal
tastes. He didn’t need
much room to work. Kim took
some files laying open on his desk and put them aside, clearing
space. Taking his keys from
his pocket, he inserted them into the keyhole in his file cabinet and opened
the top drawer. He pulled out
a large, overstuffed folder, shut and locked the drawer, and dropped the
file on his work desk. He sat
down and adjusted his glasses, looking down to examine the file that contained
nearly four years of his work, from his most amatuer musings to his experienced
theoretics. This was his entire
life’s meaning. This was
what he lived for and it was something he would die
for.
The title on the folder said:
PROJECT EMERALDA
*
*
*
Damn, I can’t do
anything!! thought Elhaym,
as she stood by the IV machine, watching her patient slowly
dying.
PATIENT DOSSIER: Jason Richard
Foster. Age:
30. Previous medical operations:
Fractured elbow operated on 6/24/6057.
No allergies. No subscribed
medication. No genetic
imperfections.
In another words, a perfectly healthy, normal
person. A person who should
have lived a long, fruitful life.
Here he lay, convulsing as tiny chemicals within him tore his body
apart. People were coming in
thousands to the hospitals, but there was no
cure. They could only prescribe
pain med and give the patients a bed to die
on.
It was horrible.
Elly couldn’t remove the obvious fact from her
mind:
In seven years, you will have ran out of
time. You will be laying there
on that bed, with your eyes rolled up in your head and your hands shaking,
unable to stop….
STOP.
Stop it, stop it, this isn’t getting anywhere, there’s nothing
you can do, nothing anyone can do.
It’s a tragedy and it will kill off everyone and it’s impossible
to stop, just like the convulsing…
Jason Foster had stopped
convulsing. His eyes were
closed.
Elly bowed her head and prayed that he’d receive a long life
in the afterlife, to make up for his undeserved death in this
world. She opened her eyes,
picked up his med record, and wrote:
Deceased. Biochemical
Destabilization.
Then she got an idea.
If we can somehow create some kind of new life that is unaffected
by this genetic tampering, Zeboim could live
on. But…how would we go
about doing that?
She remembered something she had saw on the
news. Someone tried to create
‘psuedolife’, as they called it, a…nanotech child, wasn’t
it? No, they had a theory for
it but had never actually tried it, that’s
right. The researcher was expelled
from the foundation because it went against the religious precepts of the
church.
But…would God want his creations to die like
this? Is this what he would
wish upon his people? Or did
he intend for us to discover this new technology and use it to save
ourselves?
It was a hard question, and she couldn’t
find an answer. You can’t
do anything, anyway, Elhaym, she told
herself. You don’t even
know the man’s name, and if you tried to do something like that against
the wishes of the people…
But the ‘people’ will soon all be
dead.
She
was lost in her thoughts as she turned off the light to the room, shut the
door, and walked down the the hall to the reception
office. She gave the clipboard to the
manager. She read it.
“Who’s next,” said Elly, trying not to audibly
sigh.
“No one,” said the
manager. “Just…just
go home. There’s nothing
we can do. I’ll handle
the meds. It only takes ten
seconds to shoot them up till they can’t feel
anything. We’ve got people
handling the insurance downstairs.
Just go home.
Rest.”
Elly nodded and turned briskly away.
Nothing we can do.
There’s nothing we can do.
Just go home.
It took all of her will to hold in her tears as she got on the elevator
and rode to the bottom floor.
You can cry for these people when you get
home. Don’t let go, don’t
let go…No…
Nothing
we can do. Nothing you can
do. Nothing anyone can
do. Just go
home.
Why? Why did Ignas have
to do this to us?!!
As she thought more and more of the problem, she
felt something strange twinge in her
memory. The man in the
newscast. The nanotech
researcher. He seemed somewhat
familiar, although she was sure she’d never met him
before…
She would meet him again. Unkown to her, it was her destiny. The destiny of her God.
*
*
*
Humankind will begin anew.
They will be ‘reset’ once more so that humanity will finally
produce parts sufficient enough to become one with
Deus.
Of course, Miang had no regrets.
It was what had to be done.
But she shuddered to think of the feeling of
destruction. After all, she
was their ‘mother’. She
was a mother that would drown and choke and break the necks of her children
until she found the right one that suited her
purposes. It was horrible, but
it was the way things had to be done. I’ve done this
before. I will not allow it
to bother me this time. These people….my children are now
useless. They are all meant
to serve Deus, but they cannot any longer.
She opened a com frequency to the Mass Driver facility on her
phone.
“Zeboim Industrial Mass Driver—“
“I need to talk to the main
operator. This is Miang
Hawwa.”
“Ms. Chief Executive of—!“
“Yes!”
“Ah, I’ll go get her right away.”
The comscreen fizzled out for a
moment. Miang waited
impatiently.
Ironic. I can wait 6000 years, but yet this small matter annoys
me. Calm
yourself.
The screen fizzled into life
again.
“Hello, Ms. Chief Executive of Staff
Hawwa.”
It was a short woman in a regular Zeboim worker
uniform. She was fairly ugly
but her eyes possessed a cunning sheen.
“Hello. I want to
know something. Is it possible
to convert this facility for military use?”
“Ah, what precisely do you want to do with
it?”
“Launch missiles.” she said
flatly. ‘Nuclear ones,’
she did not add.
“Ah…well, the Mass Driver facility could do that,
yes. But it would take some
preparation. And…we would
have to halt the industrial services of the
facility…”
“We won’t be needing those.”
“Ah, the people won’t like it,
ma’am—“
“The people will be dead in a matter of
time. All I want is
vengeance,” she lied.
All I want is God.
“If you wish it, we can do
it. But for an operation as
large as this—“
“You’ll keep it quiet.”
The worker sighed.
“Alright, Ms. Hawwa.
But we’ll need recommendation from the Prime
Minister. This is very
important.”
“I have a signed permission notice, of course,” said Miang,
pulling up her forged document on the com screen and sending it
over.
She flipped off the frequency and looked at the blank screen for a
moment. She didn’t care
to think about how many times she’d lied
today. The Mass Driver was the
key to ending life on Earth, and she was the person who would use that
key. She was responsible for
the deaths of millions. Millions
of her children. Millions of
innocents.
More irony. To ressurect God, I must sin enough to be damned to eternal
hell.
*
*
*
Derek Ravine sat by his wife, who was laying on the couch, her face
covered with tears.
The well-furnished apartment was
dark. Teliah’s long blue
hair fell over the pillows and her dark green
dress. Her amethyst eyes glimmered
with her sorrow, her despaired look rended his
heart. She was
so…perfect. But she
wasn’t perfect anymore. No,
she’d always be perfect to him.
It didn’t matter that…that….
“It’s alright…I still love
you. No matter what, I’ll
always love you. You know
that.”
She looked up at him and smiled
weakly. “I
know. I
know. …But…what about
our plans? What about our
dreams?! This isn’t supposed
to happen!! Why the HELL did
this HAPPEN!?” She burst
into loud sobs.
Derek had walked in the door to find his wife lying there, sobbing
over the results of a med test she’d had taken while he had been at
work.
Infertile. Such a cold, hard, clinical word for something so
emotional.
He was 21, Teliah was 20.
They’d heard news about the shortening of Aquvy’s lifespan
the day before. It’d been
shocking, but they’d decided to live out the rest of their lifes to
the best that they could. To
fulfill every dream they ever desired.
One of their biggest dreams was to have a family of their
own. Derek wanted to look into
his child’s green eyes and see his own in
them. He wanted to teach his
daughter, and show his son the world.
He wanted to see them grow up and move out and get a life of their
own, and be happy. To have added
more to the world than he could have possibly added by
himself. But it would be impossible
now.
Teliah lay there sobbing, and Derek had no answer for
her. They’d lived normal
lives so far. Nothing like this
had ever occurred to anyone.
Why did this happen... what’s the real
reason? Ignas’s nukes,
of course. But…it was our
goverenment that drove them to war in the first
place. I’m sure of
it.
“It happened…because…a bunch of
idiots in power decided that they needed to stir up trouble in places where
they really didn’t. Because
they had no respect for any of our lives at
all. They couldn’t know
something like this would happen, could
they? So they let the nation sink
away…”
Teliah looked up at him through glazed
eyes. “What are you saying,
Derek?”
“I’m saying…I don’t know what I’m
saying.
Everything’s…just screwed
up.” As more thoughts ran
through his head, his brain got foggier and
foggier. The bangs of his thick
brown hair fell over his eyes and he swatted them
back. “I…we need to
do something. Something about
the government.”
She wiped her eyes and raised herself to a sitting
position. “What could we
possibly do that would influence them any?”
“We can write up a petition.
A petition for the leaders in government to step down…And if
they don’t….”
He looked at the floor, then back to his wife’s tear-marked
face.
“If
they don’t…we’ll start a
revolution. And we’ll make
things change. If we can’t
have our own children…we’ll make peace for the children of
others.”
It was an extroadinary idea.
But then, it had been an extroadinary
day. And not in a good
manner. Not at
all.
Of course, Derek doubted the leaders would step down just because
of one petition. But he was
fully prepared to go to war with his own government to make the future a
better place.
And so, Derek’s only child was born: The anti-government group ‘Ravine.’
>>>
Note:
This chapter was written using information in the translated Perfect Works
Zeboim Civilization page at:
http://www.the-ethos.org/pw/index.php?chapter=history&page=012-013
Cold Fusion
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