Personal Vindictive
WHAM!
“I’ll not stand for this ANYMORE I tell you. Either we follow through with it today, or we have no right to continue the operation any further!”
“Anya, sit down this instance. Such brutish and outlandish insolence in this court will NOT be tolerated. I do not care who your father is.”
“Well then, if you refuse to act, then by all means, I’ll just excuse myself, and do my duty to my people elsewhere.”
The room was dark and dimly lit. A thin arid taste hung in the air. Not so much because of bad quality, but due to the tension and heightened worry of the room’s inhabitants. The overhead lights were off during the discussion, and the only sources of light in the room were a single pen light latched onto an elderly man’s glasses rim, and a small holo-projector stationed in the center of the their circle. This holo-projector was emitting a 3-D topographical map of the surface world, exhibiting the wasteland-ish remnants of a long dead world….the remains of the United States of America. This fallen nation was now a destitute and barren desert all across its surface, any sources of life had been drained long ago. Just beneath the surface level of the map, it revealed a second level. This was beneath the earth’s crust, and as the map showed, the Earth was riddled with massive expanding pits and burrows under its surface. This was what the human race had been reduced to….
As the door slammed behind her, Anya, a well dressed woman of about 20 years, her long auburn rustling behind her in her hasty exit, haughtily stormed out of the room into the more properly lit hallways outside. Almost as if on cue, a familiar face had come trundling into the complex, obviously late and shaken. She at first recognized him due to his outlandish, long silver hair, however upon taking a second look, it was his all-natured emotionless expression that assured her it was the one whom she’d heard so much about. Certainly, he was a bit different than the chairman had depicted him as. He seemed much less rugged and hardy than she’d imagined him, and he presence certainly did not exude this superiority he’d been so heralded with. Hell, at any rate he was late.
“Lance, I’d assume. If I’m correct, you’re far late for the meeting. The board has already convened, and after…recent…occurrences, they may not be too friendly to interruption.”
He turned to her and stopped, standing only feet from her and looked her placidly in the eye. He certainly was stoic that much they’d not exaggerated. Under the lights, his bright blue eyes glistened into her view, that quintessential gaze that he was famous for, and she was entrapped.
“Is that so? Well, I guess I can assume the outburst was on your part then? Even so, I doubt they’d turn me away, not with the news I’ve gathered, eh? Perhaps, if you’re interested, you should return with me and we can look over it. Or, I could just brief you later, in private.” His shrewd and blank gaze went soft almost instantaneously, and before she could catch herself, she sputtered out a short sentence and fled down the hall.
“Fine, after the meeting in 34C, my office.”
He cocked his eyebrow and fought back a smirk as he turned into the building complex. His presence highly alerted the men, who seemed nearly blinded in this dark room upon the presence of the lights. Closing the door behind him, and without another word, Lance sat down quietly at the table. A few moments of silence passed as the 9 men seated around the holo-table stared at him gaudily. Unsure if he should just spill his story, or wait till one of them said something, he gave the table a swift kick and the lot of them pounced in their seats. He tried to stifle a laugh, but couldn’t help but snicker. Lifting his finger, he pointed to a small area on the holo-map, and immediately it zoomed in on the spot……………….
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42 Years before
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Planet Earth, the year is 2028. This was back before it all even started, back when the planet seemed safe, and all the life seemed to be going exactly how humanity had envisioned it. The fuel crisis of the nations had begun to subside, and it had seemed that many miracles had been advanced upon in the past 20 years. Cancer had been cured, fuel cost efficiency was dropped nearly to ten cents to the gallon, and the greenhouse effect was working full throttle in reverse. However, it was these very advances that would eventually lead to the downfall of the human race, and all mankind, for none could have foreseen the future that had awaited them all…
This “wonder machine” a technological marvel that was invented in Australia by a man by the name of Brian Start, was a device that was for better or worse, multi-purpose. This machine used DNA encoding calibrations to extract the singular genetic sequence that strictly defined the human’s IQ interceptor point. Using this 144 letter encoding script, it translated this code into a chemical quotient, detecting all natural elements needed to cause the specific reaction, and injected a number of artificially constructed enzymes, that by using a specific denaturing process, could interlock with the RNA codes. To be put into simpler terms; he had invented a way to build a human intelligence unit of limitless intelligence out of nothing but natural chemicals and human DNA.
However, this was the catch. In order to process this limitless capacity for knowledge, intellectual reasoning, and the innate growth pattern of a living organism; Brian needed to devise a NON-living shell to house this intellect. Throughout history, people have feared science, and what their increasingly intelligent capabilities can do. Over-stepping the judgment of numerous rights activists, he instilled a cybernetic mesh with this intelligence producing drone, and imbued it with boundless information and knowledge. He called this core capacitor, AE. Alpha-Endo. He named is after the Endo project, used, which was the project in which he made his discovery, and this was his very first masterpiece. Through the immense logical reasoning capabilities that the AE exhibited, the Earth’s problems were pin-pointed and solved within a year of the AE’s inception. Its intelligence multiplied exponentially over time, and within 15 years; it developed the highest intellectual property thought to limit human potential. This was where it spiraled out of control. Its increasing intelligence, while not capable of self-awareness, had stumbled a form of biological re-construction, the ability to procreate life. The research was astounding, and from the very start it seemed the worth of the experiment was boundless. However, two years after the inception of the “human AE”, the trouble had already spawned itself. There was one small error in the schematics of the artificial life form. It was mentally unchallenged, and had received, due to human error, an artificial gene structure sequence that had been denatured in a lab. This error spanned the globe in every creation center, and the fate of humanity had been sealed.
The error was a faulty genetic encoding sequence. It was a virus, a singular cell that infects the entire body, and alters the physical properties and moral, ethical, and reasoning capabilities of the host. Over time, the infection spread across the globe in girth, and thousands of years spent developing civilized life and human society were dashed within a year. The humans that had been infected ravaged and devoured all things in their path, and those who remained untouched, fled. They raced down beneath the Earth’s surface, and hid below its crust, in the hopes that the beastly and Neanderthal-ish heathens above were not intelligent enough to find them. Up until now, they’d been right. However, times change, and soon they feared their near utopian societies would fall as had their last.
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As the map zoomed in upon the spot, it spiraled downward, plummeting upon but a single standing building, the remains of oddly sound structure amid the chaos surrounding it. Immediately, as with a push of a button, a broad heat scan lens swapped over the holo-map, and thousands of deformed creatures were shown in droves in the building’s interior.
“Well, as you can see…..we have a problem.”
||((This Chapter was a bit vague and seemingly half-baked. It kinda was, and was kinda planned out this way, as a cliff-hanger. I didn't want to divulge ALL the details yet.))||