Foretold Showdown of Dreams, Good and Evil|Year: 2037: Fion|

Three scientists meet for the first time face to face. Will they find their answers to the unknown? 

With the technology to enable base editing and genome editing, I had everything I needed to put my head down and let out the webs of DNA and nucleotide sequences trapped inside my memories, transforming my second strain into the final iteration. Unfortunately, my white and grey lab is securely made for virus safety not for the people of the law on their way. I’ve recently realized that I’ve made a mistake with my IP address connection and like always, there is no escape in running. If they somehow know my identity, then it is over. Anyhow, I’m too busy to leave. I have to destroy, contaminate, or muddle everything that could ruin my virus in this lab as a precaution and it is going to take hours or days. Should I use pressure bombs or fire? How about a nice combination?

My seat vibrates from constant shaking movement while I touch up on my notes that I am going to give to Anneka. To my right, Yama speaks.

“We have time, so let’s go over my plan so everyone can see how much better it is. The objective is to keep the subject alive, in the dark about our intentions and constantly talking. From what Lex said about his demeanor, we may be able to get him to spill something important to his downfall accidentally on his own through his speaking. The security team will go in first and secure the facility and the safety of everyone else. We’ve narrowed down the general region that the lab could be located in from Lex’s geographical observations and tracking and we will be checking out the two pinned locations in order. In the worst-case scenario, we can capture the enemy and get information over time.”

“Thanks for that Yama.” I said, looking over the painted interior of our black bus. “Going over a backup plan is a great use of time as this vehicle is being slowed down by these unfinished roads. We are going to be at this for a couple more hours.” We had arrived by a public plane to the closest airport before electing to take ground transportation. We each kept busy with preparations until our guide and driver traversed a hidden dirt road, and we arrived at the first spot to check the forest.

I get out of the bus last and see a wooden sign lying flat on the blooming flower-dominated lawn, and cartoonishly written in red and black paint is the message. So You’ve COME. With a drawn red heart to the right. When you Wish To Come Inside I am waiting to Talk. I promise to do no hArm. My entire view is artful and well-maintained in what should be a normal forest. That’s what makes my body tense. I hear automatic scoffs from the security team beside me. “Can you believe this? This is clearly some type of high-level mind game or strategy to lower our guards and expectations.” I hear Yama announce.

“I don’t think it’s that. We can probably trust this sign.”

“What are you saying, Lex?” He instantly brings up his hands, initiating a questioning motion.

“Think about everything that led up to this. We were not sure originally of what precautions to take, but we gathered that he wouldn’t meet us head on with force or attacks because a single person could never match us. Unlike him, we can always just gather new people and come again more prepared after learning his tactics, tricks, and methods. Any war would be a war of attrition that would buy him four hours at most and seemed unlikely, given his personality. For the same reason, we don’t need stealth; we don't need to fear getting attacked or his mind games, and remember, we are trying to talk to this person, not oppose them. In order to do that, we need to trust them.” 

Yama looked at the faces around him and closed his mouth. His face is in just check, but his breathing is flawed.

The people in the front rotate the outside door knob to see a bare room with one staircase in the corner going down. I glance down, and I can not see anything in the pitch black. In front of me, someone turns on a light source. We carefully pace ourselves down the stairs with caution and it takes one and a half minutes of traveling to see a lab door. We check it and see that it easily opens with a button on the right and we walk into a near empty and plain room with various chairs on the outskirts, a singular door in the back, and a computer with a couple of monitors on a table. In the center, our attention is coerced to witness a pale man standing with straight snow-white hair on the right side of his head and platinum blond hair curling down in the other half. He looks bored, staring stoically at the walls while holding a book limply in his right hand. I scan the title, Zombie Saga One. His other hand is propped on his right shoulder, and he wears a faded gray sweater and some bang-up black jeans. On our entry, the skinny figure grows uniquely vibrant and takes the room from us immediately after slipping the book into his pocket.

“Wow! I’m amazed you came here yourself, but I’m happy that I get to meet you. My fated enemy, I’m Fion, but you probably already knew that. It’s nice to see your face in person.” I stated while looking straight at his surprised face. “Although, you are taller and more plain looking than in my head. Nonetheless, I never imagined that it would be so much more fun to have an opponent to battle it out against. Someone to introduce a needed challenge. The nights I would spend awake and contemplating the thoughts behind your moves on the chess board. Well played to get this far. Let me congratulate you now on stopping me from achieving the total victory I envisioned where I lived and took the world with my virus. It will be impossible for me to live now, but honestly, I feel like I have achieved total victory already by releasing the finished virus and getting to meet you.”

I’m distilled with shock. I finally have his name, but what can he mean by finished virus? My mind is processing fast but with a sense of jeopardy. So he has not only finished it, but released it already? To what extent and where? Most of all, it’s weird that despite being in a group of seven, he is managing to talk to me directly. How does he identify who I am out of a group of people when we all made sure to wear the same outfits? From our backpacks to our clothing.

“How do you know to speak directly to me upon our entry despite being in an intentionally similar and large group?”

“Simple. When looking into everyone’s eyes, you can grasp a large amount of their emotions. Most of the people here must be some form of law enforcement or security and they are either scared or greatly angered by my presence. Then there is you, the no name hero filled with determination and a stone cold princess who can barely contain her immense distaste for me. I gave my name, so just say yours already.”

“My name is Lex, and that was amazing and pinpoint.”

I roll my eyes. “Of course it is. Anyways, I know why you are here, but I’ll ask you as a test to see if you give truthful responses.”

“It's truly not what you may have in mind, I came to question you myself and see your lab. There is nothing else going on behind my actions. Fion, I can tell already that you are quite like the psychological profile I’ve built after tracking and researching you for so long, but our time runs short and we need answers. The world is in peril, and I’m guessing you know the stakes that you have manufactured yourself. Over anything else, the main reason I came today is to talk to you and convince you to stop your research and use it to help us prevent any future threatening incidents like this.”

“HaHaHAa, spoken like a true helpless hero!” I said, letting out a hearty and resonant laugh. “I can tell the profile you built of my character is not shabby in order to catch me, so why could you possibly think we can talk this out? I would love to become friends with the one person on my level before I go, but don’t think that anything you can do can stop me when I’ve come this far. Do you know how much I sacrificed?” I scoff and tear off my sweater, letting it glide through the air and to the ground with sound. I put my arms up and reveal a black tank top that simply fails to hide my fragile human body and my metal unnatural body. “Yeah, you don’t know a thing about me. The same way I sacrificed not a single thing to gain everything! Everything in my path hasn’t even been a sacrifice. Here’s my thinking, you can’t sacrifice anything in a world of nothingness and boredom. I’ve lost no real opportunities and spent no real resources. This world is fickle and meaningless. The pain, the bleeding, and the time I’ve spent is only something to you if you are blind. It is only after being free that anything that I can do starts to matter.”

What is with all the metal protruding out of his right side? Is it painful? Is it necessary? From his wording, it must have been part of what he had to do to create the virus. I notice the law enforcement next to me getting uncomfortable and shaken, but I can sense great pain from Fion. “You may think I’m naive or that it is pointless to try and fight to change your mind. I thought that the possibility may not even exist, no matter how I put together the pieces, so I stopped thinking and just set out to do it. The one thing I know for sure is that free will means everything to you, so tell me more about it. The central question in my investigation clearly is this one point. Your end goal and reason. You want to be friends, then tell me the truth so that we can loosen the weight that drives us apart.”

“I’ll gladly do so. We have no free will or forms of freedom in this world. Just changing signposts that cleverly mask our chains to the crust of our unloving planet. In every inexplicable and subconscious way, our familiars, government, and society have twisted, morphed, and put to death our true thinking and mind with their words of lies, poisoning and infecting the mind and human self and identity. Expectations, the laughs, the lies, other wills, and beings, they all keep me from being truly free. It is the biggest shame that we conscious humans have to struggle and are kept. We will never be able to act or think in the way we were truly meant to. In ways we can’t fathom, we have borders in the mind closing in and confining everything we can think and do! I’ve lived to make them all infected to undo the infection they inflicted on me. I’ve dreamed of how I’d live if I had true freedom; I can’t remember a single memory where I’ve truly had freedom ever since I first gained conscious control of myself. It's simple, but through a virus, I will become an artificially transcendent being on this Earth. I’ll fix everything. All we have currently is a terribly wretched, understood system where each human ravenously clings and claws to control the delusions they find and crave. Resulting in a painful and destructive world where no one can have what they truly want or need. People will eat and take until they croak; meanwhile, others will spoil the little good and worth there is on this Earth. It is easy and pathetically human. A system with only give or take, but in the end sometimes we can create instead.”

“How do you suggest we do that?” I stand unwavering, taking in his words carefully.

“In simple words, you can gain free will by “taking” someone else’s free will but think. You are not acting harmfully because they never actually had any, to begin with. The status quo remains unchanged. You can not deal or steal an ability no one has. We can feign that we can do what we want, but I’ll define it as a movement in the confine of our remarkably unsatisfying system. Human conflict is the antithesis of free will and it is what I will be inaccurately “removing”. I’ll explain human conflict with a model; we can say that right now, in our connected world, we have a grand total of 100 on the scale of human interaction and conflict. On the opposite side, we could have 0, although it is currently an impossibility. However achieved, a world like that would be bliss. The only method that works would involve discarding the vast majority of humans from the equation or alternatively “removing” their free will. However, the remaining humans on Earth would be truly free. With a small number of humans, conflict as whole will cease, and the chains turn to rust and dust. Everything I’ve done is to achieve a total victory over everything ugly in this world! All I am changing is the parts that should not exist. Don’t worry about the common man too much; humans are a resilient bunch which is evident from our reigning of this Earth. Besides this we are lucky, plentiful, and evolving, a few of us will always survive this event. I suspect that the majority of the zombies will cease to function and live after the countdown time of around one year. They may run out of energy and decompose. I’ve also coded a self inactivation process into all forms of the virus activating in five years. The lucky humans and the deserving humans will be free. It will be indiscriminate in and to every situation. I don’t believe in free will on a large scale, but with this method, I will give those who want to fiercely live the same chance I had. To prove their life by fighting. The virus is harsh, but inevitably many who want to survive will be able to.”

“I’m pleased to hear you, Fion, instead of having to assume and piece together ideas like before. I agree that what you say has significant validity. It is impossible to control, understand, and even live in tune with much of what others around us do. From society to our familiars, a circuit that feels like it covers the whole world. Still, like everyone else, you are right to believe in what you find true. But as we differ greatly in how we live, I will tell you what I believe. We need to understand and believe that each person has an unwritten commitment to do what we can within our free will, no matter how restrained it is or how unfortunate the circumstances and influences may be. This should be our only and one true worry. We do have free will of our own actions if nothing else which we can use to make real progress and move the world with our actions alone. If you want to see change for yourself or others, the only one you can truly control is yourself! If you wanted to be more free, you were right to focus on your actions alone, however why do you think of yourself as greater than others? I lost my patience for your actions when you made the choice to pursue a dream that brings lonely darkness over everyone else’s light!” From my words, I see Fion shake his head in a slow and dramatically managed fashion.

“You said it yourself, we don't live the same life, so I can never expect you to understand why I don’t see it that way. I told you everything in my mind like you asked, and still, we are at odds. What we think of free will is different. We can still be friends. After all, it is natural for humans to never be able to see eye to eye.”

“I truly believe we can be friends as well. Just don’t act like explaining your thoughts is pointless. None of our actions are ever pointless. There are no wasted efforts. When I hear your story and all of your words, there is one thing that you could never explain. If this world is empty and broken until you achieve free will or remove human conflict, why did you have fun playing our game?”

“I never fully understood it, but I’ve truly enjoyed it nonetheless. It must be because it made my life more difficult and interesting.”

“Well, I think the reason you obsess over free will is because this world is, like you said, too boring and constraining to you. I think that is in part because you never had a true friend or more precisely a friend in the form of a rival.” I stare deeply into Fion, and he is slow to react. His hands take flight, covering his face, and his gaze shifts as if he is questioning and searching.

“That can’t be right. It’s not that simple! I’m not that stupid. Shut up, SHUT UP! Stop saying I’m not right. All everyone does is insist that they are more right than me. It can’t always be me. Everyone else has to be wrong!”

I hear his whispers soften and quiet, continuing. I want to help him, so I need to interrupt him and soothe this violent and brooding trance. I slowly walk up to him with open body language.

“Let us tell a story together, Fion. Sit down on the ground with me. Do you think that it is some powerful movement of fate that brings us down our path to meet today? Imagine with me what would happen if we met under different circumstances under a different thread of fate. Could we ever have been friends or rivals? Imagine us at a university or school. What would happen? Use your vivid imagination to conjure it.”

What he was saying was so dumb, and I was playing into his hand, but I obliged. Sitting down, I close my eyes. “It takes effort, but yes, Lex, I can see it. I’m sure eventually we would have met each other in a classroom or a competition. Maybe in this life, I had it in me to care and compete and it would inevitably be me against you. Time and time again, in each realm and study, I’m sure we would have fought not to lose to the other as bitter rivals. I couldn’t truly stand to lose to someone like you. Your whole existence and goody insistence would do good to tick me off and motivate me.”

“Fion, I think it's possible that the final stage we would have competed against each other on would be far past any school and this new stage could have been for the good of this world. I think at our core, we’re both capable of being competitive, prideful, and unrelenting. You’d hate to lose and I’d hate to not see you reach your true potential. I’m sure if we eventually cooperated, we could have been able to come up with the same virology discoveries that could be world-changing for scientific fields if studied and applied in time. We could develop a whole new view of science that could revolutionize everything known about virology and illnesses from how it is now. I’m sure you can also see that it doesn’t have to stop there and that there is so much potential and wonder to do past that. There’s so much that could have been achieved in due time to help humanity, although maybe you would use the word fix. It could all work out if you just wanted to work together instead of against.”

“It’s cute, yet I am already tired of these hypotheticals, Lex, because we don’t need them. Want to compete? Want to help the world? I’ll issue a final challenge or competition that we can both play instead of wandering through this endless course of fanciful thoughts. This is my final challenge, where we can both stake it all. I know more than anything you want to prevent the worse case scenario. As we speak, the virus is set to take over the world, and you have no clue of the final pieces to stop this calamity. I want to be satisfied in seeing your ego fragment, so if you clearly express to me that I’ve truly won this current game we’ve played, I’ll tell you what you need to know about virology to give you any chance at all to save the world. Figuratively, get on your knees and crown the winner. Hand me the means to claim total victory over you and everyone else on this Earth right now. Can you and your pride abide by that outlandish term?”

I struggled to process the change of events and stared into Fion’s glowing eyes for a few seconds. Why could he be doing this? He would be winning our game if he kept his secrets to himself. No, he’s offering me a chance to play a new second round. As long as I pay the entry fee and abide by his ideology. “Lex, you have achieved total victory over humanity and me.”

I smiled at Lex with recognition. “I predicted that there was a 100% chance you would be able to put yourself down to save humanity, hopeless hero. I hate you and revere that pride. You always act like you are more right than me and the worst part is that I don’t know if you are. This is well within my understanding of you as a genius narcissist. I’m sure you wished your morals inspired me to do good, really it just gives me blood curdling disgust. Listen carefully. The secret is that in order to defeat this virus you have to create your own virus that can surpass our humanity. Go to the city of Seattle and do research on different strains with the goal of manufacturing a virus that targets only my virus in all of its strains and is constantly evolving to match mine. Time will be your bitter enemy, and I predict that your chances of victory will only increase from your doomed 0% to a 4.5% chance of success. The way the virus works is by taking away the recipient's feelings and consciousness. The virus targets ion channels in the body to get rid of all your body’s feelings. I’ve made the virus take away your consciousness and feeling at the same time so that the result is not painful. In fact, you wouldn’t be able to tell what happened. It is instant. I found this out by testing on myself and I know that you can come back from being a zombie because I have. My mechanisms in this arm are able to clear out the virus slowly, even once it takes over. The bodies that are infected are wired to bite human flesh, opening a wound to use their saliva to spread and take over your bloodstream. I’ve given you everything to play. Although, It is not fair. Just know it is not about that. It is about seeing if the best man can win.”

I started smiling and shaking. “That’s it. That could work and that could save everyone. Thank you.”

“What are you doing? Could you be more dumb? Don’t thank me. We are playing a game. Remember? And I am playing to win. You all are the ones playing to lose.” I pointed to the rest of the room and signed. “Whatever delusion you have that humanity can be spared this fate of zombification, you need to discard it immediately. As soon as you set on your journey, you’ll see that hopelessness and monumental task it is to even fight. The world will pay the price even if you overcome the odds and devices that I set into motion. I can read you the same way you can read me. So, choose to head my well-meaning prophesying words or don’t. I would be careful of how your resolve holds up genius seeing how it's built from a foundation that has never once faced solid setbacks. Someone who has never had to pay for anything in blood. I wonder if you will realize the something that I’ve long known this whole time. Will you soon realize that living for someone other than yourself will leave you in a place worse than death? Call it your dream or whatever, but you’ll see that your dream and saving the world are actually different. In time.”

“Forecast enough vague and imprecise words, and by coincidence, you might be right. I am going to save everyone. I’ve sworn it.”

“Ok, so you can be averse to my words.” I beam with my eyes while Lex pouts.

“I wonder, Fion. It’s likely you took the precaution of destroying all the evidence and leads that could help us further in this lab once you sensed our inevitable approach.”

“That’s right, you won’t find anything here to help in my lab, and if your buddy law enforcement friends decide to capture and interrogate me, that won’t work either. I know someone here has to have thought of that.”

Yama taps my shoulder and whispers. “This isn’t good enough Lex. We can’t trust him and gamble on this. The number one rule is to never trust the enemy you are at war with. We need something more solid. We need my plan. What you are doing is only going to get everybody killed.”

“No, this is going to-” Fion interrupts.

“I can see that your ally is just like the rest of the world. Scared. Just like I used to be. True to human psychology, you can shut out subconsciously to see only the sights that are normal or cookie-cutter, whatever is not confusing or internally conflicting. Whenever you open your eyes, there is a cost, and you can never close your eyes in the same way again. If everyone’s eyes were to suddenly open at once to all the knowledge in the land, they would be relieved of their delusions, and they would be compounded to death with everything painful and vast that they had not the burden of seeing before. The burden of knowledge and the start of insanity. To the people of this world, I was never meant to exist. I can see an example of this realization in him. When it's clear what I’ve done to everyone, I won’t be allowed to exist by the people of this world. You want me to join you, but every nondescript fate is possible if I were to hand myself to you. I don’t plan on losing sight of my dream and being stuffed in a cell. Give me every guarantee of a better future and it won’t be enough. I’m not pathetic enough to worry about any of this after completing my dream. Living your way would be betraying my past self and everything I’ve lived for. Unlike you, I don’t have any reservations towards death. It’s perfect, my artificial creation.” I said with love. “It is everything. Unlike you, when I die, a part of me will still be alive. In good time, we will see if the remnance of me can defeat you. As time changes, so do my values. I've now lived a life where I am in control of myself and the world. And I will die in the same vein, with my choices being mine.”

“Fion, the story shouldn’t end like this. Don’t do what nobody can take back.” I use a signal to stop everyone behind me from moving forward in any capacity. My mind can’t put together anything to stop him. Is this what he really wants? I need to talk. “Fion, there is-”

“Shut up. Do you want to see me go in elegance? In the end, it will be the same, you know. Let me finish everything I have to say.”

I slowly nod and sit quietly. I latch my hand softly onto his. I can’t tell anything from his expression as he stares at it.

“Instead of using something boring like a gun, Lex, I’ve produced a virus that causes an inflamed heart, eventually creating weakness of the whole heart muscle. In a few seconds, I will lose consciousness; in a minute after administration, my heart will permanently stop beating. It will self-inactivate after it finishes, so you don’t have to worry about it spreading. There's going to be no chance to resuscitate me, but you can give it a useless attempt. You are right; having a rival is what I needed. In the end, I could never run from what haunted me. I could never forgive the ugly parts of this world. I could never outgrow this unnatural world, but I was able to forget it. Thank you for helping me forget for the period where we coincided. I found true freedom in being able to forget. It is unlike closing your eyes once opened. It is much more. I could watch the days pass in peace. Thank you, my friend. Prevent the eternal night, hopeless hero. I’ll leave the future to you.”

Frozen I watched as Fion waved his other hand to say good bye and in a single motion transformed his hand into a finger gun that he put in his mouth. Chomp. Softly, his lips meet around the tiny finger while a blue vial on his chest slams down, administering his virus, and within seconds, it comes back up empty and clear.

Sorry grandmother. Did I disappoint you? I knew the one thing you asked of me, and I failed. It may not be my say, but I’ll leave your wishes for a better world to him.

“No, Fion!” I cry out as he falls to the ground. I continue holding his hand. It grows colder. I clutch him and lay him on top of my legs. I quickly check for his pulse on his neck and then everywhere else. He’s unresponsive. I move my hand up to tell everyone that they can reassume movement and I hear a couple steps running forward to try resuscitating him for themselves. I close my eyes. What can we try? Internally, how can we repair his heart muscle in this place? Suddenly, I feel a fist hitting my chest that balls up on the fabric of my shirt. It continues tugging me upward with the rest of my body. My limp and weightless feelings from before continue while being moved in the air. Slam. Back to the wall, I look into Yama’s harsh rage.

“Follow my plan. It will be great. You’ve doomed us all, Lex. With his death, all of us will be next. Own up to your failure now. We don’t know if he was lying about the solution. Heh, he could be untruthful about everything. We needed him alive as insurance. You should have stopped him from doing that virus self-destruct thing.”

How? I feel his arm tense. I observe Anneka smashing her hands in position to take down Yama’s arm.

“Get off of him.” I’m done holding in my disgust. I look at him like another annoying, wasteful, and helpless insect. I already had to keep my distaste for Fion to myself. I don’t have room for forgiveness for someone who dooms the world. Now I have to deal with someone else acting a fool. I can tell by his eye movement that he is thinking of any sequence to help him overpower me. I see his expression as mentally processes each battle. He eventually lets go and clicks with annoyance walking away.

Puff. I drop to the floor again. I go back to where he lays and clasp my hands and close my eyes after the team determined the concluding diagnosis. Small tears escape. I’m sorry for your suffering. The devastating loss of human life. I won’t ever forget. I’ll play our game. I sit in silence and ponder. It goes on and on for moments and moments.

“No rush, but it has been an hour and a half, Lex. Here’s a phone; we need to call Dr. Aline.” I crouch down next to him.

“Hello Dr. Aline, I have a plan created from new information I learned from the person creating the virus strains. I’ll need your support and virus editing equipment to go to the city of Seattle and create a virus to target his newest virus. It would be extremely helpful to have some personnel come along. Supposedly the newest strain has already been released.”

“Yes, we have seen it. All across the world, in coastal areas, people are losing control of their bodies and minds. This is an extreme case Lex. If you need help from our employees, you will have to convince people after telling them what is in store. The city of Seattle is one of the first cities to be lost. It can reasonably be assumed to be one of many release points for the virus.”

I shut off the phone. “Ok, team. You have the choice of going to a fully zombified Seattle for an unspecified amount of time to create a virus to target Fion’s virus. I have a set of rules that everyone will follow. Here’s the first and only rule. We are not allowed to kill any of the zombies because they can all be turned back into humans and we will help anyone we come across.” I catch glimpses of doubtful eyes. I watch a member respond.

“That’s … crazy. You want us to go to an urban area filled with horrifying zombies and we can’t properly fight back. How can you expect us to remain as pacifists? All that means that we’ll be killed instead. You’ve lost it. You are asking us to waste our lives. We don’t even know if the virus you want to make is possible. I imagine that you can’t guarantee that either.”

I look into their eyes and see that it is a common sentiment. “I see. Thank you for everything so far. Everyone is free to go home and try a different plan.” I don’t bother to look at Anneka. It is obvious that we are both going by the hold of a promise. I decided to search Fion’s lab for anything useful, but mostly out of curiosity to see how he lived. The inside corridors and rooms are impossible to access and smell of smoke and dust.

“Think those metal parts in his body could help us combat the virus, Lex?”

“It can tell that they are custom made, and I think the surgery to put them in looks highly fatal. From what he said, they don’t do anything but help you test viruses on yourself, and I don’t want to slight him. For the world, it will never be a proper solution. For our case, we will have our virus tested on his zombies.” After discussion, I laid him down in a grave memorial outside in the forest, 50 feet from the house. Anneka stands in silence to my right.

Goodbye. I’ll return after I make everything right. 

                                                                            Part 1: End