She was exactly where she wanted to be.

Lately, my thoughts have been plagued with certain subjects. Ideas of technological advancement, interhuman conflicts and advanced technological warfare. Or, more specifically, I can’t help but be bothered by the word “Cyberpunk”. As if a concept that’s been inserted into my head by some outside force, the story genre, which I didn’t have much of an interest in to begin with, suddenly was pushed to the forefront of my mind.

I had an urge to go to one of the more advanced cities around the world, like Tokyo with its stacked city structure and neon lights, or Portland with its cyber gang warfare and push for equal rights for AI.

I, for one, am not huge on technology. I never have been. It’s cool, and brings people together, sure. But even more than that, it breeds tools for death and mass destruction. It creates more things to fight over nail and teeth, and more ways to produce pointless, fruitless war.

Humans will inevitably do whatever it takes to sate their curiosity and push their ideas to the limit, no matter who they stomp over in the process. Even if it’s themselves.

Especially if it’s themselves.

~

There was a new religion brewing in the middle east. I often came to check in on its progress, because it was interesting to see a new player in the game, considering your biggest contenders were usually all based around similar scripts, and old, old ones at that.

And well, after I knew the truth, they all just became more stories to me. It was simply a competition to see which one piqued my interest the most. And this religion perhaps was the most intriguing of them all.

After all, their god was alive and well, and doing his utmost to fulfill the wishes of everyone around him.

The Savior.

She was, to my knowledge, the only Chosen whose powers were present from birth. While the rest of us awakened to them at a later time in our lives, she had come out of the womb and saved her own birthing mother from a painful death on the operating table. They called it a miracle, and the doctor was so bewildered at their patient’s recovery that he insisted she must have been blessed by God themselves.

Taking their native religion into account, such a declaration was not only impossible, but nothing short of religious heresy. And living in the extremist country that they did, it was more or less expected that there were officials at the hospital within hours of the news spreading who arrived to execute those involved in the procedure, as well as the mother and The Savior herself.

The doctor was supposed to die protecting the baby he had just surrendered his faith to, but well, it seemed that the child had unconsciously chosen him. Or at least, that’s how he took it when only the both of them were unharmed despite a barrage of bullets unloaded right through their bodies.

He took her far, far away, with the blessing of near-instantaneous healing and a strong conviction to carry him through any obstacle in his way. For a long while, they were in hiding, wandering from village to village. But as soon as the young girl was old enough to understand that she was more than human, the two of them got to work honing her abilities.

She could heal people. Both in mind and in body.

With the doctor abandoning his old religion entirely, he crowned himself the prophet of a new religion, which he called “New Godism”. Of course, that’s only the English translation, but heck, I don’t know Farsi. I don’t even know English.

You can work out the logistics of that yourself.

He brought her from village to village, showing the young girl the hellish state of her own home country, and encouraged her to heal the locals of each place they hid at. And little by little, people began to see the miracle in front of their eyes, and trust their own five senses over ancient scripts. New Godism gained some traction, and soon they had a whole caravan of travelers who followed them to witness the beginning of what they hoped would become a worldwide religion.

The doctor abandoned his studies of medicine in exchange for devoting himself to understanding The Savior’s powers in and out, so that he could form his new religion around them, and instruct his scribes on how to structure their values and teachings.

But this was the modern day. There was more than just scrolls and texts; no, videos, pictures, and even livestreams made their way around the world, and even the forces of the country itself couldn’t stop those from traveling from far and wide to witness this miracle girl and the religion of those who followed her.

Some came for a god that was a woman. Others came to be cured of fatal diseases. In just a few years, the caravan which had been running from the law evolved into a city protected by the United Nations. It had quickly become recognized as its own sovereign state.

At first, the doctor had only been desperate to prove that he had not abandoned the word of his religion in vein; that he didn’t lose everything for no reason. But very quickly, he filled his life with new family and new meaning, all because his life was saved by a newborn baby. He was willing to protect that new life at all costs.

A religious war broke out.

~

“Father, I wish to see the people. They are suffering; I can feel it. Something is going on out there!”

“Sweetie. My dear, wonderful daughter. My savior. You need not concern yourselves with what is happening outside. You are too young for politics. All you need to understand is that this must happen for the sake of those who follow you. You must stay within the confines of your room, so that your loyal patrons can continue to thrive.”

“But I can help them! They’re dying, aren’t they?! You can’t lie to me, I can feel their pain!”

“You are to stay here. I forbid you from leaving. That is the end of this conversation.”

He left the girl be in her lavishly decorated room, full of offerings from the people. It had been years since she had been allowed to leave the palace, ever since its construction had been completed. Only occasionally, she would greet her patrons at the front entrance to treat their wounds, or give a speech. But those words were but scripts prepared for her by her ghostwriter, and she barely even understand what they served to convey.

It was all beyond her.

She only desired to help people.

The jewels; the headdresses; the rituals; none of it seemed related at all.

Well, it didn’t take much force for her to break the lock off of the door once she had made up her mind to escape.

“I will save them. I need not know politics to understand that people should not suffer.”

Dawning a commoner’s robes, the ignorant girl escaped the walls of her own country to meet with an overload of things she had never seen before.

Steel, smoke, and blood stained the desert scenery before her eyes. There were large, glowing cannons mounted atop armored vehicles. They flashed with bright lights, aimed in the direction of incoming people. They all wore strange, sandy colored outfits, with more steel in their hands. Guns. Sure, bulleted weapons and explosives, but other kinds as well which she had never seen. They produced heavy bursts of sound while shooting seemingly invisible objects toward the opposing forces.

This was a war.

Her loyal followers were in the midst of a war.

The Savior was in tears.

She couldn’t even think, let alone process the unjust death laid all around her. Her body moved automatically, to do that which she had come to do.

One by one, the girl pressed her hands to the chests of the fallen, and replenished their health. Some got up and moved again, while others had already long passed; their newly pristine bodies showed no signs of movement. But what terrified her even more was that those who had been saved immediately thought to find their weapons and begin killing again. And like some kind of insanity, laid down the lives which had just been returned to them moments before. Immediately, one of those which she had brought back from near death brought his hands to her neck and began to choke her. She couldn’t feel physical pain nor force, but the sheer desperation on his face as he attempted to strangle her was far more traumatizing.

Why were they so determined to keep killing? Why were they so desperate to throw away their own livelihood?

Where did all of these foreign weapons come from?

Was it her? Did she cause this?

For somebody so sheltered; no, perhaps it was precisely because she was sheltered; she began to ask the real questions that nobody else running in the sand were willing to stop and ponder on.

Screams.

Cries.

Cruelty.

Splatters of blood.

Flashes of light.

The Savior took root in the ground below her feet. She was unable to move if she wanted to. With all her invulnerability and all her power, she was unable to do anything but watch.

But as she looked up into the smoggy sky to escape the bloodshed in all other directions, something else came into her vision. It was just a spec at first, but slowly, and then quickly, it became larger and larger.

The bomb landed right on her head.

Well, I should have left the scene before it hit.

I wanted to.

I wanted to take her too.

But something compelled me to stand there at the center of the explosion. My feet were planted and stuck in place, just like hers.

I couldn’t describe the scene if I wanted to. I couldn’t even process it for myself. My senses were entirely overloaded.

If there was one outstanding feeling that I could even begin to describe that I took in?

Agony.

I could feel it, in its most pure form, from hundreds of thousands of humans, for just a split second.

From then on, I waited for it all to clear. The first thing that entered back into my vision through a haze of smoke and particles was the form of a human, charred to a crisp, down on their knees.

She was still there. At the center of the massive, ash-stained crater we now occupied all by ourselves, she was still taking it all in.

I decided to take my leave for the time being. I didn’t want to experience this story anymore.

~

It wasn’t until a few months later that my curiosity piqued again. Apparently, an EMP wiped out all electronics in the area moments before the explosive hit. And despite numerous attempts to try and investigate the impact site with drones or robots after much of the country had become entirely untouchable due to extreme levels of radiation, apparently the EMP was still in action. No sort of technology could even get close to the crater site, let alone monitor it.

So I went there myself.

And somehow, despite the absence of life for thousands of miles, there was a single sprouting leaf, at the very center. Lively and green against the charred earth, as if it was from an entirely different setting.

It grew right where she had been standing.

“Sorry.”

I don’t know why, but I felt the need to apologize to her.

The next day, I came back with a cheap little watering can, and fed the little sprout. And while I was at it, I gave it a name too.

“Eve”.

I wanted to pot it and take it back with me so that it could grow in a better environment. But that seemed wrong.

I think it was exactly where it wanted to be.