Chapter 0:
A Changed Race
A black video screen turns on, revealing the image of a man with a wide crazed smile, maddening wide eyes, dark circles, and a shabby white scientist's jacket topped with thick goggles staring at the viewer.
“This man is Dr. Howard Spinner. He was a highly credited biologist. He has a PhD in many fields of study," said a young woman .“About one year before the incident, Dr. Spinner became obsessed with the thought of immortality. The madman believed his calling in life was evolving the human race after a series of family tragedies. The scum developed disillusions about reality and of himself. The following video files will show the creation of the cursed legacy the pervert left for us,” said the mocking feminine voice.
Another image of Dr. Spinner appeared, but it started to move, showing him trying to interact with his audience, revealing his wide grin. He slowly tapped the screen's glass as if he were aware of the audience; they were his pet goldfish in front of him. His face went serious for a moment before he smiled back.
The man backed away from the camera before raising his arms to the heavens and shouting. “Hello out there! My children or even those who are looking back at my greatness!"
He took a deep breath with a crazed smile spreading across his lips. "If this goes well enough, all will deify me as a god, and this shall be the start of my tale of transcendence." He looked dreamily off into space before shaking his head and looking back at the camera.
"Well, anyway, this is the first video entry of my journal entries. This is journal entry 156 after extraneous studies on immortal animals or those with some of these traits. My personal favorites are longevity, turning back time, reestablishing genetic code, or advancing cellular division! There are even traces of otherworldly entities, but a clause forbids me from saying more. You know those deals with the devil we call lawyers."
"But I will say more later on the other similar subjects. Why must we be confined as bags of flesh with moderate intelligence?"
"I disagree with this notion. Thus, I had been going on a barbarous journey alone as any other true genius would."
"It was lonely at times, and I found what any prominent explorer would need: like-minded individuals and backers to work with."
"One wishes to stay in the shadows but gave me mysterious creatures of the likes I have never seen before. Ah, that clause."
"Some would say to look at those weird and peculiar gift horses in the mouth, but I am not one of them. They were bizarre, and their abilities only furthered my research. I admit it was a bit of a distraction dealing with these things. Like playing with ants as a child is not professional, and those subjects of study must be kept off the record at the backer‘s request—sorry, viewers, we'll let imagination be your inspiration here."
"Don’t let that get you down, viewers of my greatness! All other research and samples are cataloged along with notes for a study to review for the young minds wishing to learn from me. Are you not satisfied already? Now for the best news."
"I have discovered a way to rewrite the human genome until the DNA and chromosomal alignment. I want changes, not disfigurement. I want splicing and evolution, not slow mutation and natural selection!"
"It has now become so simple and fast that a child playing with logs would understand what can be done to gain these animals' and creatures' immortal divine qualities and abilities. This is not just a mistake from the burden of knowledge but a simplified process."
"In the past, I have had many failures. More than the number of journal entries, what is a failure but the mother of discovery and birth to innovation? Thus, I have built this machine to do just that.” He took out what seemed to be a child’s storybook next to a remote from his lab coat and pushed a big red button in the center of the remote.
The floor in the back split open as a machine rose until it towered over the doctor. It was pill-shaped and had many different lights on the surface. As the machine started to activate, a high-pitched wailing came from it as if monsters from the depths of hell were escaping to the mortal plane. The screen went white, then black.
A new image starts with Dr. Spinner missing his eyebrows and covered in many bandages as a living mummy. The machine looked different somehow.
“This is journal entry 157. It is approximately two months after the last disaster and meltdown. I found the problem. Having fixed the device along with a heavy overhaul and system maintenance. I have hacked the world’s satellites and computers with one of my backer’s virus programs as a way to use all of the world’s computing power."
"Now, I installed the biochemical samples into the machine along with the sequencing data. Let’s fire it up! To all of you watching out there, the outcomes I have calculated are that I die or succeed and trigger to engulf and transform the world's populace into creatures of superiority. But only after I make the advancement first. What pioneer wouldn’t want to be the first to leave his mark on the notes of history?"
"I must go as the pioneer to a greater tomorrow and evolve into the new mankind. May God witness as I fuse his mighty creations and that we are not so inferior to this Great Creator. Immortality, I’m coming, BABY!” Said the madman. He quickly opened and stepped into the machine, a gaudy mess. A fashion show might have puked it up. It would give a migraine to anyone who looks upon it. Too many lights and unnecessary wires exit the machine hull, which is painted sky blue.
Now that it was lit anew, the machine looked like it would explode again.
The metal glowed orange as a poker and deformed as an ice cream on a hot day. A heatwave that gave an illusion the room was underwater shimmered while the rest of the room started to boil, melt, and smoke into charcoal.
A cloaked figure walks to the machine, ignoring the changes happening around it. The figure makes adjustments to the settings. Beams of energy shot skyward through the opening and the clouds. It faded, and the room started to cool down as the machine crumbled apart.
A beast crawled out of the wreckage covered in tar-like ooze from head to toe. The ooze slowly fell off, revealing transparent white skin. Its muscles and veins are visible.
The creature panted and breathlessly gasped for air, clawing at its throat. The skin soon returned back to its pasty hue. The beast was now a man again; however, it seemed he was different somehow. He was younger-looking somehow.
Dr. Spinner rummaged through the wreckage until he found a mirror-like piece of metal for laser reflection and laughed, seeing the young man staring back at him. His eyes filled with excitement and contracted to dots, but he held his heart in shock as he noticed the cloaked figure standing over him. “Oh, backer, I didn’t notice you there.”
Dr. Spinner gets up, pats his chest, and gloats. “As you can see, I succeeded. We can run more tests and adjust before the global change. Though you look the same.” As Dr. Spinner rubbed his chin deep in thought, a black tentacle extended out of the cloaked figure’s sleeve. It extended and pieced through Dr. Spinner's heart.
Frozen in shock, hate contorts his shocked expression from this betrayal. The figure of Dr. Spinner falls. A pool of blood flowed under him. The black figure pours a liquid onto him and sets it on fire as it walks away.
The screen's image changed quickly to show Dr. Spinner trapped in some glass box cell. There was a heavily armored guard at the entrance to his glass cell. “Come on guard, tell me what has become of the outside world. You should already have all of my research data, the names of my known accomplices, and logs with that traitorous rat as well. So tell me, what has my experiment brought down to bless all of human creation with,” inquired Dr. Spinner.
The guard turned around in a fit of rage. His face was deep crimson, and his eyes shined as if the fire could jettison from his eyes as he shouted, “Blessing? Your disease! No! Your curse has caused hundreds of billions of deaths! After the populous was in mid-change or a full transformation, they killed one another, ripping flesh from bone. They continue killing each other out of fear and the loss of their minds.
Some are taking their own lives out of the madness that you caused! The top scientists say what you caused is now irreversible and that it is impossible to conceive the process. With this disease that you brought into the world, how can you bother to live?”
Dr. Spinner quickly rebutted. “Yes, it’s a blessing. Not only have we grown as a species because of me. Now, everyone can do more, be more, and defend one another."
“Didn’t you hear me? You Quack! They didn’t defend one another. They killed outright everything in their paths. You caused that! People only recently started to gain the ability to hold onto their humanity again.” Said the guard.
“I only see that the fittest were able to survive, as nature intends. Now, there is less to fear and more resources to go around for the new generations."
"The populous will adapt, and the populations will equalize back to what they were in about fifty-something years. Still, I see much fear in your lifeless eyes that are clouded with rage. There is nothing to be concerned with now; just rebuild with the new bodies I gifted to you all. Yes, you have your salvation with newfound strength, just as I’m now immortal. I should be a god, a ruler of you all!”
“An immortal. I see. That’s the only reason you haven’t died after the 2,000 executions already carried out. Is that it? Then stay in this cage and continue to be one of those samples that you so love to work with. Haha, aha ha. Agh!
Dr. Spinner’s face darkened as a smile spread on his lips. “Ah, I see that you are going to mid-shift. Do I fill you with such bloodlust, or do you simply not have as much control over yourself as you would like to think? Can you tell me what it feels like for you? I can only get so much data from self-experimentation. Can’t you? You pathetic governmental dog” scorned Dr. Spinner.
“Agh! Haha. Funny you should say,” the guard paused in between short, stifled breathes, “That I’m a dog,” said the guard in scathing pain. His body started to grow thick streams of fur, and his nails thickened into claws. His bones rearranged themselves, along with his teeth growing as he was turning into the form of a werewolf. In this transforming state, he raised his right claw and slashed a gash in the glass prison. Then, quickly after he gains some self-control, he starts to revert back.
Seeing the transformation, Dr. Spinner mocked, “If you’re going to do something, go through with it next time, mutt.” Dr. Spinner quickly turned translucent as he started to shrink. Once his body reverted back, he had the figure of a four-year-old boy. “Please! Mister Guard Doggy, could you let me out of this cage?”
The guard, in his weakened state, becomes green from this site. To have to look at that image of a hurt boy with the knowledge of who he really was almost caused him to barf. “You're one sick psychopath! You know that! You are a danger to us all, you demon.”
“Well, mister doggy, if you don’t want to play.” Dr. Spinner lifted his left hand, which was still in a liquid-like state. A barb shot out of his palm in a split second and hit the glass. “Then don’t try to come in,” said Dr. Spinner in his crazed grin. The image froze with a closeup of his smile.
A stainless-steel table and chair were in the middle of a cold white concrete room. A 50-inch high-definition screen television was mounted on the wall. A young brown-haired man dressed in a tightly fitted green military uniform sat at the table with a bored look of contempt on his face if this was truly all that important.
Another figure continued to walk unfazed by the screeching chair from the television and hit him over the head with the remote in her hand. He came to attention while holding his head in place to stop the stars from dancing around.
The figure standing over him reveals a young woman with fair skin like white marble, long raven hair with blood-dyed tips, and all-black clothing from her neck to her combat boots. Most men would need to pick their jaws off the ground.
She turns to the television and says, “Before your training is complete, you must understand what happened to the human race and why we are the way we are.” The beauty pressed buttons on the remote, and the screen went black.
The beautiful woman turned back to the young man and continued to give a debrief about the madman, known as Dr. Howard Spinner. She gave a quick history of the world's changes, the new civilizations, habitable environments, and what went into the establishment of their organization.
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