Sometime In The Future
EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM:
THE WORST HAS COME TO PASS. OUR NATION HAS FALLEN.
DESPITE THE HEROISM OF OUR SOLDIERS AND THE SACRIFICES OF OUR CITIZENS, THE ENEMY HAS OVERCOME OUR DEFENSES. WE'VE BEEN FORCED TO SURRENDER.
STAY INDOORS AND REMAIN VIGILANT.
THEY MAY OCCUPY OUR BORDERS, OUR STREETS, AND OUR HOMES…
BUT THEY SHALL NEVER OCCUPY OUR SPIRIT!
THE FUTURE OF OUR NATION RESTS IN YOUR SURVIVAL.
ENOCH SHALL RETURN STRONGER THAN EVER!
"The announcement is useless. Everyone is dead." Flick, the message shut off and a hellscape greeted him with assailing heat that formed rolling sweat beads down his leg while longingly looking at the scenery that would never unchange. Skyscrapers that once stood proudly stood no longer. And a partition grew with buildings falling into this otherworldly destruction not of mankind's making. But the buildings continued through and the Man leapt over the worldly demise and wandered around this…city? If you can even call it that. Dilapidated buildings and lives seared upon the war-flames which bellowed and tinted heaven bloody over man with the sun's penetrating ray like a mother's reach while thriving yet ceasing upon the artificial barrier and reddened from the child's cry.
All moisture was stripped from every living and nonliving thing and the air grew unbearably hot. The disappearing sun and a landscape bathed in crimson from blood and fire. Blackened and charred bodily remains crumpled and fell apart, collapsing over one another as far as the eye could see, like sacks of burnt leaves spilling onto the ground. Others were reduced to charcoal and burning wax, even their cybernetics weren't spared. Someone further up froze statuesque, flash-fossilized alongside their tears and their head shifted upward toward someone or something, pulling another who had no body left, just charcoal-crusted arms. Parts of buildings had hands sticking out—the only soft, fleshy thing remaining on the planet. A hand, its fingers sticking and burning like candles as the fat draws toward the fingertips by the tissue below, its metallic augmentation melted.
Then the Man went through the smoke and flames with chilling oceanic eyes that shivered ice with revived circuitry—bright yet belated life with youth replaced with ardent longing while an ominous radiance stirred within, and suddenly, an image popped into his vision and read:
BE ADVISED: A LARGE SOURCE OF HEAT IS CLOSE BY.
He closed the notification and said, "Obviously." A sore heart from bloodied grounds and caused him to clench his teeth while screams drowned. Soon, leaving the city center toward the outskirts, his mind cast back to where the ship was last. "This is consistent…" The ship's contrails blended into the city's fiery smoke fast and halted to track the remnant contrails before continuing.
Soon, his brown hair obscured his vision and was removed.
BE ADVISED: CLOSING IN ON THE INDICATOR MARKED.
A looming destroyed glass wall amplified the scene's austerity and the machinery lines brightened his radiant eyes while gazing miles out upon a crash landing. "That's it." And still, in enhanced vision, no enemies littered and He ventured forward until the structure silhouetted no more and the once monolith became a fraction. War-bound resolve pulpified within while jumping leaps and bounds and indenting the ground and dissolving its wake with air decompressing until finally standing like an effigy upon his destination.
Then his feet sank like quicksand. Ya'juj and Ma'juj could've been justified in their desolation, but this was a city and your echo was the only wail back at your call. Not even corpses—"Something doesn't feel right." And a sinking feeling nudged him once stopped, and He waded. A hand grabbed his ankle and 'people' from the ground topped. Could you even call them that? They were ghastly—an amalgamation of human and inanimate parts and neither dead nor alive, but something between and an affront to nature. They moved in an eerie silence like automatons with blistered eyes and cracked lips covered in black ash. So He hit them like a timpani but they didn't budge. One? Two? He rushed from the flock. For He was lost for words when initially meeting these...things. No heart or care was given, and out of spite, they couldn't die and were crafted like puppets who drank their cup of suffering to the dregs.
The creatures were tenebrous and deformed and recast with crude materials and corrugated skin with a life and moral compass bereft. Then He dodged an attack with experience kicking in. His fist impacted with a counter strike, moist sounds interlaced with metal clanging and an ungodly screech responded. Their orifices along their body oozed blood from their crude and oddly shaped bodies, which they couldn't keep together to threaten anybody. They leapt and jumped and did everything to reach flesh with frenetic movements used to seize and pass their ingrained blades in everything: living or dead was lost upon them for they neither breathed nor thought and after each clash, they distracted themselves with violence upon one another, dismembering and drenching themselves in their own degradation and rubbish.
"I'll free you," He said with a vascular body pulsing to life and delivering blows to each creature that imploded them upon impact. Soon an entire layer of dead skin separated from the creature's underlying tissue and stuck to his knuckles. So in granularity, He appeared and disappeared while new topography took shape with the air circulation caused by his movements pushing everything back and their numbers dwindling from the gyrations. A flare the creatures couldn't keep up with—a flare with a fire attack that turned one to ash with no screech or yell while smoke wafted from the Man's hands and the gaggle was no more with body parts strewn across the unpacked crust of the planet. But one still arose. Just short of ending it, He stopped and looked at the recognizable visage beyond the pith—his stomach turned in on itself like the Gordian Knot until He lost it in the consortium from disbelief.
Then the gleam from the creature's diminutive wrist, which was ornamented with a sun bracelet, drew him while it entered the glass wall. So He moved away from the ship and entered the destroyed building with debris pieces nearly nicking him while the creature waited adjacent to where He stood. Soon information sent to his neurallink galvanized what He already knew but hoped was untrue. "I'm sorry." He stared at the Moon with eyes matching the redness with a yearning heart to burn it through. But a sharp pain nicked his leg and his heart buoyed on the ocean of sorrow, for the creature pressed forward like a shark after blood and pressured more than a cyst on the skin's surface and was haunted. It tried striking again but He backed away.
So rotund her soft cheeks and porcelain skin were. But more callous was the retained pigtails and soft brown eyes while horrific supplies strewed her body and destroyed the care and youth with only looks being sustained. "Pa…Pa…" It took everything to mimic its former self. The former self He remembered so fondly. "Leaving you like this is worse than killing you." And He killed her while downcast and kissing her hand and taking the bracelet, for shelved another failure within an evergrowing library. "I hope you are free…" And the scenery remained constant once He arose. An unanswered and unsurprising hope. "god is dead." A freeing revelation to some but not to him. Soon off the floor and gazing at the absolute carnage thrust upon the world: Man, Woman, Child. 'god is dead' wasn't spite but a fact, for this was caused by those whose hearts had no light.
Then what of a god who'd allow this? Is his heart black? god died or left them and both were equally terrifying. So He stood for an edifying event yet to come while his heart shattered and from it came the bubbling and carbonation of his blood, but not at others, only himself and his failures which piled higher than a steeple. Failure after failure. And it coursed like a sorrowful flood and wrenched his heart with a demanding feeling and tugged him until He looked at the Moon's growing size with the flood drowning him amidst moiling to overcome. But this rigueur…a tear crept. And then he wept.
●
Truly surreal. The ship's sharp edges and sleek design made catching one similar to catching lightning in a bottle, for the thin outer shell was durable and fast for its size—but not the cause of the world's destruction. And it lay there like a slumbering giant in tranquility—a tranquility swiftly pounded. "This ship feels real," He said. And soon it gave way to the gaping and punctured hole from his bare fist. He entered the ship languidly with his weary eyes set upon the awe-striking wafer-thin blue circuitry along the bulkhead that separated itself like etchings on a circuit board. It led to where He thought the captaincy was, or where He hoped it was, and said lines carried blood through the ship like veins with port and starboard walls breathing like a living thing with a pulsing heart and seeing eyes and a thinking mind.
Then how was it not alive? Truly otherworldly. Soon his breath faded while the hairs along his body perked up with his eyes adjusting to the sharp contrast, which glowed briefly before fading. He pushed toward the stern and at a penetrating light but stumbled into the cold epicenter of the ship's engine, which was swishing and emanating cold air while failing to revive itself. Past this was a burned cockpit, "This is where it hit." Leaving and descending a staircase by the initial door, the same thought looped: it was less ship and more space, for besides a bit of light, there was nothing until He finally arrived at a white room with a door so thick you'd need a drill to bore through.
Tap tap—the metallic ring filled the room from the knocks before flames coated his fist. "It must be behind this." Hot. And the once-cold air warmed from a telegraphed hook which erupted like a mallet upon a gong from cacophony to a symphony with the door bursting and an air mass rushing forth as if alive—the epitome of death as its arctic hand grasped within and elicited a shiver. "RAH~~~!" A guttural roar rocked the ship and blew him into the nearby wall while the inert coagulum caused the ground to quiver.
INITIATING TITAN'S DEFENSE.
"The ship's defenses are active without power?" He said with the creature's gelatinous girth and tonnage spreading throughout the room like a contagion.
And it was lugging with amoeba mobility. "BLGHH~~~!" So He dodged whatever erupted from its maw with the place turning into a vat. "Need to be careful." A fast attack with faster effects and chances couldn't be taken—no, definitely not, but this somethingness was in the way. "This wasn't in the other timeline. I must be close if they have defenses like this." Acid oozed from its perforations with the scent of old fine wine but damaged everything it touched. A nature remiss. With no eyes but rained acid strikes with flaccidity, for the acidic nature dealt damage rather than physical exertion.
Soon, He dodged. "You're in my way." Strobic fire from hell hit the creature with destructive energy while its body tried vainly to hold itself with globs falling. "Fire it is." It released a barrage which was dodged so fast that time stilled, or it might as well have, for thousands of globs were evaded, but one caused a tear in clothes and skin. "Damn." Then before it deepened, like a phoenix, He combusted and turned the room into a furnace with the silky fire peeling and licking the ceiling and ground and emanating waves that took the creature aback while the world shone on him, and so too his blue eyes and brown hair contrasted and reflected with an intensity you could swim in.
But this didn't stop the acrid smell from permeating the room while the acid on his body swiftly burned off with his foot striking the ground and devastating its wake and forming a runoff streak. The air evaporated and space burned and distorted. Fist to gelatin and gelatin to abstract painting with each strike burning his fist but contorting the creature. So He unleashed the fiery onslaught undeterred with each punch meteoric and stirred within a flaming hurricane and creating a true heaven unsupported, for righteous fury was incurred due to being in the way as He took this hurdle and courted it alongside the coagulated blood staining the ship's bulkhead which was hit with a heat flood and evaporated.
"What is this thing?" It was unlike anything seen before until nothing existed of the creature, for amidst the crater's epicenter from his last strike was equally nothing as it burned up and left no feature recognizable—He wrought destruction like a lightning crash. The intensity reduced. "If only I had that—" And his natural eye color clashed with another—a growing, evanescent yellow. "I could see it all. But the Patron is overtaxed with these jumps even riding alongside time's arrow." So the heat and flaming sea subsided while steam rolled off and He crossed the battle-torn room where caution was erred but was gone even amidst the creature's globs lingering in clumps which stopped moving.
For what He coveted was before him. It all led to this. Soon happiness seeped into his heart, the little allowed while riding upon bliss toward the hatch where the creature once stood with a light fixture hanging over it and nothing could stop him: fate, devil, or god. And the hatch confirmed his suspicion with a width that could house only one thing—the thing He sought. Then He looked for traps with shaking hands and the reverie breaking from an overtaking voice. "What is there in this?" "Asia?" His eyes widened and wheeled the room's crevices. "You're always gone, making these sacrifices, and I miss you. This thing will kill you, and you don't see it!" And He took ahold of his head. "Why now? I'm so close." Shaking and shaking.
So He moved his hands along his head to rub the voice but failed. "I have a Patron. I can't be hacked. So what is this?" Sweat dripped. "No." He usually curtailed these thoughts, but now, it was at the forefront and felt akin to getting lobotomized with an icepick. "She's worried and misses—" "Don't ignore me! Why love a world that hates you?" "The world isn't perfect, but it's not wrong to make it so. god has forsaken us, but you can't forsake yourself. You control your life, and this world reflects that." And He nodded and said, "The world reflects the human heart and mind. And where the heart goes, the mind follows. Love is still here, even if flawed. We can't lose hope. I won't lose hope." Soon the sheet metal was punched through like a nuisance while pulling through a black case with a smile, "I don't…" He couldn't form words and swung the case over his shoulder. "Finally." He exhaled as his resolve was a boulder.
And his breath felt housed for an eternity while an invisible weight lifted itself off of him. "Let's see how it looks now." He put the numbers in the algorithm to draw a probability distribution. Then numbers of modernity rolled across his eyes and sorted themselves with the median absolute deviation being highlighted. "Come on now." Soon the case slipped through his clammy hands, for carrying the world was nothing like carrying the hopes and dreams of your world.
WITH APPLIED VARIABLES, HUMANITY'S VICTORY IS AT 1%.
So He fell to his knees, not to pray or praise but to weep while the case fell wayside, for He couldn't stand and sobbed with the echo hitting the walls while tears seeped through the metal but not due to bleak numbers. "Yes! Thank you! Thank you!" Like a madman's mantra, it continued and never ceased and He rose and lifted the case and kissed it. "Thank you!" Even lugging it again, "This is the key to victory." But this time reverie couldn't stop.
Then his eyes, once malleable as stone, had softened. "It's up to you now. All things made will entropy, but we don't deserve this. Not now. I—no, everyone is indebted to you." For everything he'd done, including the box's weight, was coffined by what the user would bear. And He walked to the ship's exit and the circuitry along the bulkhead turned blue to red while the cold was still present and cut like a razor against the grain with his body spurning and coming apart. "I'll fix this, but I have to go now." Soon his body turned into motes of light and dispersed with eyes tinged with sadness yet smiling. So the ship's alarm blared and exploded and engulfed before bursting outward for miles while the Moon grew larger, and the landscape more hellish. Death, blood, misery. For it tanged the air like nothing before.
No one was left to ask whom the alarm blared for.