Prosperity City

SUPER EARTH

2185.05.29

The President of Super Earth found himself alone for the first time he could remember in a long, long time.

The aides and guards usually swarming him lay dead, their soulless empty eyes staring into his own, faces frozen in a mix of fear and pain. The ground was slick with... liquid. Blood, human and Illuminate. Red mixed with purple and blue and black. It almost looked beautiful, like a violent abstract painting.

But the smell...

The President gagged at the smell. His stomach churned with nausea, but he couldn't vomit. He slowly picked himself off the ground, his palms slipping a little on the viscera. He decided not to touch his face.

The Presidential Security Bunker was empty of life. His Honor Guards had sacrificed their lives in finishing the job of protecting him. Two charred Overseer corpses lay about the door, killed from the last grenade held defiantly in hand by the last guard just a moment ago.

The President checked himself for injuries, took a stim off of the body of a SEAF marine and hesitantly jabbed it into his neck. Then his human eyes, honed by a million years of evolution to spot predators in the grass, detected something wrong.

The blood was climbing up the walls.

It wasn't blood.

A black, viscous fluid was seeping from a shattered crystalline ampoule held in the dead Overseer's grip. The President watched in morbid curiosity as a tendril formed out of the fluid, then as if sensing him, slowly crept towards him. Instinct told him to run, to hide, to get out, NOW. But as he took his first step away, an overwhelming feeling washed over him and he froze. Somehow, some way, he wanted, really wanted to touch it. A craving beyond reason. Not curiosity, more... longing. It felt like it had always been what he wanted to do for a long time.

A sharp pang of fear arced through him like lightning, then dissipated quickly as the fluid quickly wrapped itself around him, trapping him in a swirling, black cocoon.

Then all went black.

"You are undeserving of the Blood you touch." A voice suddenly spoke. The President tried to recoil from surprise, but was trapped within the fluid. The voice came from inside him. A voice in his mind, devoid of tone, timbre, or gender. A concept, given sound.

"Who the hell are you?"

"That is not the right question to ask." the same, unidentifiable voice continued.

A million questions ran through his mind. Scattered thoughts tried to organize themselves. There was no sense to be found.

"I don' t understand." He finally said.

"That is because you don't see."

"See what?"

"Your salvation. Your kind's salvation."

"We came bearing the burden of enlightenment and the responsibility as missionaries. Religion has always been a part of civilization throughout the known universe, but we were different."

"We came with the gift of the Seeds. We saw you as our equal: ignorant, primitive, yet full of potential. We wished to accelerate your kind to Enlightenment, through the plowing of the Seeds and creation of your own creators. And yet you refused."

"In your wanton savagery, you deemed our gift weapons. You turned your instruments of slaughter on our unarmed messengers. You massacred our people and claimed a bloody victory. Because you do not see what lies before you."

"Our origins are beyond space, beyond time. None can escape their grasp, yet none can ever see their true form. In your arrogance, you misused their blood, poured countless amounts of it into a world undeserving of such power, and in so doing, you created a mutated God, a deity born from bloodlust and hate."

Beyond space... beyond time... no escape... The President's mind flew to the war waging all around him, on his home planet. To where the invaders had appeared from.

The Meridian Singularity.

"You are starting to see, aren't you?"

Information started pouring, forced into his mind from beyond his consciousness. A slow trickle at first, then a stream, then without warning, the last piece of his mental defense failed, and it flooded in. Garbled screams, distorted shapes, incomprehensible emotions. He wanted to close his eyes, cover his ears, even though he knew it was impossible to block it off. He was screaming, begging for it to stop, just for a second. It was all too much, all too fast.

Then, as suddenly as it came, the flood stopped.

And he understood.

He saw with his mind's eye, the first encounter, greed and hubris, blood and death, heartbroken Children pleading for revenge in front of their Great Creator. It was so clear, so obvious, as if it was right in front of his face this entire time and he had been blind to it.

Humanity. A society built on false premises. It was so pointless, so desperately futile. He wanted to run out, yell at every soldier to lay down their weapons, to kneel and pray for forgiveness, and that they just. Don't. See.

Oh, but what even is the point of that? What good will it bring to try to keep alive what is but a whisper of a God's dream?

The corners of his mouth twitched. He started to smile, then laugh, then suddenly he was racked with maniacal laughter.

As if anything they did mattered now.

"We were never the ones made in God's Image." he finally managed to mutter.

"I see now."

"No, human, no you don't. You have... the wrong eyes."

"I have the wrong eyes." the President found himself repeating mechanically. Of course.

As the President's arms lifted uncontrollably towards his face, as his nails dug into his open eyes and the unbearable pain raced through his body, as blood spurted and his palms closed around the two small, delicate, smooth spheres, the last shred of his sanity failed to scream.

The President of Super Earth lay dead in his bunker. His face was contorted into a smile, his limbs at a strange angle, Dark Fluid slowly leaving every pore of his body.

On his forehead, small, round bulges appeared. With a bit of a struggle, they finally tore open the skin. A few drops of blood trickled down the lifeless corpse.

And his new Eyes began to see.