text: This is my first post on here. Figured this would be the best place to put a piece of my work that will be evaluated. Enjoy this... weird one, to say the least lol. # At the end of his days, one scientist prepares to outlive us all... It was a bright summer day. Birds chirped their songs in the afternoon shades of their trees, children laughed and played in the parks, and couples sat together on park benches, taking in the lazy summer air that carried scents of freshly bloomed flowers. And underneath the sunny afternoon in the basement of a dilapidated laboratory, a scientist was about to spit in the face of natural law. The laboratory, once a powerhouse of innovation and genius, was now nothing more than a rotting carcass that barely resembled its former glory. From the outside, it was nothing more than an old two-story building wedged between a bakery and a pawn shop. An unnamed forgotten structure that most people never noticed. The doors were chained shut, and the windows were boarded up from the inside. The bricks were cracked and faded from decades of decay, and the grimy windows made the boards behind them appear almost ghostly. The building looked, for lack of a better word, dead. Though that was far from the truth, as Dr. Ivor VonLichten knew all too well, hunched over the keyboard in that dark basement. Most thought the laboratory was a former office for a law or accounting firm, but it was actually the birthplace of Ivor’s robotics empire. He thought it a cruel joke, that he rose to the top from humble beginnings only to fall back to square one. The paint was peeling off the bleak grey walls as mold and its stench seeped through the cracks. Rusty steel beams supported by a rib cage of pillars along the wall held the patchy ceiling, drops of murky water falling into various buckets placed along the floor. The basement echoed with the loud clacking of Ivor’s fingers on his keyboard, fervently blasting out lines of code. Wires all around the floor of the basement ran like arteries to a massive wall of monitors, dozens of screens burning images of coding commands and readings into the air. Ivor sat there in an old office chair, his tattered lab coat flapping everywhere as he typed out the next revolution of modern technology. Ivor had pepper-grey hair, with age spots dotting the skin stretched across his narrow arms and bony fingers. His glassy grey eyes were arid after staring at the myriad of screens so long, and his labored breath forebode its end. By all definitions, Ivor VonLichten was a dying man in a dying place that should have served no other purpose than his tomb. But still his fingers typed on with a ferocity that only the spark of life can bear, burning with the embers of a single fact - Ivor VonLichten was simply not going to die. For the bones of his laboratory were not going to be his grave, but rather his saving grace. Even after the failure of his business and the subsequent failure of his body, his mind was still as valuable as the day it was born. A mind that was praised and scorned by the very same people who were going to be responsible for their own demise. Ivor knew that as the people of this world laughed and played, they choked the skies and poisoned oceans, their own deluded happiness merely acting as a distraction from their impending doom. Ivor knew that humanity had an expiration date, not just individually but the species as a whole, and it was approaching exponentially faster. And Ivor knew that he was not going to join them as they dug to their own deaths. It was this very idea that drove him, even now in the decay of his own body and the ill basement he worked his last breathing hours in, to his greatest feat. And it was precisely when a screen to his left blinked green with the words *TEST #77: INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL*, that Ivor’s jaw hung open and his eyes widened, staring in awe at the green glow of the monitor. Ivor checked. Then double-checked. He had quintuple-checked and still the integration was shown to be indeed successful. This was it. The moment he worked so tirelessly for, the moment that he sold everything he ever owned for, the crowning achievement of humanity’s entire meager existence had finally come to fruition, punctuated by a simple line of text on a green computer screen. His eyes were pulled to the corner of the room on his right, where cords as big as pythons ran into a single rectangular box, standing upright and glowing a stark ice blue. Standing eleven feet high, the front facing end of the Cradle - as Ivor insisted on calling it - was made of tempered bullet-proof glass, illuminated inside by cryogenic preservation rods, giving it the appearance of the underside of a glacier. Dozens of empty barrels labelled LN2 - liquid nitrogen - were littered around the monolith like giant beer cans the morning after a frat party. The edges of the glass flaked with frost and condensation. Yellow tubes gripped the sides of the unit like yellow skeletal fingers, each one filled with a solution that was worth more than the box, the supercomputer, and Ivor’s pension combined. Ivor slowly stood up from his swivel office chair, and stepped towards his now completed creation. His feet ached with every step, the muscles in his legs and core tightening in pain and revulsion, rejecting the need to move. But Ivor stepped closer, and brought his rattling, thin fingers to the glass face of the Cradle. Within the ice blue, like a silhouette of light, was a figure in the shape of a human body. Only Ivor knew what lay inside: a synthetic solution of several durable, flexible materials, slowly being drawn into the frozen Cradle. Ivor looked back at the room, a dank and dying skeleton of where his career started. Despite the notion of his being here a pathetic joke, he had to admit it was strangely poetic that this was the place he had found a way to begin anew. It dawned on him that this was the last time he would ever truly experience the world as it is, even now in such an infectious room. Ivor closed his eyes and took a deep breath - the rank odour of mold, the damp air, the drips of water that you *definitely* should not drink - taking everything in, and felt a strange sense of nostalgia. Suddenly, the floors were clean, the paint was fresh, and the fluorescent ceiling lights gleamed a bright white as he and his friends from college sat around drinking terrible coffee, towers of unopened boxes surrounding them, already laughing and talking through their favourite ideas and how they would change the world. Then Ivor blinked, and just as suddenly as they appeared, the lights dimmed, the walls grew colonies of all kinds, and the sounds of optimistic laughter faded away, replaced with drips of dirty water and the hisses and hums of machinery. Ivor looked back at the Cradle, and his wistful expression morphed into a scowl as he thought about how those same people would think of his creation. They would have called it insane, a delusional hope that would end in catastrophic failure. He could hear them - “Ivor, you’ve really lost it now. You call this a *solution?* You’ve built nothing but a fancy coffin!” Any other mind would scoff at his project and write it off as the tragic fall of a once great mind. But Ivor knew better. The one line of text on that small screen knew better. And here it was, physical proof that they and billions of others before him were wrong. For this wasn’t his coffin. This was his Cradle. Ivor’s focus now lay on the figure in front of him - a reflection of an old man in a rotting cave of his own failure. As those same hollow eyes stared back at him, his expression bore a new appearance that he hadn’t seen in a long time - determination. Ivor reminded himself why he was here. The Cradle was functional, meaning that Ivor was about to step into the greatest achievement by any mortal being known to man - and *become* that achievement. It was decided. Ivor pressed a button on the right side of the Cradle. A small tube ejected from underneath the button, containing an orange canister no bigger than a chocolate bar. Ivor took it in his hand and walked back to his desk, sitting down in his swivel chair. He pulled out a small mesotherapy gun from the left hand side drawer, modified with a switch array and cords running into the enormous computer in front of him. He flipped the switches to prime the device, turning on a green laser pointer on the underside of the muzzle. Ivor placed the tube inside the fixture where the syringe would go, and placed the gun to his head, the green laser fixed directly above his right ear. On cue, one of the screens switched to a diagram of a human brain, similar from what an MRI would show. A red line blipped intermittently across the screen, right through the brain diagram. Ivor brought the gun up and down, the line on the screen moving with the gun. He did this until the line beeped a satisfying green when it was aimed at the correct spot and the right angle. Ivor looked at the computer one last time before bringing his eyes to the Cradle. In that moment, he felt the embers of youth spark once again in his bones, blazing with anticipation at his feat. He took one final breath in that room, clamped his eyes shut, and pulled the trigger. &#x200B; \* \* \* &#x200B; Chuck del Toro was on the Eastrail 177 train when everything happened. Had he lived through the experience, he would’ve remembered every painstaking detail. The subway car barreled through the veins of tunnels, carrying all kinds of people to their daily routines to fulfill their duties as cogs in the massive clockwork of society’s machine. Chuck sat in between a wealthy-looking business executive - dressed in a suit as sharp as crystal, shoes that gleamed like polished obsidian and a watch that was probably worth more than Chuck’s apartment - and a rather impoverished individual wearing a tattered hoodie, faded jeans and busted sneakers that resembled three-week old banana peels. Chuck held his blue college backpack close to his chest, equal parts out of fear and embarrassment from his two travel companions. Too many things were on Chuck’s mind to notice that the subway car was shaking more than normal. That paper was due at eleven-thirty, right? Or was it twelve? So many mundane concerns piled onto his preoccupied mind, resulting in a migraine from the mounting pressure. Chuck resorted to looking outside at the lights as they sped by in a blur as bold, dashed streaks of light whizzing in a hypnotic motion. Then, the dashed blurs began to flicker. It was only now that he noticed the rumble of the car had reached a point beyond normality. Looks of concern and mild alarm rippled throughout the other passengers, including the vagrant and the businessman. Chuck turned his neck to look out his side of the car. Through the blur of motion, he saw cracks snaking their way up the bricks, and he heard the clatter of dust on the car roof. Panic creeped up his throat, and the hairs stood up on the back of Chuck’s neck as the tunnel in front of them collapsed open. Up ahead, a section of earth caved in, bringing that section of the subway tunnel with it. So much of it fell (or Chuck’s section raised) that the surface was now partially visible. Chuck’s subway car barreled out of the new exit. The wheels left the rail and the air fell silent as the car fell into freefall, seconds lasting an eternity. Chuck gripped the pole for support out of instinct, anchoring himself to the car. The vagrant grabbed the seats, and the businessman just tried to stay in his chair out of panic. Passengers all along the car tried their best to hold on. Some succeeded, some others had surprised expressions as they were lifted into the air, then the car made an impact on the ground below. Chuck’s car was the second one in the chain, which ended up saving him from the initial fall. The front car fell face-first into the ground as the second tried to fall to the ground, pushing against the now upright front car like an open stapler desperately trying to close. Passengers flew ahead from the force, including the vagrant and the businessman. The coupling bent too far and snapped, the momentum sending Chuck’s car hurtling ahead as it bent left and crashed onto its side. Chuck fell forward, his head bashed against the wall as the chaos of the fall began to blur. After what felt like forever, Chuck lifted his head that now felt like it weighed a ton. He touched his fingers to his forehead and felt blood. Chuck lumbered ahead on all fours, crawling to the nearest light. In the bend, the car had partially torn open, revealing the carnage outside. He made it between the businessman and the vagrant, and what he saw made him think he was hallucinating from a concussion, if that was even possible. Several chunks of earth collapsed and rose as buildings’ foundations groaned and fell, glass dust sprinkling down like rain. The land appeared to be rippling like the ocean, the surface cracking under the stress of the bends. Cars rained from the sky as they flew off of streets and parking garages, the meticulous paths of roads now crumbling into chaos. Chuck’s gaze drifted past the dissolving of civilization towards the horizon, where horror blazed. He had simply thought they were spots in his eyes from the crash, but reality was far worse. The sky was on fire as new suns began to supernova in the distance, blazing balls of light and heat rising and cooling into clouds the shapes of mushrooms, buildings on the horizon becoming translucent and fading away as the nuclear explosions raged forth, the deafening shockwaves barreling towards Chuck’s ears just before his vision faded to black. \* \* \* The Cradle hissed and hummed as the ancient glass doors creaked open, white gas billowing out as the last of the refrigeration solution faded away. Stumbling out of the Cradle was a humanoid figure made of a strange metallic material, black as the night. Microscopic cells along the body shrank and expanded, focusing on the nearest shreds of light, giving the figure a sort of ripple across its skin. The figure fell on all fours, struggling to keep its weight aloft, unused to the feeling. Slowly, two eyes opened, the aperture and artificial corneas contracting. Solid sun-yellow eyes gleamed, the pupils like sun spots. The figure slowly pulled itself up and took in the surroundings. The land had half fallen away, the side of the room opposite of the figure completely gone and open to the landscape. The room had been completely overtaken by nature, all kinds of vines and vegetation weaving from the hole throughout the room, as well as the sides of the Cradle. The cracks in the floor grew tall strands of grass, and a few flowers. Against the wall sat the remains of a supercomputer, the monitors blank and coated in dust so thick they looked like tablets of stone. On the ground by the computer was what was left of a human skeleton, covered in moss and grass, barely holding itself together. Ribs, a skull and arm bones poked out of the green, the puny remains of a hand grasping what was left of a now broken mesotherapy gun. After looking at the remains of the lab, the dark figure walked to the edge of the room, and the eyes of Dr. Ivor VonLichten absorbed the enormous scenery. The landscape was a series of jagged hills, smoothed over by centuries of erosion. Grass and trees covered the hills, ebbing and flowing in the breeze. All around the landscape, the remains of enormous fallen skyscrapers were littered like ancient tombstones in a forgotten graveyard. In between it all were great ravines formed by past earthquakes, riddled across the ground like lightning scars. Beyond that, enormous craters dotted the landscape like an enormous fist had repeatedly punched the Earth, now eroded and overgrown. A once mighty metropolis and monument to human power, now merely skeletons being consumed by the tide of earth in the wake of a new era. And yet Ivor stood there, having survived it all using the same resources as this fallen empire. He looked down, observing his metal, glistening black hands. The sensory receptors picked up every change in wind, every odour it carried, and every noise that it blew. He looked across the enormous landscape again, and nodded. Ivor brought his left leg back, bent his right knee, and lunged forward off the edge of the cliff. Suddenly, the fibers in his body began to expand and lengthen, legs merging together, each finger fusing into the remainder of the material in his arms until he was an enormous, thin sheet of metal, catching the wind with colossal wings and soaring across the sky into the expanse of the ruined city. Ivor descended onto a desolate city street, the asphalt overgrown with vegetation so that any semblance of concrete were simply slabs no bigger than three feet across scattered around the area like pebbles in a field. His body morphed back into humanoid form, performing a perfect somersault as he made contact with the ground. Looking up at the broken city Ivor truly knew how it felt to be an ant in a cemetery. The wind blew through the area, moaning as it weaved through the buildings’ skeletons, and distant clouds casting hazy shadows across the area, creating wispy shades like the ghosts of the human race. The sounds of ancient concrete cracking and crumbling under its own weight, as well as new species of birds making their nests in the decrepit skylines. Ivor took it all in, his heightened sensory receptors picking up every scrutable detail. Ivor, realizing his newfound freedom, willed his arms to change form. His fingers and hands melded into his arms and stretched out, forming two ice-pick like fixtures. He drove them into the concrete of a crumbling building and began to climb. He felt no sense of tiring or wear. Rather, it was a monotonous task as simple as breathing; his joints automatically readjusting themselves to account for structural damage in the building. During the climb, however, he would occasionally notice a strange shape at the corners of his eye. When he’d look in that direction, it was gone. He mentally cursed himself for not installing 360 degree vision. Still, he climbed forth, convinced that it was just a visual anomaly from his bionic eyes. After all, no machine would ever truly be perfect. He rose to the summit of the building, and took it all in. The cliff face where his old lab was located was now a tiny speck in the distance. If he looked at all the wreckage long enough, he could visualize what used to be the city’s original infrastructure. It was almost melancholic now, looking on at a world that used to be brimming with energy now reduced to an enormous concrete cemetery. Still, those were mortal concerns. Ivor wrote it off as nothing more, and prepared for the glide back down to the surface. Suddenly, mid-glide, he was hit by something. Ivor tried to shake it off, but whatever it was wouldn’t budge. In a panic, he retracted his glider wings and unleashed a blizzard of spikes on his back like a bionic porcupine. He retracted them and tried to unfold his wings again, but it was too late. He hit the ground with a resounding *thud.* Ivor struggled to get up, which wasn’t a good sign since he shouldn’t have had the ability to struggle doing anything. He noticed that he was now in what seemed to be the remains of a subway car, on a pile of what appeared to be three human skeletons. He couldn’t tell the difference between the three of them, but that thought quickly dissipated as those same shadows he saw before now showed themselves directly in front of him. They appeared to be strange-looking descendants of crows, now much larger and clearly stronger. They eyed Ivor with a sense of fascination, an expression that Ivor felt looked unnaturally human. Then, Ivor felt pain - a sensation that he had thought he would never feel again, and he knew that it only triggered when something in his new body was truly wrong. He looked up and to his right at his arm... to realize that it was now not there anymore, but was now in the hands (wings?) of one of these demonic corvids. The other corvids looked at him with fear and began to hiss at it and ruffled their massive wings in an attempt at intimidation. The corvid holding Ivor’s arm looked at it, almost like it was studying the strange object. It looked down at Ivor, and Ivor felt another feeling that he never expected to feel again - fear. The corvid brought down the heavy metal arm onto Ivor’s head, and did so several times until Ivor’s eyes went dark and his body went limp. The other corvids squealed in shock, confused as to what exactly this one was doing. Then, they hunched over in an act of submission. The now dominant corvid brandished the metal arm high above its head, screeching loudly in a cry of victory, holding aloft the first tool - a weapon - that would lead to their rise.