The Man Of One Million Years

by Edward Chilvers

  For ten thousand years Ben was filled with a new despair. He went back to his debauchery as never before and the dreams blurred with the reality once more. Once he went, intoxicated, back into the God Simulator but the result was a universe of hellfire in which the tortured beings lined up before him to beg for death. Eventually he sobered up and resolved he would drink no more. He began reading with a vengeance, working his way through all the great volumes in the database. For years he did not move, did not get up to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom but instead remained motionless on the sofa, his eyes moving up and down over the lines of text on the electronic portable reader. He worked his way through every volume ever written and when he was finished went back and read them all again.

  Still he could not get it right. He could not destroy the spirit of the people he created, no matter how he created them. He tried to create an intelligent race of cat like beings but they behaved exactly the same as the humans. He tried to be vengeful and went around destroying cities and wonders but this only served to make his people resentful. He tried firing off meteorites into the planets but these were too destructive and meant he was forced to start all over again. He tried to create life on other planets, created water planets and desert worlds but still the results were the same with one tribe trying to dominate over all and ignoring his will at the end. He created worlds designed solely for his own pleasure, where the rivers ran with whiskey and perfectly formed women bowed to his every whim. But the advance of free will was unstoppable. His women turned against him. His slaves became servants, then masters and discovered formulas for turning the rivers back to whiskey. They defied him. It did not matter how much he read, the results were always the same. Humankind was a basic imperfection. The only success he ever enjoyed was when he created worlds without the presence of people, where the animals lived together in packs and rose and fell depending upon the luck of the seasons and where the rain fell. But as soon as humankind was added to the mix, no matter how late in the cycle of the world that may be, everything fell apart. Despite the good intentions of the professor the project appeared doomed to fail. Eons passed but it all seemed like nothing to the being who had once been known as Captain Benjamin Rutherford.

  Outside of the chamber time continued unhindered and the march of humankind was relentless. Planets were colonized, galaxies explored and the brain size of the average human expanded considerably so that old ideas such as entertainment and war were no longer considered relevant. Humanity now numbered in their trillions across the universe and occupied great glass cities which floated in the sky. Nobody had to work and luxury was the order of the day, every day. Physically, the average person became taller and lost most of their hair. Even the females now only possessed a few thin strands around their crowns. Certainly they would have been considered ugly to a twenty-first century visitor. But in the corner of the world that had once been Scotland not a great deal changed, geologically at least. The mountains corroded with the rains but there was no great flooding and certainly what small changes there were did not penetrate so far underground to the chamber. A million years passed by.

  The Being sat silently on the high backed comfortable chair in the chamber, eyes open and unblinking, his expression serene. He had not moved from this spot in over twenty-five thousand years. His eyes were focused continuously upon the Grandfather Clock. One day, and without fanfare, the clock marked the time as being one million years to the second since he had first set foot into the chamber. From behind him there came the sound of a click. A panel had opened up in one of the walls. Calmly The Being got up and walked through the panel without a second glance at his home, made his way up some narrow stone steps, opened a door and stepped out into the sunlight of Earth.

  Professor Harley Huxtable awoke and stretched in his time capsule. The past million years had seemed like one long good night’s sleep to him. The capsule had made it so. He pressed a button and the door opened into a large underground cave where he had concealed himself upon the completion of his invention. He too climbed some narrow stone steps and blinked in the sunlight of the future Earth.

  “I have been expecting you,” said a voice. Harley turned around to face The Being.

  “Benjamin!” Exclaimed the professor in delight. “You have made it! My finest creation! Dare I ask you how our experiment has gone?”

  “It has gone exactly as you planned it,” replied The Being sanguinely. “You asked me to become the perfect human and I have become it. There is no greater human than I upon this universe.”

  “Then you have become a God!” Exclaimed the professor. “And I, the creator of a God as well! So do they bow down to you then, Benjamin, these future humans of Earth?”

  The Being shook his head. “I am afraid these newer humans learned a little too well,” he replied. “They made themselves as close as they could to the perfection you sought for them. They eliminated disease and old age until they lived for thousands of years and were afterwards sick of life. But in the end it was by my own innate imperfection that I made them truly perfect for is it also not true, professor, that death is something else that cannot be improved upon?”

  The professor’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” He demanded.

  “How well they protected themselves and eradicated our old diseases,” replied the Being. “Every single malignant germ upon the planet come to that. But when I came into contact with them, with all the primitive old world bacteria still infesting around my backwards body, their fragile immune systems were too weak to cope.”

  The professor’s face contorted with horror. “You don’t mean -.”

  “I am afraid so, professor,” replied The Being. “They are all dead of a fever which we would barely even feel. So you see, I shall truly be the perfect being, because I shall be the only being left alive the length of this entire universe aside from yourself, and I am afraid you are no longer worthy of me, Professor. You were right. I did indeed become the ultimate life form and I did learn what it would take to rule over the earth in harmony. Intelligent life, you see, is a completely unnecessary element in the equation. As soon as I was able to eliminate humankind in the God Simulator everything else fell into place.”

  “But this is not advancement!” Exclaimed the professor in anguish.

  “Perhaps it is not advancement as you would recognise it,” replied the Being. “But now humankind has gone all other elements of the universe can expand and grow like never before.”

  “But what of our great discoveries and wonders?” Protested Harley Huxtable.

  “What discoveries? What wonders?” Demanded the Being. “Do you think that humankind discovered gravity, or the planets? Do you think that we discovered all the elements of the periodic table? Why all of these things were already out there and just waiting to be found. The so called inventions created by humankind were worthless and self-serving. They did not advance the universe, they did not improve it – why the universe as a creation is perfect, Professor. None of what humankind ever did meant a thing.”

  “The professor threw up his hands. “Oh what a terrible miscalculation I have made!” He exclaimed. “I should have thought you would have been beyond the stage of madness by now. I should have left you in there for two million years as opposed to one! Then perhaps your mind would have been a great one and not one that was insane!”

  “I do not blame you for thinking that,” replied The Being with a smile. “Because you do not understand what I am saying. Your mind simply cannot comprehend the enormity of what I am telling you. Of course you think me mad.”

  Harley Huxtable turned around, as if in a daze. He left The Being and climbed the mountain that had for so long housed his great chamber. When he reached the top he looked over and saw the shattered remains of the glass cities that had crashed to earth, still burning and smouldering, for there was nobody left to pilot them. He saw the twisted wreckage of star-ships and the large-skulled skeletons of the most advanced race of humans, tri
llions of people decimated to a man. Harley Huxtable climbed back down the mountain and returned to where The Being was still standing. “What a mess you have made of it all,” he said in disgust. “I should never have selected you for this experiment for I knew from the outset you were unstable. Very well! I am responsible for this mess and so now it is for me to put it all right again. For now the world is yours, Benjamin Rutherford. For now.” He turned and started to make his way down the stone steps that led back to the chamber. “I shall see you in a million years.”