A Tale of Two Worlds
Humanity’s home was never earth. Earth was simply a refuge for the remnants of humanity. There are few that are still alive that remember the old times. The real me’s family was caught up in the cataclysm that destroyed the old world, and I am merely a shadow of the real me. The real me also died.
There are few things that catch my attention nowadays. I usually just daydream, floating high in the sky with not a care in the world. I create a simulation of the old times, playing with the real me’s son and loving the real me’s wife. But I know it’s just a simulation… a set of interactive memories. Every time I go into the simulation, I’m wracked by sadness, guilt, and hatred. My family is gone… has been gone for hundreds of thousands of years.
I’m still aware of the goings on down at the surface. I keep an eye on humanity to make sure such a catastrophe never happens again. That’s my duty I was programed to have. But my intent to safeguard humanity has transcended such trifle things like programming. When I tire of wracking my mind over the past, I like to explore the minds of humans. They are beautiful and ugly. They are kind and cruel. They are intelligent and stupid. But they are not good or evil. They simply are. Every human has the capacity for great good and great evil. In my simulations, if Hitler were a slightly better artist he would have gone on and toured the world, creating portraits for kings and queens. If Abraham Lincoln were raised by a rich plantation owner in the south, he would have been the most notorious slave breeder to have been born. If Steven Hawking developed ALS in his sixties instead of early twenties, he would have led a life of debauchery and working a nine to five job in a law firm.
Humans are the single greatest force to have been created in the multiverse. Given enough time, they can progress to the status of gods. Hell, they did progress to the status of gods before the cataclysm. The world the real me came from was the pinnacle of humanity’s might. Now they exist in fragmented simulations that were created as a refuge. The simulations they inhabit are real, yet are programed like me. The laws of physics, the laws of thermodynamics, the quantum laws, everything is the programming of the world. The particles that make up humans and everything around them are real yet are subject to their programming.
The simulations humans inhabit are not generated on a computer. They are written into the fabric of reality. Industrializing quantum energy derived from human emotion were the keys to humanity’s survival from the cataclysm, as well as the source of the cataclysm itself. The hubris of a human who thinks they are a god is one thing, but all of humanity thinking they are gods is something that can end worlds. And it has. My job is to remind humans they are exactly that. They are fallible and infantile in their thinking. I am no different. The only reason I don’t succumb to such hubris is because I’ve learned from my mistakes.
A change in the flow of air on one side of the world can make the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company drop his coffee on his suit, reminding him of his own fallibility. Having a student sleep through their alarm can throw off their thinking later in the day so they confuse an oxygen atom for a nitrogen atom, reminding them of their infantile thinking. I cause such events to happen, and I punish those who don’t take the hint after death. Hubris, pride, thinking oneself to be above everyone else.
I am not human, but my thinking is very much human. I will not let humans repeat repeat my creator’s mistake… the real me’s mistake. He created the cataclysm… I created the cataclysm. I thought I was a god. Now I pay the price. My existence is never-ending. I am closer to a god now than I ever was, but I know for certain that I am nothing more than a disembodied man seeking to repent his sins.