*On-going. Updated Sundays.*
I cannot recall when first they began calling me harbinger.
Time had long ago released all constraints it once held over the passing of days. Perhaps, had there been light to gage with I could have guessed, but for us, light was a privilege that had been long absent. The name came from the mouth's of the young and old alike, almost as an esteemed title to swell the breast and lift the nose. They passed the word with no ill intent, nor a desire to see me pain. It was said with simple fact, for harbinger was a name I deserved above all others. Above even the name bestowed upon me at birth.
I had descended humanity into the darkness of an age foretold only in fiction. I alone had shown the primates of Earth an ability to wield a power they had no business interfering with. The power to pull from an atom the promise of unmitigated loss, a destruction far more complete than any other to come before it. A more superior conquer than Alexander. A more ruthless invader than Columbus. The mere fantasy of believing humanity could control was in itself a hubris that had seen to our end. Had seen far beyond what was capable of mending, despite the hopes and momentary dreams of many.
It was a name I had earned, one to ignite the sun and strike away darkness with its warmth. But not a glow of comfort. The warmth was of a twisted kind, diseased and ill natured. A warmth that corrupted all its whispering rays touched. To lead to an impurity that changed the very nature upon which man kind had evolved for millions of years. A warmth that altered the very structure of what it was to be human. A warmth that invited death soon after its deceiving embrace.
But the end of life was not seen as it once was either, as death had morphed to a concept most no longer feared, nor was it any longer a state held revered above its counterpart. Death was not necessarily a thing tempted or yearned after, but it was almost like a reward, to be given after a hard life lived. (Idle life that would easily flee from veins, in what could be considered blessing).
For that’s exactly what had become of life. Hardship preceded by hardship. A gift that I, the harbinger, had granted with the dark knowledge and intellect that came from ambition and good intention. Traits I had learned to fear above all others.
But yet we lived.
Secluded underneath a ground that would no longer have us, for mother earth had rescinded all fruits she once offered. The rain seemed sometimes to shy away from the ground it fell towards, like it knew how poisoned it had become. Vegetation was warped in its growth, fatal to those that dared taste its contorted offerings. As was the little life that lingered with a painful resistance and hunched essence. Mutated in a way that bore shame on the entire human race, but one more than any other.
Me.
From my mind the knowledge and key to this irreversible end had come. Had flowed forth all too eagerly. Had perhaps I taken a moment to think of what I was building, or looked beyond the words and numbers to what they came together to build, we may have escaped the nightmare. But perhaps is only a word to curse those who look back, wishing a different past as their own. My imagination does not deserve even that faint glimmer of comfort, but only the wholehearted guilt I promise myself night after night. I toppled the green kingdom of life in all its forms. In all its beauty and all the beauty it ever created. I ignited the flames that quickly enveloped the family tree of humanity. Three and a half billion years of work, burned away in hours. Earth’s history wiped away like it hadn't lasted a quarter of all of time it has (rewrite). What little remains cannot in good faith be called life for it is a pile of tangled, mutated, and backwards bending limbs. And it is ugly.
So very ugly.
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