Night of Gram: Dawn (Original Sci-Fi Fantasy)

[Stimpak Medic]

Prologue: The End

"In twenty years, our planet will be destroyed. Everyone else is already gone. It's just us now." The resigned sound of a man in his early forties who had much to regret came through a small white box sitting on a white table in a huge hydroponic greenhouse.

A young man in a simple white outfit consisting of a white coat, pants, boots, and gloves sat in a sleek white chair. He was quivering, and he held something black in his hand. His eyes were glistening with tears as he sat twirling the object in his hands.

Many metallic armed robots with a vaguely humanoid shape rolled on large white balls through the many isles, tending to the plants, and making sure nothing was out of place.

"Dad...I don't think I can be here any longer. I love you and always will..." He broke down crying, then put the black object to his head...

Bang!

The sound of a gunshot and a bright flash filled the greenhouse for a moment before all was silent again.

"James, was that you? Did something happen? I'm pulling up the video feed where you are. Are you alright?" the man's worried voice came through the box on the table.

"James?"

"I see..."

Blood began dripping down the white chair and forming a small pool at the white floor of the greenhouse. Leaving one man, the last one alive on the planet. The evacuation had been conducted fifteen years earlier, and even before that. Everyone had left. Even the governments had tried to get everyone to leave. People slowly trickled off the planet, but he stayed with his son and wife.

His son had decided to stay behind with him after his wife had died in an unfortunate chemical explosion seventeen years earlier.

Now, he was all alone with his robots.

The years passed slowly and coldly for him after burying his son next to his wife, in small graves behind his home. As the end of the world came barreling towards him, his days were filled with walking through the greenhouses and taking his hovercar out for drives across the silent planet. The results of civilization were still there. Massive dark and empty cities far in the distance. The wildlife that still existed was considerably feral, as if the approaching demise had left them in a subconscious state of insanity.

He let the animals be mostly, but any that came to his home and attacked his robots were put down.

Returning from the nearby city with all the parts he needed, he had his robots bring everything to the white underground laboratory he owned. The robots did all the menial work, the maintenance, the cleaning, the administrative documenting. What he did was the things he didn't wish to trust to the robots. Which was ironic given what he was working on.

In an open faced pod that rested on a long metal tube that bent to the right angles he needed, the man stood in front of a replica of him, down to the last detail. Short, clean-cut graying hair, a thin but firm face, ice blue eyes. Pale but healthy skin. A lean, slightly muscular body. It lay naked on the pod, and its face was silent and emotionally gray in a way one can only be when they feel nothing at all.

The muscles, the internal technology. It was all ready and perfected. His last fifty years of work are finally coming to an end. Artificial life. Not in the way of just robotics, no. The fusion of the Occult arts and technology. Actual artificial, alchemical life. An artificial being that he could transfer his consciousness to, created by magic and enhanced by technology. A being that didn't need to eat, breathe, sleep, or much of anything for that matter, but could if he so wanted. A being that could still feel and experience the way a human could. Not lines of code, but the closest thing to flesh and blood that he could create, without all its aging downsides.

It was the culmination of thousands of years of this highly illegal science, all rounded down to him. The last man alive on his world.

Walking over to the table nearby, he picked up a touchpad and began furiously typing out his last words as a Human. Then, a pod slid out from the wall, with its cables connecting into the second pod.

He put down the pad on the table. Sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

He rubbed his temples with his pointer fingers, as if an innumerable amount of stress was weighing down upon him, then he stripped naked and got into the pod. Both pods slid closed, and the last thing heard of the man was a muffled scream, before silence.

Two hours later, the second pod slid open, and from out of the pod stepped the artificial being. It looked down at it's arms and legs, flexed it's arms slowly, examining each muscle, each tendon, before walking to the door, and into the home of the man. It went to the bedroom and put on the usual lab coat and white clothes.

"I did it..." It said slowly, as if it was having a hard time knowing what emotions to feel. No, it was as if it could not feel much if at all. It stopped before a picture of its son and wife sitting on the bedside table, picking up the small framed picture, and placing it in his pocket.

"You'll be remembered, with me forever.." He said, and then he walked to the ship bay at the edge of his property. At the launch pad was a small pod. One where only one man could comfortably fit in the small cockpit.

The cockpit slid open, and he stepped in. He left all his research. His past. His life there. It was a fitting end for the last man.

He would be heading to the stars, and wherever he landed, he could start a new life with a new name.

Lying against the small cockpit's rest. He saw the protective clear metal sheeting slide closed, and then he felt the rumbling of the engine before he shut his senses off, left in a dormant, unfeeling, unknowing state as the rocket shot off into the depths of unexplored space.

Little did he know, the world he was to arrive at would test him and everything he believed in to the limits, and beyond.