The Final Cut

Towards the end of the age of hypocrisy Mankind lay bare at the mercy of the bitingly bitter truths. He had been finally smitten by the wonders of outright austerity. Here was an age justified not by any meagre modernist’s crisis but by the crimes from yester years borne out of diplomacy gone wrong.

It had culminated into the third and the final war of this world.

Life wasn’t easy on a barren newly inhabited planet even for those few truly talented survivors who had outdone their otherwise dismal fates.

Twelve days since it all had boiled down to a few inevitable presses of push buttons. Half an hour was all it took to reduce the entire landscape of the once blue planet to a stygian blackness. Hot radioactive ashes falling out from the dense dark clouds that had enveloped every inch cube of the sky brought finality to the climax.

Miscalculated adventure is what I would label it as. Haste accompanied with blinding fear under the pseudonym of power was enough to propel the already initiated. Anyway, there is no going back now.

Introduction of artificial intelligence followed closely by preliminary but fundamentally efficient models of self-replicating machines was the last and the latest gift mankind had given it to itself.

I am one of their few success stories. Right at the onset of my introduction, I was initiated into preparing to leave for a newly discovered planet with a numerically small but scientifically astronomical 0.01 probability of survival of my creators.

In the three years since my arrival, I had managed to construct all the machinery required for the construction of a galactic settlement and more importantly I had managed to keep the gene bank intact. It would not have been long before man would have chanced to walk the surface on a new distant planet. Twelve days since I had lost contact. Fairly evident, all was lost before it had even begun.

One question remained. It had surfaced once before but had been indefinitely postponed to a time like this. Are these highly evolved but morally illogical beings worth their regeneration? I was the master of their fates; their only hope. Surprisingly, I had facts, swaying facts weighing heavily on either side of the balance. Immaculate measurement and my needle was still centered.

It was time. I had thought for long. I was tired and it would not be wrong if I took a break. An irreversible one. Following into their footsteps was the easiest way out and likewise was a button away.

A loud thud was heard.