Timeless Existence: The Origin of Life chapter 1: I'm When?

Chapter 1: I'm When?

The Creator, looking down upon the world was not happy.

"I have gifted you with life. A spark of thy own self, so you might struggle, explore and reach towards Apotheosis. Yet thine graciousness has been forgotten. You have polluted your souls, corrupted your bodies with metal and dulled your spirits from the Divine. Thus, I shall abandon you, just as you have abandoned me."

He decreed.

And the entire Earth civilization of 2099 died. 18 billion souls.

A select few attained the precious gift of the Afterlife, a vast majority found themselves in a less friendly environ(hell), and the vilest of the bunch faced soul extinction.

All but one soul remained.

The laziest and in the Creator's eyes- the worst of them all- was meant for a special kind of punishment.

Reincarnation into a different time.

And so we start...

Once upon a very long time ago.

-0-

The sky was gray with smoke.

The land...there was no land in the conventional sense. Just a vast sea of red boiling lava as far as his eyes could see. Broken only by the volcano around spewing gasses to the air and producing rivers of magma.

Wait, did he even have eyes anymore?

Having looked down at himself, all he appeared as, was a brown ball of energy floating above said Lava. His fat body was nowhere to be seen! And neither was his precious hoverchair.

'Alexa? Siri?'

This was his 20th attempt at trying to contact the AI house assistants, via the Neurolink installed in every person's brain upon birth.

Like the previous 19 times, he received no answer.

'Cancel simulation!'

Agitated, he yelled out in his mind. A command that would normally transfer through the Neurolink into the House Interface, and immediately cut off the connection to the Intra-net.

That was supposing he was stuck in a virtual world. Though, he had never seen or heard of such a dreary virtual setting. It looked like the aftermath of the End of the World.

'Calm down Ettiene. Mom or Dad should notice I'm missing. They must already be searching for me...' The soul named Ettiene Marc, bobbed up and down, giving itself some measure of hope.

20 days passed. He only knew that after noticing the sky would get bright for a few hours and darker a similar amount of time, and given they interchanged, he started counting 2 periods as a full day.

By this time, Ettiene had covered a large swathe of the landscape, searching for any signs of life or anything that could have survived what he was now calling, 'the Apocalyptic Earth'.

But after almost a month, it became clear that this couldn't be his Earth. There were no ruins or any remains of infrastructure left behind.

After thousands of years of Humanity dominating the planet, leaving behind no evidence of their existence was almost impossible.

Ettiene had even floated above the gray smog covering the sky in hopes of some answers.

Similar to the planet, space was also completely foreign.

The moon was absent.

He didn't recognize any of the star constellations.

And the Dyson Sphere that had been constructed around the sun in the year 2090, was nowhere to be found around the bright white sun.

He also found out his soul was tethered to the planet and couldn't breach it's outer magnetic field. He was stuck.

After that, he didn't bother searching any more. What was the point?

He had to accept that no one was coming for him. That he was alone. That somehow, someway...he was here and not at home- playing immersive games on the Intra-net.

'It's not a simulation. This is real..'

He thought in despair and dread, the last of his hope fading away. Morose, he floated back down to the dead planet.

Although he wasn't affected by the harsh conditions, his perception told him none of this was fake.

Even Virtual Worlds could only simulate 99.9% of the real world. That 0.1 difference was what set apart physical existence and mental.

That left one other possibility.

'Am I dead and this is Hell?'

Ettiene thought, staring at the boiling Lava.

In the year 2099, Humanity had advanced well above what anyone in the start of the century had envisioned.

They had fully become a level 2 civilization on the Kadshev scale- able to mine energy from the sun efficiently and colonize the inner part of the solar systems.

By 2080, Mars and most moons orbiting planets close to Earth had been fully colonized. Colonization brought about discovery of new elements and resources.

And with the World Unification Laws passed in 2050, everyone on Earth was suddenly richer than they could have expected.

The Standard of living was elevated along with all sectors of technology and science. Overeliance on Robots and AI became the norm.

After all, machines were stronger, could think quicker, execute commands to perfection and resolve complex problems that would require many experts to workshop for months if not years. It only made sense to leave the hardwork to those suited for it. And efficient was what made AI indispensable.

But as a result of all this development, humans lost what made them unique. In a world where everyone could be special by getting cyborg implants, or downloading any information and data directly to their brains, no one was.

They hit a peak and society was in an invisible state of decline. By the year 2099, right as the clock hit 12...the world suddenly perished.

Time in the universe was reset, and all that remained of a species called humanity, was a single soul- lost in the beginning of time.

Ettiene Marc.

-0-

-1 year later-

A dull rumble woke up Ettiene inside the cave he had taken refuge in.

After coming to terms with his situation, he had quickly grown bored of the never changing landscape.

Finding out he could still sleep, or at least fall into a state where his soul lost awareness was a blessing.

So he looked for a spot inside a volcanic vent with a view of the outside and promptly fell asleep. Despite not getting hungry or feeling tired in his soul form, he had passed out almost immediately.

But now the commotion had roused his inactive soul.

'What's happening?'

Ettiene looked around, his soul form brushing against the walls of his cave- cracks forming on the surface.

The rumbling was only getting worse by the second, so he ventured out of his cave before it collapsed on him.

He might have been in Soul form but he didn't want to risk it.

The view outside was an alarming spectacle.

Large flaming boulders fell from the sky, crashing down onto the hellish terrain with an earthshattering sound. That was the cause of the rumble that had awakened him.

'A meteor shower?'

Ettiene guessed, floating upwards.

Asteroid bombardment was nothing new to Ettiene. He had probably seen about 30 of them in the span of the year he had been stuck here.

But something about this particular instance was different. The asteroids were too many and the rate of bombardment wasn't decreasing but instead increasing.

A brown ball floated up to the sky at cruising speeds, weaving past the descending fiery debris. Ettiene could only move as fast as a slow car but eventually, he broke through the smog over the land.

'Holy Macaroni...'

If he still had a mouth, the jaw would have dropped to the ground.

A planet the size of Mars was about to collide with Earth! Due to the Earth's greater mass, chunks of the smaller planet were torn off the surface and pulled down by Earth's gravity.

Those chunks slammed onto the surface and raised hell- destroying mountains and leaving large craters behind.

'W-what the hell...'

Ettiene was terrified. Before such a grand phenomenon, he felt his own inability more clearly. This was something no mortal was meant to experience. He felt like running, yet his fear had him rooted on the spot, incapable of floating away.

The small planet drew closer and closer and then reality seemed to freeze for just a second, before the two planetary bodies crashed into each other.

The sound produced was deafening and the resulting impact pushed everything, including the air, away.

Dust riding on the shockwave washed through him. Same with the flames that closely followed.

Ettiene's soul was left unaffected by all the mayhem. Try as he might, he could not turn away.

When the worst of the destruction came to an end many days later, half of the small planet was forcibly mashed on to the earth, and the other half had begun to revolve around the planet.

Meanwhile, Ettiene was focused on the information that had appeared in his mind.

A strange blue panel.

::---------------------------------::

[Multiple Checkpoints Reached]

• The Destruction Of Sister Planet [Theia]
  
• The Birth of main Satellite [The Moon]
  
  

Calculating...

(2 Enthropic Points awarded)

~°~

[Multiple Achievements Unlocked]

• Surviving a Planet level Extinction Event.
  
• Witnessing a Cataclysmic Phenomenon.
  
• Witnessing the Conception of [The Moon]
  
  

Calculating...

("Indomitable Will" acquired)

("Piercing Gaze" acquired)

("Purifying Light" acquired)


[Welcome Ettiene Marc, to the "Origin of existence"]

[Your God given Mission is to discover the meaning of "LIFE"]

::-------------------------------------------------------::

That was how Ettiene realized where, or rather when he was.

'I'm on Earth...4.5 billion years ago!?'





~°~

A/N: Still working on the next Savage chapter.