The Man Of One Million Years (3 page)

It was a year before Ben finally accepted he was to be here for the long term, probably the rest of his life, which he at this point considered in human terms. In all of that time he never once entered the God Simulator, if that indeed was what it was, because he imagined it might involve some kind of commitment and he was not ready for such a long term commitment just yet. He began to greatly miss human company, and the company of women especially. He still watched a lot of films and he still got drunk a great deal but he also read as well, and the reading tablet gave him an unlimited supply. Although he was no longer as prone to acts of violence he nonetheless became terribly depressed. He began to look upon Harley Huxtable as the incarnation of the devil and became convinced the professor was secretly filming his plight. Indeed the search for hidden cameras became something of an obsession for Benjamin and there were days when he did nothing except comb every inch of the chamber in a fruitless hunt. Sometimes he would sit for days on end, neither eating, drinking or sleeping (none of which he was required to do any longer) but instead pondering the complexities of the professor’s character and trying to work out what it was that had inspired the man to embark upon such a strange experiment. Harley had said that Benjamin was to become the perfect human, the ultimate being, and yet Benjamin certainly did not feel he was making any progress in this direction as yet. He was sure the professor was somehow watching him and wished the man would give him a sign, some advice or at the very least have a conversation with him. Besides, surely the professor somehow had to moderate the experiment in some way, even if the chamber itself was self-sustaining as it appeared to be.

Benjamin soon realised he did not age or become unwell no matter what he ate or drank and so, released from any sort of responsibility for his own actions, gave himself away to total hedonism. For a very long time he did not pass a single sober hour but instead drank and smoked and injected himself as and when he pleased. The God Simulator and the great library database within the computer went completely ignored as he indulged himself in every pleasure. He dearly hoped the professor was watching from somewhere. He dearly wished the great man, the man with the ‘once in a hundred year brain’ could see what an atrocious mess Benjamin was making of the entire experiment. The best times were when Benjamin would indulge in a cocktail of drink and drugs for weeks on end then fall asleep for days and dream non-stop. In his dreams he found he was able to take control far better than from the confines of what was in effect his cell and was able to interact with his fantasy people, build relationships and succeed. Of course the professor loomed large in these dreams as well but for some reason whenever he met him Benjamin could never be angry with the man. Often they ended up working together in some nonsensical adventure before the professor would fade out of sight only to return much later with an equally ridiculous scheme. Sometimes dreams and reality blurred and Benjamin spent years convinced of the reality of his imaginings. When he finally woke up for good, twenty-four years later, he found he could remember next to nothing of what had passed.

Benjamin could never quite pinpoint what it was that led him to leave the hedonism behind and try the God Simulator for the first time. One day he simply woke up fresh and warm in his bed and was overcome with an overwhelming desire for goodness and purity. He felt the need to be creative, to do good, to exercise control over something more than his own hallucinatory dreams. And so he climbed the stairs to the mezzanine floor. The God Simulator had a diameter of three metres and was around two metres tall and consisted of thick blue metal with glass windows which seemed to have been blocked out with blue paint. Benjamin had poked his head inside the God Simulator before now but he had never bothered to switch it on. When he entered he was confronted with a comfortable padded swivel chair. He sat down facing a large red button which, aside from the chair, was the only thing in the sphere. He pressed the button. Suddenly the small room was plunged into the most complete darkness. Benjamin turned slowly around in his chair, turning again and again. A small light hovered in front of him. He reached out his finger to touch it. The light attached itself to his finger. Benjamin brought the forefinger on his other hand round and pushed his two fingers together and then apart. The light expanded before him and became a warm glow. He stretched it as far as his hand span would allow then rose from his chair and pulled it at the edges so that it filled every part of the room. He returned to his chair and regarded the colourful clouds which now filled his vision. He reached out for a yellow cloud and took it into his hands, moulded and kneaded it into a ball and set it back in its place where it glowed brightly before him. He kneaded an orange cloud, then a red one and set them both back into the orb. Then he took the red ball and brought it together with the yellow ball. A great explosion filled the space and Ben felt a pleasant heat against his face and the whoosh of air. When he looked again he found what appeared to be tiny balls of gas floating before him. He kneaded a yellow gas cloud into a ball and brought several of the other balls around to hover close to it. Slowly the smaller balls of gas began to circle the yellow orb in a regular orbit. Benjamin reached out and put his hands between the yellow orb and the furthest ball of gas and pulled outwards. The Solar System, for this is what it was, grew larger, indeed it seemed the space inside the Simulator grew larger and soon he was looking down at one of the smaller balls of gas and it was the size of a beach ball. He zoomed in upon the ball of gas even further still until it filled almost his entire field of vision. He reached out and spun it around and it continued to spin, steady and regular. A cloud began to develop around it and as he watched the gas turned first to liquid, then cooled still further until solid patches could be made out. Soon it was a perfectly spherical, perfectly solid sphere. Benjamin licked his finger and touched a cloud. The cloud grew dark and grey then started to rain water down upon the surface of the sphere. The cloud grew until it almost completely covered the sphere and all the time the water rained down upon it. When at last the rain subsided Benjamin saw vast oceans and continents, with patches of land containing huge mountain ranges, plains and sandy deserts. Benjamin wiped some of the sweat from his brow and smeared it upon the surface of the earth. Tiny plants appeared and spread. They grew better upon the plains and not so well amongst the mountains and deserts, but they grew differently wherever they sprung up and in the most fertile areas became huge trees in forests which covered entire continents. Benjamin zoomed in some more and soon he was swimming – actually swimming – in the deep seas of the world he had created. He dived down, deep into the depths then plucked a hair from his head and allowed it to float before him. The hair twisted with the currents and disintegrated, its remains falling to the bottom of the sea. Benjamin followed them and soon he saw tiny fish swimming this way and that and before he knew it the entire ocean, wherever he swam, was positively teaming with fish. He reached out and took hold of a handful and moulded them together. A much larger beast with great tusks and a wide mouth now appeared before him. Benjamin moulded more fish into different shapes and more and more sea beasts were created. Now he swam back to the surface, took hold of one of the smaller beasts and threw it on to the dry land. The creature grew legs and crawled away. Benjamin took more beasts from the sea, of all different kinds and cast them on to all parts of his new world. Some he threw on to the plains, some he threw on to the mud, some into the deserts and some into the mountains. The beasts changed before his very eyes. Massive, terrifying monsters roamed the surface, some on two legs, some on four. The monsters fought with one another, preyed upon and consumed one another. Some came to dominate a particular area whilst others slunk off, defeated, to the more undesirable corners of the world. Benjamin took hold of a beast and threw it into the sky and as it fell it grew wings and made off into the air where it built a nest in the forests so it could be safe from the larger monsters. And all of the beasts, all of his creations, changed and evolved depending on where in the world they settled. In the colder polar regions the beasts developed thick fur and padded feet, white camouflage so they could hunt and hide more easily. In the arid deserts they grew scaly and lizard-like, and in the great plains they grew lean and quick. Benjamin roamed upon the surface of his world, witnessing earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. But he was the master of it all. Benjamin came to a vast stretch of plain bordered by a mountain range in the far distance. Here he sat down in a clearing by an oasis and there sculpted a model of a man and a woman from the mud. He gave the sculptures hair from his own head and watched as the two came to life before him. Finally some people to talk to! But the man and the woman did not seem to interested in speaking with him as an equal but chose to worship him instead, bringing him gifts of crops and sacrificing animals in his name. Benjamin created more people from the mud and these people bred amongst themselves. At his direction they built primitive stone structures, and constructed stone monuments in his name. They created giant effigies in his image and their adulation of him became more and more elaborate. They came to him and begged for his favour, and when he was unsure who was the most worthy they fought amongst themselves in terrible wars, developed great fortresses and siege equipment, built armies and colonised land then used that land on which to build great cities surrounded by walls and served by roads and viaducts. The march of humankind was relentless. Their cities expanded across the world and the technologies improved. Castles became skyscrapers. Now they no longer cared about Benjamin’s favour, now it was all about themselves. Places of worship were knocked down and ignored as the people forgot about him. In a rage Benjamin zoomed out, far out, beyond the solar system and more until he had zoomed out so far he was holding the entire universe between his fingers. He screwed it up into a ball and darkness pervaded once more. The experiment, for now, was over. Benjamin stood up, stretched and left the orb, made his way down the steps and glanced at the grandfather clock. It showed the passing of twenty-five thousand years.

For ten thousand years Ben was filled with a new despair. He went back to his debauchery as never before and the dreams blurred with the reality once more. Once he went, intoxicated, back into the God Simulator but the result was a universe of hellfire in which the tortured beings lined up before him to beg for death. Eventually he sobered up and resolved he would drink no more. He began reading with a vengeance, working his way through all the great volumes in the database. For years he did not move, did not get up to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom but instead remained motionless on the sofa, his eyes moving up and down over the lines of text on the electronic portable reader. He worked his way through every volume ever written and when he was finished went back and read them all again.

Still he could not get it right. He could not destroy the spirit of the people he created, no matter how he created them. He tried to create an intelligent race of cat like beings but they behaved exactly the same as the humans. He tried to be vengeful and went around destroying cities and wonders but this only served to make his people resentful. He tried firing off meteorites into the planets but these were too destructive and meant he was forced to start all over again. He tried to create life on other planets, created water planets and desert worlds but still the results were the same with one tribe trying to dominate over all and ignoring his will at the end. He created worlds designed solely for his own pleasure, where the rivers ran with whiskey and perfectly formed women bowed to his every whim. But the advance of free will was unstoppable. His women turned against him. His slaves became servants, then masters and discovered formulas for turning the rivers back to whiskey. They defied him. It did not matter how much he read, the results were always the same. Humankind was a basic imperfection. The only success he ever enjoyed was when he created worlds without the presence of people, where the animals lived together in packs and rose and fell depending upon the luck of the seasons and where the rain fell. But as soon as humankind was added to the mix, no matter how late in the cycle of the world that may be, everything fell apart. Despite the good intentions of the professor the project appeared doomed to fail. Eons passed but it all seemed like nothing to the being who had once been known as Captain Benjamin Rutherford.

Outside of the chamber time continued unhindered and the march of humankind was relentless. Planets were colonized, galaxies explored and the brain size of the average human expanded considerably so that old ideas such as entertainment and war were no longer considered relevant. Humanity now numbered in their trillions across the universe and occupied great glass cities which floated in the sky. Nobody had to work and luxury was the order of the day, every day. Physically, the average person became taller and lost most of their hair. Even the females now only possessed a few thin strands around their crowns. Certainly they would have been considered ugly to a twenty-first century visitor. But in the corner of the world that had once been Scotland not a great deal changed, geologically at least. The mountains corroded with the rains but there was no great flooding and certainly what small changes there were did not penetrate so far underground to the chamber. A million years passed by.

The Being sat silently on the high backed comfortable chair in the chamber, eyes open and unblinking, his expression serene. He had not moved from this spot in over twenty-five thousand years. His eyes were focused continuously upon the Grandfather Clock. One day, and without fanfare, the clock marked the time as being one million years to the second since he had first set foot into the chamber. From behind him there came the sound of a click. A panel had opened up in one of the walls. Calmly The Being got up and walked through the panel without a second glance at his home, made his way up some narrow stone steps, opened a door and stepped out into the sunlight of Earth.