The Man Of One Million Years (4 page)

Professor Harley Huxtable awoke and stretched in his time capsule. The past million years had seemed like one long good night’s sleep to him. The capsule had made it so. He pressed a button and the door opened into a large underground cave where he had concealed himself upon the completion of his invention. He too climbed some narrow stone steps and blinked in the sunlight of the future Earth.

“I have been expecting you,” said a voice. Harley turned around to face The Being.

“Benjamin!” Exclaimed the professor in delight. “You have made it! My finest creation! Dare I ask you how our experiment has gone?”

“It has gone exactly as you planned it,” replied The Being sanguinely. “You asked me to become the perfect human and I have become it. There is no greater human than I upon this universe.”
“Then you have become a God!” Exclaimed the professor. “And I, the creator of a God as well! So do they bow down to you then, Benjamin, these future humans of Earth?”

The Being shook his head. “I am afraid these newer humans learned a little too well,” he replied. “
They made themselves as close as they could to the perfection you sought for them. They eliminated disease and old age until they lived for thousands of years and were afterwards sick of life. But in the end it was by my own innate imperfection that I made them truly perfect for is it also not true, professor, that death is something else that cannot be improved upon?”

The professor’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” He demanded. 

“How well they protected themselves and eradicated our old diseases,” replied the Being. “Every single malignant germ upon the planet come to that. But when I came into contact with them, with all the primitive old world bacteria still infesting around my backwards body, their fragile immune systems were too weak to cope.”

The professor’s face contorted with horror. “You don’t mean -.”

“I am afraid so, professor,” replied The Being. “They are all dead of a fever which we would barely even feel. So you see, I shall truly be the perfect being, because I shall be the only being left alive the length of this entire universe aside from yourself, and I am afraid you are no longer worthy of me, Professor. You were right. I did indeed become the ultimate life form and I did learn what it would take to rule over the earth in harmony. Intelligent life, you see, is a completely unnecessary element in the equation. As soon as I was able to eliminate humankind in the God Simulator everything else fell into place.”

“But this is not advancement!” Excl
aimed the professor in anguish.

“Perhaps it is not advancement as you would recognise it,” replied the Being. “But now humankind has gone all other elements of the universe can expand and grow like never before.”

“But what of our great discoveries and wonders?” Protested Harley Huxtable.

“What discoveries? What wonders?” Demanded the Being. “
Do you think that humankind discovered gravity, or the planets? Do you think that we discovered all the elements of the periodic table? Why all of these things were already out there and just waiting to be found. The so called inventions created by humankind were worthless and self-serving. They did not advance the universe, they did not improve it – why the universe as a creation is perfect, Professor. None of what humankind ever did meant a thing.”

“The professor threw up his hands.
“Oh what a terrible miscalculation I have made!” He exclaimed. “I should have thought you would have been beyond the stage of madness by now. I should have left you in there for two million years as opposed to one! Then perhaps your mind would have been a great one and not one that was insane!”

“I do not blame you for thinking that,” replied The Being with a smile. “Because you do not understand what I am saying. Your mind simply cannot comprehend the enormity of what I am telling you. Of course you think me mad.”

Harley Huxtable turned around, as if in a daze. He left The Being and climbed the mountain that had for so long housed his great chamber. When he reached the top he looked over and saw the shattered remains of the glass cities that had crashed to earth, still burning and smouldering, for there was nobody left to pilot them. He saw the twisted wreckage of star-ships and the large-skulled skeletons of the most advanced race of humans, trillions of people decimated to a man. Harley Huxtable climbed back down the mountain and returned to where The Being was still standing. “What a mess you have made of it all,” he said in disgust. “I should never have selected you for this experiment for I knew from the outset you were unstable. Very well! I am responsible for this mess and so now it is for me to put it all right again. For now the world is yours, Benjamin Rutherford. For now.” He turned and started to make his way down the stone steps that led back to the chamber. “I shall see you in a million years.”