I am standing in a winter wasteland. Staring down at the blood stain that was once a man. The gore stood out against the pure unsoiled snow, and already the blood began to freeze amongst droplets of microscopic structures of water particles. Dan has fallen to his knees screaming. I can still hear the sound, but what is one more voice amongst a million dead I ask myself. There are no less atoms in the world than the day before. Try as my might, I cannot summon the will to care for all those lives lost. I remember the thought crossed my mind to comfort him, perhaps to say that Rorschach isn’t dead, I could have said he was in another place far away. He wouldn’t understand though. To this world he might as well be dead. Where the conscious goes is of little consequence when the remains of a body are strewn across the snow.
I am on Mars standing on a glass palace crossing over a desert of red sand and rock. Laurie has told me she has slept with Dan. I feel surprised and hurt, yet she is confused. She doesn’t understand, she refuses to see the world through my eyes. A tangled web of events, as linear as a spider’s web. I tell her I am a puppet, we all are, but only I can see the strings. Free will is a concept man has created to help them feel that their choices are their own. I am tired of these people, tired of their lives. I am tired of their cruelty.
No one is in control of their own fate. The clockwork is drawn. And I am standing behind Ozymandias in his stone palace- an Egyptian tomb off the antarctic shores. I wondered if it occurred to him that he could have died. Even the smartest man in the world isn’t without mistake. I remember thinking how easy it was to kill him, just as I had done with Rorschach. A callous wave of the hand and I could rip apart the bonds of particles holding his body together or cause the potential energy within his muscles to suddenly combust. I recall how that would accomplish nothing. Just another body in the snow to be forgotten, no one would remember it among the millions of dead around the world. I tell him I am leaving, perhaps to create my own life on some distant world. I know I told a lie, but at the time it was the truth. Like a puppet who plays his role I leave with a picture of nothingness in my mind. My part is done, the curtains are drawn, and Rorschach’s atoms were strewn somewhere to a place between dimensions.
It is Christmas morning and I am with Janey Slater. She is kneeling beside the presents, a hand resting over a red present beneath the Evergreen tree. Tinsel shone dimly in blue light. I approach, fondly looking down at her, knowing I would cheat on her with Laurie. The love for her was slipping away but I did not know it. Jon Osterman was slipping away and there was no getting him back. She says I am like a god now. I tell her I don’t believe there is a god, and if there was I am nothing like him. I am nothing like her.
I am in a place that isn’t my own. There is nature all around me. I feel the grass beneath my feet. The components of carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, nitrogen, and organic molecules are there in familiar sequences. Around me is the thick brush of a jungle, the sounds of birds and wildlife is loud. This place feels free and untouched. I know I am far from the planet called Earth. I look to the sky and find it blue. I see the orange star that gives this world light and I see two million and seventy-nine immediate reasons why it is wrong.
I looked to the planet’s sun, and I was there. The energy of countless atomic explosion erupt around me as I stand on the surface of a star. I look up to see the stars beyond the corona and flare. A blue terrestrial planet is millions of miles away yet I can see its landmasses in bright detail. Weather systems obstruct my view of green forests and wide oceans. Tall mountains colored tan and white like antarctic snow. I do not know where I am, but after looking and creating tens of thousands of worlds. I am intrigued and wish to watch.
There is nothingness all around me. The strands of all things are clear to me here. Dark matter is scattered like haphazard cobwebs in all directions for an infinite field of possibilities. Worlds appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. I see the beginning and the end in an instant. In the center of a black hole there is nothingness, but in this single point there is more matter to be harness in such dense power than any other event in the universe. I cannot help but stare in awe as I float through a sea of tangible time and elusive space. I know I have sent Rorschach through this endless ocean to a place I already knew about, but whether it would all be in one piece was a matter of how willing he was to live. Jon Osterman did not want to die that day in the Intrinsic field Subtractor. It was just a matter of reassembling oneself in the right order. He would end up in a place I don’t know about, and I will not meet him yet.
I am standing on a lush field of green grass staring up at the planet’s dying sun. I have watched as life adapted to its terrestrial existence. Small creatures at first no larger than a few meager hundred billion cells crawled across the ground and start to grow legs and chase after the more advanced insects. I observed and did not interfere as I watched the skies darken and lethal radiation leaked into the atmosphere. I expected it to last another eighty million years before it began to collapse. I do not expect the life on this world to last once the sun was gone and released its radiation across the surface. It was of little consequence if another world failed... And yet I felt this place to be special.
I am standing in a forest, developed from eons of evolution and natural selection. By my guiding hand the sun is bright and warm. Influence from Earth own Sol had guided my own hand, sometimes I am mistaken that I have returned to such a melancholy plant in a place where humans had yet to encroach upon and destroy. I have only to look to the dirt at my feet and see the difference in nitrogen and carbon to know that was not true.
I am staring down upon a blue dot hanging suspended from the invisible strings of fate and mathematics. It rotates at one thousand six hundred and seventy kilometers per hour, traveling around its single sun at twenty-nine point eight kilometers per second. The continent of Africa looks back at me from the lifeless moon. A hurricane moves slowly towards the panhandle of Florida. Soviet missiles are poised to strike upon American soil from Cuba. And the world continues to turn without concern. It is either ignorant the threat of total annihilation, or apathetic. For the time it took to recover from nuclear holocaust, what does it matter in the lifetime of a planet? To kill a parasite, it is sufficient to wipe the slate clean. It is better to create another experiment than attempting to salvage one that has already failed.
I am on Mars and Laurie has come to realize who her father is. I watch as her world shatters around her, reflected by the glittering glass that falls around us like slivers of rain. She falls to her knees, crying and helpless. She finally understands how I see the world, and she sees how the worst memories come to light.
I am watching as a blue planet turn without care. An artificial sun illuminates its continents, reflecting off its clouds, and shows the haze of a healthy atmosphere. I may keep this world moving and turning easily, yet I know I cannot shepherd this world’s rotation and motion forever. I am not a god, nor have I any interest in becoming one. To create life, that is a simple thing that requires only the basis of amino acids and the right conditions. To guide it into the future by an unseeing hand, that was not my place. I must find another solution to keep let this world live. I try to think of the moment I am in, searching a million possibilities in a matter of seconds. Yet I am distracted. Loneliness has taken its toll on me.
It is October, 1985. Rorschach has broken into my lab to warn me of a plot to kill masked vigilantes. He asks me to look into the future to see if I know the identity of the killer. I cannot, tachyons prevent me from seeing what was to come. Particles that traveled backwards in time, released by mass nuclear reactions. There is nothing I can do, but if I could solve the energy crisis perhaps there is a chance I might save this world. If two nations could cooperate then the threat of extermination is eliminated. With Veidt’s help, there might be a possibility that could save everyone. The most powerful man in the world, following the strings that bound him like any puppet should.
Eons have passed and clear ecosystems have appeared. Terrestrial fauna had taken its firm hold upon the planet, and with its presence a new dominant species has appeared in the blink of an eye. A species resembling Equus ferus caballus in distant form. Smaller in size though no less durable. Keratinised structures in the hooves have developed in a unique pattern allowing for the evolutionary replacement of fingers, entirely replacing the need for digits or thumbs. They’ve begun to use of holding tools with their newfound ability. At steady rate of increasing frontal lobe in hereditary patterns I expect increased intellect in several thousand years. I keep my distance, silently watching as I keep their world turning.
The Equus dominant species has separate into three subspecies with unique characteristics. First divergence appeared in cranial structure with single dorsal horn protruding from forehead. Curiously the bone protrusion generates an electromagnetic field. I assume it is a possible mutation due to environmental factors, further study is needed to understand the phenomenon. Second subspecies has developed wings, impressive flexibility has been observed in them die to a flimsy bone structure. An intricate muscular system has formed in the wings, further studies is needed to understand how the strange electromagnetic field appearing has affected them as well. The greater scientist within me overrides the apathy I’ve had for the evolving life forms. Curiosity and excitement I have not felt since my work in the intrinsic field center fills me and carefully I observe life in motion.
I’ve grown to understand why this planet felt special to me. A double entropy field, imagine two different forces of energy working together to hold matter together. One that works by fundamental properties, holding together the fabric of matter and time. Another, flexible field that the caballus species is able to touch upon to manipulate and use the world around them. With the use of electromagnetic spheres and the transference of potential energy they are, remarkably, able to command the very force of order and disorder. Astounding... And I must question if this is by natural occurrence, or a consequence of my own meddling upon this world. Should I stay longer would these fields become stronger or fall apart? I cannot begin to fathom the consequences of disturbing the forming balance between the two quantum fields. Perhaps it is time for me to leave this place before more harm came to it. There is a poetry in the universe, just as the laws of entropy dictate how all thermal energy deteriorates and crumbles over time, the long I stay in a place I create further disorder.
A pair of foals play in the forest, jumping from log to rock, shouting in a jumble of words that the forest floor was lava. They are brightly colored just as the rest of their kind are. A trait to show their dominance in this world, a mastery in their own way that did not come with the same kind of barbary that followed mankind. They are having fun, straying far from their homes to follow the fast flowing creek. Spring has come and the snows are melting. The current of the deceptive creeks is fast, and they do not see the danger in their games. One steps onto slippery wet rock and jumps away. The other soon follows, and inevitably slips into the water. By the time the first turns to see if their friend has caught up they are already being swept away to the current. I move my hand out towards them.
Walter Kovacs glares back at me, his mask crumpled in his hand in a mix of anger and failure. He faces his death with both feet planted upon the snow covered ground. He asks me to finish, I cannot let him leave Antarctica. If the world knew of what happened here today, millions of lives would have been wasted and a billion may follow in the war to come. Only we may know the lie, that there is no alien menace with their eyes set to destroy humankind. There is only the smartest man in the world, and his desperate act to save it. Rorschach could not live any longer, not in this world. I move my hand out towards him.
Coughing up water the foal shakes water from his dirty wings. He is uninjured, yet frightened of how close to death he had come. His friend stands over him, just as scared. She is the first to look up and see me. Fear appears in her large eyes and she backs away timidly, pulling her friend with her. I continue to stride forward. Her horn is pointed towards me in an attempt at defense, yet she doesn’t understand the intrinsic properties to remotely become a threat to me. I stop and stand before her. I tell her not to be afraid. She is caught off guard by my words yet quickly takes a stand again to defend her friend. The foal seems persistent to defending herself. Her friend stands beside her, looking up at me with silent awe. He understands I saved him, and slowly his friend changed her own stance to join him in curiosity when he explain. I could not be the one to make this world continue living. They would need to be in control of their own fates, not be guided by my silent hand. There needed to be inheritors to carry the burden of keeping their way of life alive, those more in touch with their own people. Someone to move the sun, and to move the world. Silently I reached down to them and a bright light fills them both.
Events I could not predict were set in motions. Entropy, the measure of disorder against order, moves just as time does. A web of bad memories and diverging events. We're all puppets in this life, and I had inadvertently cut the strings.