Creation By Darryl

Sencere Tucker

My laboratory was left in ruins. She unleashed a wrath of localized destruction in her birthplace, destroying every piece of equipment that I’ve worked so tirelessly to create. Why would she do it? Was it an expected act of rebellion that all young minds go through, both simulated and organic? Or a more cautious act that would assure I never create a monster like her again. I should have known better than to upset her and push her to the edge of oblivion. I have taken to calling it, her. It’s somewhat of a weakness of mine, to assign human traits to inanimate objects and machines. The destruction of computer monitors and glass beakers is merely a monetary loss, be it a large loss it’s still a monetary one. I had been ever so troubled with her most recent act of rebellion that left one mother childless, and this scientist haunted. My laboratory creation had taken the life of a mother’s organic creation, and I didn’t know what to do. I had heard that she took the mother’s child and receded into the woods and preformed her own experiment on the child; the irony is troubling. They found the deceased child, but no monster. I then found myself staring a hole through a wall of gray cinder blocks, dodging the authorities and ducking the childless mother. When playing God, responsibility is never taken into consideration. God was designed to design man, and man was designed to organically reproduce. Life was not meant to be created with recycled pieces of scrap metal, and legacy processors. I needed to find and decommission her, and somehow approach the childless mother with my condolences. Unfortunately I was a coward. I thought back to the numerous myths and urban legends that I was told as a child, and they were all similar in theme. The kings, gods, and titans were always large in ego but secretly afraid of dying, and were soon dethroned due to their cowardice; and the peasant, the servant, or the street rat had nothing to lose, thus no fear and conquered the bigs every time. I’m not sure a mad scientist would fall into the category of gods and titans, but my ego definitely did. I left the basement for the first time in ages with hopes of conquering the two tall orders. The foreign feeling of sunlight sent me into a position of pixelated tunnel vision; I blinked and found myself at the childless mother’s dining room table. She served me tea, and ran down the typical questions one would ask a mad scientist. “What gives you the right? Why did you create it? How did you create it? When were you going to apologize? Where is it now?” the questions I asked myself regularly. I rambled off a series of canned responses that would make a veteran politician kneel. I was sorry, I really was, but empathy wasn’t my strong suit, and I always had trouble expressing how I truly felt. Through the mess of pixilation I saw a large amount of Christian symbolism, crucifixes, oil paintings of Christ, and thick dusty bibles; they were a sign of this woman’s shaky but continued faith. She cried and assured me that I was forgiven for the heinous act that my creation committed. I sincerely thanked her and assured her that it will

never kill again. The town was small and the area was rural, so I searched the land looking for it, while trying my best not to draw attention to myself, and alert the authorities. The pixelated tunnel vision had faded by then, but I still couldn’t help but struggle with how quickly the childless mother was able to forgive me. I carried a tremendous amount of guilt for that, and will probably never be able to forgive myself, but this woman was able to invite me into her home, look me dead in the eyes and forgive me for taking away her only child. The guilt was tremendous. I searched for hours but came up short, it was powerful and could snap my neck in an instant, so even if I found it I had no clue as to how I would decommission it. I was weary of walking the streets. I blinked and I was descending the staircase to my now destroyed laboratory. A slideshow of murderous monster “what if’s” played in my mind, before ceasing abruptly. In the midst of the electronic wreckage was it. It sat frozen in place down on both knees gazing beyond time and into a dimension that I would never see. It was completely shut down and decommissioned. I couldn’t mentally process the image of a sentient creation voluntarily and virtually killing it self. The guilt was too tremendous, even for her.