Thursday, March 15, 2164
Dr. Elias Corbin
The sweetest music, the most decadent meal, and the best sex money can buy don’t begin to compare to two simple words:
[LEVEL UP!
You have three unassigned attribute points to distribute.]
Before I can fully process the message, a similar one replaces it.
[LEVEL UP!
You have six unassigned attribute points to distribute.]
I can feel my sagging face tighten slightly, wrinkles less pronounced. My hunched spine straightens just a bit, and the weakness holding me back for the last decade recedes. My grip on the wicked blade I’ve just used to defile the sanctity of life grows surer and my guilty heart skips several beats. My vision even clears noticeably as inoperable cataracts start to diminish. All that is nothing next to the perfect pleasure of the moment, leaving no room for any other sensation.
I can’t help but groan in pleasure as my body improves under the influence of my ‘Quantum Interface.’ It’s like a miracle as the superior upgrade to my old ‘Universal Interface’ integrates the stuff from between spacetime and the void into my decrepit body.. Even as my entire soul cringes away from the blood on my hands, my body can only register ecstasy.
It’s not even that big of a change in the grand scheme of things. As far as we have been able to ascertain, each level roughly correlates to somewhere between one and two percent improvement to all aspects of self. My mind and body are maybe three percent improved, but in every possible way.
I waste no time dumping the three new free points straight into ‘Toughness.’ There isn’t the same kind of pleasure this time, but I feel so much better.
I regain at least an inch of my former height as my spine straightens. The remaining dullness clouding my vision, an ailment I’d grown accustomed to decades ago, recedes into memory. I can feel all my skin tightening and my muscles firming. Other changes aren’t immediately palpable, but the QI spits out a report in response to a mental prod.
A stream of abbreviated reports spools across my newly clear vision.
[Begin Report:
- Blood pressure, up 12%
- Collagen levels, up 17%
- Skeletal integrity, up 25%
- Muscle mass, up 22%
Twenty additional changes were detected… See More?]
Just one. I think a query at the QI. Please, please, have worked.
[Additional Data Requested:
- Total Tumor mass, reduced by 45%]
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
It worked. It’s not enough, not yet. I might pass for a healthy 65-year-old now, but the many tumors riddling my body have only shrunk, not gone away. Still, this bought me at least another decade of borrowed time.
If this incomprehensible miracle is possible, there must be a perfect solution. There simply has to be a way to harness all this power and potential, to point it at all the cracks forming in the slowly crumbling society of my precious home world.
And now I’m level two. Just like that, more than human. I blink away the notifications and refocus on the world in front of me.
My sober eyes can’t help but see exactly what I’ve done. A woman strapped to the surgical table before me, pooled blood cooling, eyes lifeless. I did that. With no warning I’m on my knees and vomiting bile. My whole body is wracked with heaving despite the fact I haven’t eaten in more than a day. How could I, knowing what was coming? That this was coming.
After a couple of minutes I’m recovered enough to get back on my feet, trying to ignore the mixing bile and blood on the once-pristine steel floor. Very deliberately, knowing I can only delay the inevitable a few more moments, I first wipe the sick from my mouth , then wipe the dark red blood from my hands and knife. Even without the red sheen, my hands feel soaked in blood.
This transgression was beyond thinking, a divergence from my every stated belief and philosophy. I can feel the cognitive dissonance rattling my mind, even after my stomach has begun to settle. It’s more than just tragic and horrific; it’s a complete betrayal, a declaration that we are a failed species falling from grace. And yet, someone has to do this.
No, not ‘someone.’ I have to do this. The thought brings an involuntary grimace to my suddenly-younger face.
The woman whose blood I have washed my hands of was a murderer in her own right. She was an unrepentant monster, a deviant who ultimately thrilled in violence. The records show she killed at least a dozen people she worked beside and lived with for years. After all, it’s not like I could have jumped from being unlevelled to level two from killing an uninducted person. She probably had to kill half-a-dozen close friends to achieve what I just did.
I’m such a fucking hypocrite.
She made it to level three by cutting unwary throats in the dark of night. It made her faster, stronger, and tougher than she had any right to be. Of course, that didn’t matter much when steel alloy bands secured her to a surgical table, a gag filled her gnashing mouth, and the knife I held was laser-sharpened.
I can almost pretend it was an accident, that I’m back in a surgical ward, a scalpel in my hand instead of a knife. The sterile orbital station has the same recycled air smell as hospitals. Of course, I haven’t worked as a surgeon for most of a century. Would anyone even believe that Dr. Elias Corbin, visionary leader of the Mars Terraformation, did this? If someone walked in, would they ask how I scared off the foul creature who slit that woman's throat? Would they ask if I needed help with the next one?
The incredible sensation of the level gains is long gone now. Gone as soon as it arrived, really. In its wake, the guilt, the feeling of being deeply unclean, is more intense than I could have imagined. Water can wash the blood I’ve spilled from my hands, but never my spirit.
My traitorous eyes dart to the next bound and gagged criminal. He’s a murderer, too, and a rapist, and other things. That doesn’t make it easy. Nothing could make turning away from a lifetime of pacifism and dedication to the public good to become a monster easy. But it needs to be done. I must do this with my own two hands.
I can’t allow myself to die when I have so much more work to do. The worst thing is that part of me desperately wants to kill the man and gain more experience points, to get the next level up.
I look away from the bound man, past the other soon-to-be victims, strapped down on their respective surgical tables, and to one of the plasteel viewports. My reflection startles me. I don't look anything like my prime, but it has been a few decades, even with the best life extension technology, since I've looked this good.
I focus past my reflection; through the plasteel, I can see the Martian terrain far below. It has a few large, yet fragile, brown and pale green patches clinging to its surface. Making this happen—the impossible made real—took a very long lifetime.
It’s not enough. I sigh. They still need me.
There’s nothing selfish in this, no desire but the greater good. No one else can do this. I let out another, bigger sigh and approach the man sobbing through his gag. The knife feels lighter in my hands, and the tremors that plagued my aching fingers are entirely gone. The only hint of hesitation left is in my heart.
“I am so very sorry,” I tell this doomed man, just as I said to the woman minutes ago, but now my voice is steadier, the baritone of my younger days vying with the raspy crackle that I’d been reduced to. “I wish there was any other way, any alternative. I promise you, your sacrifice is for the greater good.” I raise the knife above my head, higher than I was able to for the woman less than a minute ago. Hopefully, this kill will be cleaner. “Today, you’re going to help me save Earth.”
Despite all the bliss that follows, I will always be haunted by how practiced this little speech becomes.