Prologue

  October 30, 2244 BTG (Before The Gate)

  The world had become a far more dangerous place. Despite the war having ended, the new governments of earth continued their efforts in their desire for a pure human race. Johnathan Skarts watched the ever-forgetful news anchor as he delivered his daily news. “Five transcendent were apprehended today.” The unnamed news anchor spaced out again, which seemed to be happening more frequently as of late. His assistant stepped in and handed him his flash cards. “Right, right.” He cleared his throat. “Five transcendent were apprehended today. During a raid on the McDonolds in Mainsville New Alaska. Officials say they are to have their identities and memories erased and exiled without trial.” The anchor moved to a new flashcard. Johnathan knew exactly what the news anchor was talking about. They had taken his wife, and fried her brain. She was a citizen. She had a social security card and a birth certificate, and they took her and zapped her head with some strange device. The mere thought caused electricity to dance across his fingertips. A look at their child caused his thoughts to only spiral into deeper turmoil. What would happen if his remaining family was taken from him as well.

  Johnathan calmed himself as the camera panned to the 5 individuals that were strapped into those horrid chairs. Some were begging, while others were in tears. Nothing they said or did really mattered. They were all zapped one by one, and the fucks that administered the wipes were enjoying it. One woman was spat on right before they zapped her brain. After it was done, she slumped over like the others who were all vacant eyed and drooling. She wasn’t dead. No, it was far worse. They wiped her brain of everything- her memories, and her very personality. She, like all the others was a blank slate.

  He looked at his son again, but this time he smiled, because there was an ugly truth behind that horrible machine. He would know, after all. Johnathan had been a reason behind its existence. It was his theory… his equations that drove the machine, and the truth was ironic. Every time they used that infernal contraption, they were wiping their own minds due to a backlash pulse released during a cooldown cycle, and the ignorant fools never realized it. At least people like himself had a resistance to the backlash thanks to evolution.

  He looked back at the tv to see a new reporter. This time he saw something being unveiled. It was covered in a giant white sheet. Whatever it was, it was huge. Whatever it was, it was about to be no more. Many rumors had spread about this device through e-magazines and archeological journals all over the internet, but one thing was for certain, this was the means of purging them. It was up to transcendent like himself to rid the world of it. It was the least he could do to atone for the terror he had helped birth that was plaguing half of the human race.

  Pulling out his disposable phone, Johnathan saw the number listed on the caller ID as Mr. M. He answered, “yeah, I see it. The arrangements have been made.” Johnathan said, as Mr. M acknowledged and hung up. There was a plan. Admittedly it was a bad one, and Johnathan knew it was doomed to failure, but the transcendent were desperate. The Idea was a scorched earth policy. If they were to be doomed, then so would everyone else. They were going to blow the device and cause a worldwide mind wipe. He looked back at his son. “At least your generation will be the least effected.”

  Walking over to the crib, he pulled out an ancient looking relic that his great uncle found back in his days as an archeologist. It was something his uncle had dug up at the Richat structure in the sahara. It was oddly gun shaped, and made out of a metal Johnathen personally deemed to be orichalcum. It had odd runic inscriptions along the barrel with a quartz like crystal where a gun’s magazine should be. It had no trigger or use other than looking pretty and mysterious. He laid it in the crib next to the boy, and placed pictured all around the room of him and the baby, along with a photo of his babysitter and the baby, It was underhanded, he knew, but the girl had a motherly attachment to the boy, and she would be good to him. She was Johnathan’s friend, after all, which was why what he was doing felt scummy. He lamented the fact that he would be tricking her into thinking the baby was hers.

  Finishing the note, He gave Cynthia a call. Once she arrived, he gave her the folded note and told her to pocket it and keep it on her. Of course, if she read it now, it would come off as normal and unsuspicious with formula instruction on the back, but to someone with no memory of anything, it would make her think the baby was hers. The guilt only increased, but it was the only way to ensure the boys future. “How long am I gonna have with this precious bundle of joy?” Cynthia asked. “Don’t know. With the raids increasing, machine maintenance is gonna be more frequent. I just don’t know.” he said. “What they’re doing is awful. Please don’t go? Give it up and just let it break.” Johnathan shook his head. “It pays the bills, and besides, it’s a living.” he joked, referencing an old flintstones joke. “If you must, but please be careful. If they find out what you are?” Cynthia let the question hang.

  Johnathan didn’t answer, and instead, gave her the usual shpeel. Besides, he had a job too do. Pulling up to the security gate, he flashed his badge. “How’s your night?” Johnathan asked. “Not bad. I don’t envy you- Having to deal with those mutant freaks.” He wanted to tell the man he was a transcendent and scream at him, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything, and it would only serve to hinder the plan. He needed to get into his lab and check in for maintenance duty. Thankfully, a car was pulling up behind him. It gave him a reason to get away from that ignorant asshole. Upon entering the building, he was greeted by an assistant. “Hey Dr. Skarts You’re here early.” Johnathan wore his perfected mask of a smile. “Hey Nikie. Just prepping the calculations for tomorrow’s maintenance.” The girl seemed to by the half truth as they began to walk and talk. “Did you hear about the gate?” Nikie said excitedly. “No. what’s that?”

  The truth was, he already knew. It was part of an information packet sent to his burner, and it was the very device they were going to use to murder his fellow transcendent… if they hadn’t started doing that already. It was a target of opportunity if he could sabotage it. “This isn’t my lab.” “I know Dr. Skarts. They moved you. We are to work on both the gate and the M.E.D. device. Johnathan almost exhaled a sigh of relief. When Nikie said they moved him to a new lab, his stomach did a summersault.

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  After logging in with his PIV card, Johnathan got to work on the memory eradication device. He was now fully logged in, and typing away. Every now and then Nikie would look over and offer to help him, but waved her off. Johnathen was starting to get nervous. He needed her to leave for what he was about to do. The girl was sweet, and he really didn’t want to hurt her. It was also a last resort, because if he did kill her, it would up his time table by an incredible margin. Luckly her lunch was coming up, and she would be stepping like clockwork. She was like everyone else in the working world. Nikie was only there for the money. That didn’t mean she liked the job and lived for it. And as predicted she stepped out.

  Johnathen listened for her footfalls to become distant, and when he couldn’t here them anymore, he pulled out a flash drive from his pocket and plugged it into his terminal. Accessing the drive, he pulled a piece of custom software onto the device and installed it. It was a cleaver piece of software engineering. It leveraged AI to implant the necessary code to initiate an automatic buildup in the beta wave emitters that would cause a world-wide mind wiping event that would set the world back to the stone-age. Once the program was installing, he began looking for anything regarding the gate. It was naturally nowhere to be found on his new terminal, but a glance around the room explaned the reason for that.

  Sitting at the far end of his massive lab, was the gate itself, and next to it was a research terminal. Forgetting the flash drive, he made his way over, and began poking around. Nikie had forgotten to log off. More to the point, it was a stand-alone system. Johnathen began poking around the files. He noticed a few files of interest. One was Project Wormhole. Another was the Apophis initiative, and the last file of interest was project mutant. And then off to the side was a program to activate the dam thing. Part of Johnathan wanted to activate it, but instead, opened the files and began skimming through them.

  The first two files were interesting. What he was able to gather from these files, was that they had been old data that was restored and painstakingly pieced back together from corrupted data, but essentially, they thought it was some sort of wormhole device. People were naturally sent through, but nobody ever returned. So, they eventually quit sending people, deemed them to be diceased, and classified the device a golden age garbage disposal. He looked over at the strange gate like device, and noticed that there were glowing constellations peppering the thing, along with the inscription, “Here lies the imprisoned” in cursive. “That inscription is new” Johnathen noted. Looking back, he thought the same thing, especially since the test subjects never came back. Then there was the Apophis initiative. Not much was available in this file, but something in this file changed his mind about the device. It mentioned the possibility that the device was viable as a wormhole device. That was where there was still corrupted data. How did this all fit into the Transcendent issue? Easy, Popular belief was that it was killing any living thing going through it. So, that’s what they’re doing, but Johnathan wasn’t convinced.

  If that was the case, then why the constellations? It was then that he notices a singular image within the file. It was a stone looking version of this one and a picture of his great uncle standing next to it. He recognized that man from the family albums. His uncle was even holding the very same relic Johnathan had given his own son. It was then that the door slid open, and he heard someone challenge him, “How did you log into my terminal? You don’t have an account.” Johnathan, who was panicked, looked up and accidently hit the activation button, and before he could issue any kind of apology or excuse for cover, the device began to activate.

  Nikie was about to bring security down on them. He really didn’t want to hurt the assistant, but he had too. He felt the power of his transcendent power enhance every part of his physical prowess and before the weight of his actions could bear down on him, he bolted forward with electricity dancing across his body. Nikie’s eyes widened in surprise and fear, then her expression went to one of hatred as his hand wrapped around her throat. Johnathan felt her seize up in convulsions, as he poured electricity into her. Tears fell down his cheek as he watched the life leave her eyes. He was no killer. So, Johnathen coped by telling himself that she was one of them. That… She also wanted him dead. He prematurely let her go and she fell to the floor. “You will die like the rest of them.” She mouthed while convulsing, and then she died.

  “I did what I had too. This needs to happen.” Johnathen repeated, trying to focus past this trauma. He needed to get himself together. Once he did, he laid the events out and weighed his options. Nikie’s death certainly alerted security when she stopped living. It was the same for himself. Something she did say didn’t go unnoticed, however, “You will die like the rest of them.” That meant they had been using that thing after all. It also meant his escape was unlikely as he could already hear the pounding of footsteps. “I’m not dying on your terms.” Johnathen yelled in defiance.

  He had moments to act. Johnathen’s first action was to magnetically lock the doors. This should give him minutes. Doing, that, He checked the M.E.D. The software had finished. He wasn’t supposed to activate it, but he was caught and they would be suspicious of it. So what if a few normals came out of this okay. His son would at least have a future, and besides, what would Mr. M do to him that was worse than his own immanent death? “Nothing, I’m already fucked.” With no more hesitation he pressed the activation. That was also when the large and strange device made a 10th click and activated. Having been hyper focused on his sabotage, Johnathan hadn’t noticed what the device was doing. Now that he actively observed it, he saw the shimmering puddle in its center. In a morbid since, it was beautiful.

  Johnathan didn’t have long to decide as plasma cutters were being applied to the security door. They would soon see Nikie’s lifeless body and shoot him. Even without a memory, it wouldn’t be hard to conclude what had happened here and guns weren’t hard to use. “Fuck! I’m going out on my terms.” Grabing a notebook and pen- An action Johnathan wasn’t sure why he’d done, made for the shimmering puddle of death. “Maybe it won’t kill me.” he thought as he lept into it, but nobody was ever documented as ever returning. But Johnathan could at least hope.