Cockroach the Barbarian

The old world had killed itself with mighty weapons, or great and terrible plagues had been unleashed, or a meteor had struck the Earth, or something something aliens. The important points are, almost everyone is dead, everyone who lives is a mutant, and I had been granted eternal life and was enjoying every second of it.

Except this one.

The woman was as beautiful as they said. Limbs in all the right places (not something you can take for granted), eyes that shone (figuratively, not radioactively or hunts-in-the-dark-ly), and skin that was merely splotchy (instead of pock-marked, a bit green, or coming off).

And it turned out she was a laser-witch.

“Why?” I attempted to growl past the gag.

“Because it’s the right thing to do..”

“So?” I managed.

“So you could change the world for the better. Why wouldn’t you want that?” I should have known. I threw her across the room, dove out the window, and began running.

I could judge how close she was by the brightness of the blue light following me.

At some point her skin had turned translucent and what was beneath had a sickly glow. Perhaps her eyes had been shining radioactively after all.

“EARTH HANGS IN THE BALANCE!” she yelled, right in my face.

Her second mistake. I headbutted her.

Then the street collapsed, and I was face-to-eyestalk with a man-shrimp.

The Creation of Men

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Voltaire

The bunker is old. Larger than it needs to be and virtually self-sufficient, built for the worst possible wars. Even before the worst came to pass, the scientists who live there rarely left. With every trip to the surface revealing only greater reasons for despair, they buried themselves deeper and deeper in their work.

Their project had been the creation of a proof-of-concept for super-soldiers. As large as possible a spectrum of ideas and techniques were collected and tried. Genetic engineering, psychological engineering, in-utero surgical modification, drug glands, lifelong 24-hour training regimes, even fringe ideas like sensory deprivation while on psychedelics and nested coming-of-age ceremonies, both designed to impart a lasting paranoia about even the most basic facts of reality.

Finally, with all avenues explored, they realized they could proceed no farther without putting their methods into practice. Producing super-soldiers was now pointless, but they were terrified at suddenly living without an explicit goal. Finally the solution came to them. The world above was chaos, cults and clans in slow decline. It needed unity, purpose and leadership. They must create hope. They must make a god.

God's genes are a human ideal, and God's brain chemically shaped from the moment of conception and has been in an induced meditation for as God has had a brain. God was born into satori, never to leave, from there to unite humanity, to lead humanity, and to reshape humanity. Soon the bunker doors will open, and a bright light will spill out.