Broken and Driven

It’s done.

I have saved our species….

I have saved our planet….

And in so doing I have embraced my own damnation.

I know, on a cognitive level, I am the greatest hero humanity has ever known. But in my soul that I am also our greatest villain....

Public opinion will not favor me.

I will go down in history as the worst monster humanity has ever produced, and I will deserve it.

The Rwandan genocide saw the brutal extermination of almost 1 million Tutsi's-- in a mere 100 days.

The Nazis are thought to have killed fewer than between 1 and 15 million people, in truly barbaric, torturous ways.

Up until today, the largest genocide in history was violent destruction of Indigenous peoples in North and South America by invading Europeans, and the governments established by colonial powers....

Historians can't agree on the numbers but some say that nearly 100 million people were killed or forcibly displaced throughout the prolonged genocide against the original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere....

A marked shame on the face of human history, but a shame shared by a entire offending cultures over the course of several hundred years.

Collective guilt is a very different burden from the one I now hold.

As far as individuals who carry what I now carry?

There are none.

Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward caused a great famine, which led to the deaths of 15-55 million people.

This will be another leap, it will take our species forward.

But at a great cost.

By definition what I have unleashed this afternoon will be a total and successful genocide.... An entire genetic subgroup of humanity will be made utterly extinct, on a global scale, in about a year.

My most recent projections estimate a direct human death toll in the range of 2.5 to 4 billion.

Men. Women. Children. Even infants and embryos still in utero.

Anyone who doesn't carry the markers for each and every one of the 23 identified empathy genes will fall ill, with a 100% mortality rate.

It is extremely communicable. Given enough time it will insert itself into the genetic material of every human being on earth and it will be passed down to future generations, making humankind the reservoir species that keeps the disease alive for all time.

same way mitochondrial DNA started as a bacteria and integrated with our single celled ancestors to make the first eukaryotes.

But this won't be an energy power-house, this will be a genetically programmed self-destruct button, lingering in our genome forever: apoptosis on a species wide scale, killing the human capacity to act like a cancer.

The pain I am going to inflict will be…

Beyond reckoning.

But I know it will be worth it, in the long term.

This is the next step in our evolution.

A crucial, and necessary step.

Those who carry all 23 markers for the empathy will carry it, harmlessly.

But anyone missing even one marker will certainly die.

This disease won't only eliminate the sociopaths in government who start wars with impunity. It won't simply assassinate the men who target literal children with drones and bombs and predation. This disease won't only destroy the billionaires who willingly sacrifice our environment and the working class for profit. It won't only eliminate serial killers and rapists and people who abuse kids and animals.

It won't only slay human monsters....

It will also murder everyone who happens to be just a little bit narcissistic. People who are just a tad greedy. People who are a bit too short tempered or have mean streaks. Parents who are negligent, or absent. Every person who is capable of shrugging or turning away or laughing when they see others in pain or need... All of these human failings will cease to exist.

Direct violence itself will cease to exist, and so will the violence of inaction.

Apathy itself will become a thing of the past, and the humans who come out the other side will finally be capable of building a true utopia, where all are cared for as they deserve-- without interference or disruption from people who are... Defective.

It's not that these people all deserve to die. Many do.

But not all of them.

I thought about relaxing the targeting criteria, but I finally decided: if I'm going to murder each and every person holding humanity back, I better go all the way-- and make absolutely certain the survivors have no lingering obstacles.

Unfortunately, this was the only way, and what's done is done.

There will be a massive secondary die off numbering well into the 100s of millions as a result of a near total infrastructure collapse.

Non-targets will starve to death, perish without medications, die from heat or cold when the grids collapse— or succumb to old world illnesses when sanitation and healthcare systems crumble.

They're not dead yet, but in a way they are dead already.

The germ is released, and there is no stopping it.

All of this makes me the biggest mass murderer to ever have lived.

A tragic weight, and I must bear the guilt!

I tell myself this is acceptable collateral, I tell myself this is the cost of promising future generations a real utopia.

There will finally be peace on Earth.

I know I am right, this crime is worth my very soul.

Nonetheless, my soul feels broken.

I should force myself to linger, to bear witness. But I am too great a coward.

Since this disease cannot harm me, I must go out the old fashioned way.

A bullet in one temple and out the other. I will time it with my pulse and aim for my amygdala. That’s where most of my guilt is located— and I will wash it away with lead and smoke.

One squeeze on the trigger and I will obliterate all that I am, including the unbearable knowledge of what I have done.

It’s a mercy that I do not deserve.

But what choice do I have?

I must not live to see the suffering I will cause….

No, that’s not quite right. I must not live to see the eventual suffering I HAVE caused.

The causation is done, the weapon is fired.

The fallout will be like a period of Hell on earth.

It’s almost funny, I was raised Christian. But I was never a believer until I broke the capsule and scattered it on the wind at that farmer's market downtown.

Before then I thought the whole question of belief silly and absurd.

And yet...

When I looked on those oblivious faces, walking right through ground zero... I knew:

It was I who cracked open The Fourth Seal.

I am Death.

I have never ridden a Pale Horse in my life, but I did drive my father's puke green mustang to that parking lot.

It’s funny, isn’t it? How God used me to usher in His apocalypse?

Still, the bible thumpers got at least one thing wrong: they never should have called it "End Times".

Haven't read the book in a long time. Not since I was a kid.

But wasn't the whole point of Revelations the collapse of the old world and the ushering forth of God's Kingdom?

Well.

I guess I still don't really believe that bullshit.

But Heaven will come, probably within a generation or two.

And I don't deserve to see it.

Goodbye.

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