The sound of traffic bustling along the streets of Manhattan was especially crisp in Sovereign Ennos’ ears as he walked briskly toward the corner of 5th Avenue and East 34th street. It was 8:55:48AM and the distant top of the Modern Empire Capitol Building arced toward the sky before him like a glimmering spike of pearl. One hundred and ninety-nine stories into the sky it stood: defiant, beautiful, and in a moment it wouldn’t matter to him or the world at all. His achievement, he knew, would rocket higher and faster than any other, and at 9:00:00AM he would come to destiny’s door with a knock and a smile.
The whir of electric motors driving sculpted cars along the rubbercrete-paved streets brought a quiet peace to Sovereign’s heart. The fear that had come with him on the walk from his laboratory beside the great tower to the street corner ahead dissolved into a breathless anticipation. He smiled and blinked, checking the clock embedded inside his left eyelid-8:57:59AM. The small device he had connected to his Cerebrojack buzzed softly behind his ear as it prepared his brain for the moment almost upon him-“no, upon the whole of mankind,” he thought.
A roar came from up the block, an electrical monster whose motor cackled as it echoed off the canyon-like walls of the city. It rolled through traffic on immense wheels and Sovereign looked up with eagerness. He pushed hastily through the crowd and approached the curb just fifty feet from where a dozen people waited for the bus. He paused at the edge and looked back. His gaze climbed the monolithic tower behind him and he squinted at the fiery reflection of the sun far above. “Goodbye. I’ll see you soon” he said with a blink–8:59:55AM. With a breath he stepped off the curb, but he never heard the sound of the 9:00:00 bus as it crashed into his 93 year old frame.
With a whoosh it passed through Sovereign as it tore his broken body away from his conscious mind. He smiled as the bus’s electric motor reversed and brought the beast to a jarring stop. People shrieked in horror and rushed to his twisted corpse. “He slipped!” cried some, “He killed himself!” insisted others. A drug addict shrugged and mumbled “that’s fucked up” before staggering off. Sovereign walked through the bus, passing easily through people and steel, unnoticed and invisible.
It was jarring to see the mottled corpse that he had inhabited until now. More than just a home it had been him for nearly a century, and in spite of his clever plan he couldn’t help heaving a breathless sigh of remorse. But a smile crossed his face as he looked toward his lab and was lost in a moment’s reverie: a new body waited in an embryonic chamber near the machine that would distill his consciousness into another lifetime. It was therefore surreal when he realized that the dozens of faces that had cried in horror at the sight of his death were now turned toward the sky. Though he did not feel it, he saw in their faces that a scorching heat encroached.
His eyes climbed the tower once more and he saw with a horror that did not pound in his chest an image he would never forget. The sides of the tower buckled and melted as its windowless visage turned black from a heat that Sovereign knew could only be the result of a magnesium-charged bomb. Torrents of water and vapor spilled from the broken face of the building as its sprinkler systems failed to stop the unanticipated chemical reaction. Smoke billowed and more explosions rippled up the tower as the twisting, crunching sound of steel and concrete echoed off the surrounding skyscrapers.
Sovereign cried out voicelessly, his terror shared with no other human being as a hundred thousand tons of steel and stone toppled from the sky. Shops, people, vendors and the laboratory office where Sovereign’s hope for a new life were all pulverized as cars crashed and people ran in mindless panic. No one knew or cared that what had died beneath the rubble was mankind’s hope for a glimpse at the world beyond its own passing and a chance to choose or reject it. But when Sovereign fell and sobbed with no tears and no voice, it was not for mankind he cried, but for his own inauspicious end.
*Author’s Note: This story has now gone through three revisions. Thanks to everyone who has commented, critiqued and discussed this piece with me; your suggestions have helped both to make this a stronger story and to arm me with additional perspectives to consider as I move forward with writing short stories for this site.