They Will Be Gods

"Within A Decade, We Shall Be Gods."

It was the headline of every article, the title of every video shared on every platform for months.

It was announced triumphantly by the world's most famous exogenetic architect, the visionary, the one who would save the world, the man whose mark was the golden locket he wore at every public appearance and in every photo taken.

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It was the size of a small dog, but with an extremely stocky build. Its face was flat enough to be considered a concavity. Its thick, wavy, ebon fur stuck out in coarse, randomly-directed tufts. Its eyes searched in all directions like ever-spinning, oversized marbles, threatening to pop from their sockets with every haphazard rotation.

Its most prominent feature was its disproportionately sized rump that just couldn't find a way to keep still.

It ate whatever it stumbled upon. Like its ancestors, its superpower was the ability to consume nearly any matter, as long as it was organic.

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Progress.

The necessity of progress was the supposition that invigorated the birth of The Hereditary Foundation. Their expressed goal was to leave something worth inheriting for the next generation. Their secret goal, to guide the world out from under the shadow that was the pitiable human condition. Their logo incorporated a stylized golden locket, the same worn by their founder, the gene architect who would, years later, claim that he would transform humanity into Gods.

The creature didn’t nibble at the clover like the deer and rabbits that called the forest home. Instead, with unfocused eyes, it would slam its flat face into a leafy patch, lugging a small mound of soil along with the vegetation.

Unable to taste, it was unaware of the additional roughage.

When a pair of the uncouth, frumpy things happened to waddle into each other, they would sit only an inch apart as they gazed unseeing into each other's empty, hollow, eyes.

Then they would belch.

For hours they would eructate into each other's flat faces.

This was the way they shared their lineage, their life story, and information about their health and well-being.

Through the belches, they presented everything that they were, which admittedly… wasn’t much.

Then, the moment it was over they would instantly forget everything, for they were creatures unaware of the present moment, let alone the future, the past, or the presence of another.

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In the end, it didn't require an entire decade for humanity to ascend to God-hood. Within five years from the first announcement, The Hereditary Foundation was ready to create its first God.

They sampled the perfect genes from across the spectrum of known life on earth and even fashioned several of their own to fill the gaps.

They had created the perfect code, the perfect being, a God.

The world waited in rapture, watching from billions of different screens as the man wearing the golden locket proudly rolled up his sleeve and took a shot of luminous verdant liquid into his arm.

Soon, they would all be Gods.

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It was true to claim the creatures couldn’t see, that they were blind. Though their eyes were perfectly functional, they simply did not possess the mental capacity to spare, to dedicate to sight.

If additional cognitive prowess could be somehow granted, no matter how much extra capacity or ability was given, that phrenic power would be drawn into the inescapable gravitational pull of their self worship and obsession.

No matter what, the creature would remain blind.

They survived predation simply because predators eventually learned that eating one of the creatures meant certain death.

It wasn’t so much that they were poisonous, it was because their bodies produced an unnatural cornucopia of chemicals and metals.

Occasionally, other animals, a deer, or a mountain lion, would awake to the sound of raspy, apneic breathing to find one of the creatures cuddled against their side, seeking the warmth of their body heat.

Adrenaline fueled panic would then fill the animal, sending it fleeing, with its eyes wide and breath raspy as the large-butted mouth breather from which it fled.

Even such limited contact with one of the creatures was a death sentence for a normal beast, due to the toxins they sweated and leaked from their butts.

Over the next few days, the chemicals and metals absorbed by the animal's skin would journey through their meat and organs.

Their death was often preceded by a state of stumbling madness and it usually ended in frothing, back-breaking seizures.

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The first year after mankind became Gods was a motley disaster. Economic systems collapsed. No one was sure exactly how society was supposed to function if everyone was perfect, if no one was ever sick, if no one needed to eat to live, if no one died. But, despite the hardships, there was endless celebration and overflowing hope for humanity's future.

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It was with their clapping cheeks, with their endless anal seepage that the creatures destroyed entire ecosystems. Trails of reeking, smoking, dying vegetation would slowly crisscross a forest until the toxins accumulated in the soil to a large enough degree that even the oldest trees died.

Then, the creatures would move on, their stubby legs propelling them instinctively in the direction of new biomes to decimate.

Once they reached an appropriate age and had consumed enough biological matter, they would begin to grow and swell, doubling, tripling in size in a matter of weeks.

At which point, they would fall over face first into the earth with their posteriors sticking in the air.

For nine months or so they would appear dead, their only movement would be their hardening skin and ever swelling butt.

A tertiary, mycelial root structure would soon grow from the mouth and burrow into the soil. The white feathery web would continue to absorb water, minerals, and additional nutrients to feed the creature.

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At first, the rampant mutations were defined by their instability.

People transformed into blobs that stuck to walls, masses of tumors with feathers and too many mouths. Some of them turned to crawling beasts in constant agony, their bones all the wrong structures for their own muscular system.

A few became giants, gargantuans that could topple buildings, but they quickly died from cardiovascular systems which failed to support their immense sizes.

Some people rooted to the ground and became wailing, tearful meat-plants. Some never stopped changing; their forms continued to morph daily.

A decade passed like this as gradually, the genetics of the survivors began to stabilize until they reached a point where they maintained a consistent form and life cycle.

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Once the nine month mark neared, the ass of the creature would become semi-translucent and occasionally jiggle.

Without warning, fluid of various viscosities, colors and smells would geyser into the sky.

Then, from the hole, a sexually mature human would come tearing out, covered in slime.

Like a newly emerged butterfly, they would crawl across the forest floor, their skin drying and their muscles hardening as they gained the strength to stand over the course of the first day.

In this form they lived roughly a month as their bodies slowly starved to death. The metamorphosis had stolen their capacity to eat and speak. The jaw, the teeth, vocal chords, had all become vestigial.

Some of their instincts grew stronger after the change. A lifetime of social need was now crammed into four weeks. Perhaps, it was also an effect of their genetic memories, having to witness how so many other humans had lived, each and every time they closed their eyes.

Whatever the reason, during that month, like swarms of cicadas that emerged every 25 years, they would flock to the crumbling cities, the symbols of human society, the corpses of progress.

In the first generations after the change they donned rotting, tattered clothes and would spend a week or two living in dilapidated houses, forming pseudo families composed of strangers.

They ate mock meals at kitchen tables covered in rodent feces, bringing empty, rusty spoons to the patches of skin covering their mouths. They slept in dusty, moldy beds, and gathered in unlit theaters, replaying old movies in their minds.

It was important to maintain society, even if it was only the feebly mimicked motions of what daily life had once been.

They walked the streets, practiced art, and when the twilight of their time as people came, when their month came to a close driven by overwhelming instinct they chose mates.

The bitter unions were often defined by their sorrowful, morose nature, by the weeping intercourse.

In those first few generations, the most intelligent ones would use their month of life to seek a cure, until the end of their life neared and they were pulled away by the instinct to mate.

Armed with the knowledge and memories of all mankind, they possessed a meek trickle of hope, at first.

But, as each generation successively failed, and the remnant technology of the past civilization continued to corrode and decay, so did that hope.

Oddly, they never did let go of the idea.

They never did learn.

Even after they ceased attempting to cure themselves, they remained convinced, possessed by the idea that if they could only know more, if they could obtain enough knowledge then their suffering would cease.

Perhaps, it was a madness that compounded within the species over the many millennia of their existence, something that was within them before the genetic cataclysm.

Did the first of their kind foresee it? The origin stories those ancient people told so many thousands of years ago warned of the foolishness of choosing knowledge over life.

Generations passed with them living twenty five years as something less than an animal and then for a month as people cursed with endless memories.

With time, the despair compounded.

Eventually, they ceased their attempt to continue civilization.

The hopelessness had finally overwhelmed their social instinct.

With increasing numbers, this burden eventually began to outweigh the urge to mate.

One by one, they choose to spend their month starving in isolation.

Eventually, there was only one left. In the last, cruel twist, the final punishment, he found himself to be asexual.

He preferred to spend his month as a person on a particular sunny ledge that overlooked a mountainous forest. There was a shady tree on that ledge, one he enjoyed resting beneath.

He didn't believe that he was the man who had worn the golden locket. But, he did feel a familiarity, a connection to him and his memories.

Maybe they were a bit alike.

It was because of those feelings that one of his selves, in a small house overgrown with vines, with a tree fallen through its bedroom, had found a golden locket and kept it.

On his sun-lit ledge he sought tranquility. Surrounded by the skeletons of his own corpses, of his former selves, he slowly starved in the light, an ever dying immortal, as a creature that knew everything but understood nothing.

When he found that his time was drawing near, he would look at the locket one last time before hanging it on the lowest branch of the tree, hoping it would still be there for the next 'him'.

He knew 'he' would want it.

The picture inside had turned to dust before 'he' had ever originally come upon it.

But, he still enjoyed imagining what it had been, perhaps a happy family, a secret lover, or someone dear and departed.

When the locket's chain eventually broke, he began burying the tarnished, golden heart at the base of his tree.

He knew the time would come when he would climb the hill to find that the tree was gone and the locket as well.

And then, there would be nothing left.

Often, the same thought ran through his dying, immortal mind as his last breaths shuddered in his chest, and the infant creature in his belly quivered, ready to burst forth.

Was this what it was to be a God?