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Chapter 16 - The Final Test (1)

He laughed dismissively. Why would it matter? He was himself. That was final. Labels, forms, definitions - none of them touched him. He didn't question what he was. He knew. And what he knew needed no explanation.

So, he didn't answer. But the voice seemed to have read his mind and stopped. He initially thought he would be asked more questions but the voices fell silent. 

Suddenly, he saw multiple clones of himself. He says clones because they behave differently than him. Each one had a distinct expression on its face.

One version spoke only of doubts. Another, acted with blind confidence. Another was trying to hide himself in a corner.

One version did nothing, just looked at him.

He guessed them to be parts of his psyche presented to him by the chamber.

He instinctively knew, he had to choose to acknowledge, accept and step past them.

'Basically, transcend yourself type thing', he thought.

That's exactly what he did. There were not a lot of parts of himself that he didn't accept and if there were he already got rid of them in his previous life. After all, he wasn't idle for those 150 years. 

Self-improvement had always ranked at the top of his list. His constant desperation and curiosity had led him to understand much about himself. He was self-centered, indifferent and selfish. 

He was an obsessed person that spent decades acting like an addict trying to achieve his goals without even understanding why. So, he was stupid in many ways too.

After passing the previous section, he came to the final section. The core spiral.

The core spiral was a spiral floor that seems to rotate beneath you, though your feet never move.

It was quite fun, until he started hearing voices.

His mind fractured into inner voices; he heard his own guilt, rage, grief, ambition and hope.

They argued loudly in his head. It was the most painful experience of his life. Even the reassembly of his entire body, that occurred when he became a superhuman, in his previous life, was less painful than this.

Then these voices began taking shape.

Grief resembled Jack, his former compatriot and second in command of the United Human Empire. It even looked at him with Jack's signature disdain plus barely hidden rage.

It said to Silas, "So, you failed. Huh. So you doomed us all for nothing. Was it worth it."

Hearing this, Silas laughed. He knew that if this was really Jack, he would understand, he would know if this was worth it. Even though Silas himself didn't know.

Silas didn't have a response for Jack so he turned to the others. His eyes stopped at guilt.

Silas instinctively knew which was which because when he looked at these beings he would instinctively feel the emotion these beings represented.

Guilt was a 11 years old child. Silas recognized this child. This child was the last human Silas saw in his previous life.

As Silas was preparing to activate the time machine in his previous life, he was hit with a deep sense of nostalgia. He was going to leave everything he had ever built behind.

This was naturally a bit hard for Silas so he decided to take a tour of Earth. It had been a long while since he did that. Silas had basically left the governance of the world to Jack, Alpha - his AI and the central government for the past 60 years.

So, he wanted to actually see just what he had created on Earth. 

He had his gravity boots equipped. With these he could fly at a rapid speed. Not too fast, about Mach 5. This was not the limit of the gravity boots but this was the maximum speed his superhuman body could endure.

Flying East from his lab, he arrived at Hawaii. But the scene he saw was not one he was expecting. It seemed Silas had underestimated the damage done from his lab's explosion.

Because what he saw in Hawaii was devastation. He saw people dying off in droves. The energy poisons and radiations from his lab had merged with the environment and were expanding rapidly.

Hawaii was already enclosed by this corrupted environment. And what Silas saw in front of him was tragic to say the least.

He saw human literally balloon up and explode. He saw another develop burns at a speed visible to the naked eye and die under the most extreme agony. Then, he saw something even more horrific, he saw a child, the same one he was seeing in the chamber currently grow. 

But the problem was that the child's body didn't have enough energy to support this growth. Yet even so the growth didn't stop, so his body began consuming itself to support this growth. 

He saw the child turn into an empty, shriveled husk right in front of him. This was the moment Silas finally understood the devastation his actions had caused. He was literally killing most if not all of humanity because he was too lazy and irrational.

He knew it was safer to place his lab on a satellite or on the moon but he didn't do so because he was desperate. He didn't care what his actions will bring to fruition. 

He just wanted another chance. Another chance to accomplish his goals.

Recalling this memory Silas sighed then he thought of his next actions. He remembered standing in the sky looking down at the scene and thinking, 'Well what can i do? Excellence has a price'.

He was just that crazed at the time. But now, he could see more clearly. He didn't regret using all of Earth's resources to his benefit nor did he regret killing humanity by accident.

What he regretted was the futility of their forced sacrifice. Silas would understand if it was necessary for humanity to die for him to succeed. But it wasn't. 

Humanity died because he was a little careless. It just seemed so futile to him now.

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