“Please! Don’t kill them! They are our only hope!” I wildly glanced around the room for support. Of course, none was to be had. Were there any weapons? No, there was an ungainly glass contraption, some eye droppers, some paper posters…ah, some hydrochloric acid would do some damage, at least enough for me to save them this time…

“Don’t be foolish…after this political tension you have created within our house because of this project…tsk, tsk…we cannot let it go on like this.”

“No! Please…” I brought the glistening, dagger-like implement up to the light. I was ready. “you wouldn’t want me to...” A shattering of glass as my brother smashed my glass vial. “Oh no, you killed my prime amino acid!”

“Oh, that is a trivial matter, considering the noxious gases you’re always spewing about the house. At least now I may beg forgiveness from our siblings. We cannot let this family get forced apart by your Government meddling! I intend to at least sanction your project from completely killing us. Now please, be serious.”

“Your political intentions are worse than my biological aspirations. By the way, your brothers would like to ask you about a difficult math problem downstairs.”

“Very well, I will see to our ??????? ? ?????? (siblings). You, however, must work on that Government project, quietly now. Our siblings will support this sentiment. Now get to work. We must work to live, eh? Can’t have this family surrender to financial woes, can we?”
“Of course, as the ‘Government’ sees it.” I mumbled. I sighed and swiveled over to my typewriter. My brothers were my only support in these desolate times. My brothers, though hostile, are forgiving souls that simply want to unify my shattered family. Even as it is, with the Government pressure I am receiving, I could barely spare my brothers any thought. Projects, siblings, Government…that is the way of things in my world. Everyone seems to be set on imitating the exalted government, even my younger brothers, though not myself. I was an oak tree, wise and perceiving, yet unyielding to pain and suffering. Ah, the government will have me shot for that if they really have those electrode mind readers. The Government is all-powerful, the Government is supreme, the Government was our savior and on and on…that is the world we live in, and that is the mindset we hold dear. I’ve read that once, a singular world government was deemed impossible. Now, alas, our fatal dream has been realized.
Of course, I am proud of my country. We Russians have been spat upon for too many millennia to be ground into the soil. We are brooding, vengeful beings. We have our vengeance now, our thirst for power seemingly quenched. Ah, but humans may never quench that urge for it is our savior and our death, together. Now, as supreme beings, our culture wants more…and I am the one that will get that for them.
You see, as a prime researcher (though still in my teen years), I am granted access to “degrading” resources like books-sources for rebellion in some, passion for learning in me. I had recently created a primeval world, much like ours was billions of years ago, and had presented it to the government. Of course, I had only relinquished this project for the sake of my secret aspirations. My project included a series of glass vials, essential gases, some heat…and you have your world. In fact, my miniature world was evolving, as I predicted it would, at an amazing rate. I already had oceans and basic fungi developing inside my miniature glass world, my imitation of the gods of civilizations past. Gods and religion are foreign to me, never having been forcibly introduced. Our constrictive government no longer allows religion, and with their “influence”, they could enforce this to ensure unity and domestic tranquility. I was one of the few people to work at home, away from these suppressions of freedoms, yet my world has changed, over the centuries, even less than those of the general public.
My home’s description barely differs from the descriptions I have read in Mark Twain’s novels, written hundreds of years past. I also work at a price, unlike the mindlessly fearful masses slaving away at factories for their government utilized clients. I was paid with my freedom and human rights, not seen for millennia but which I believed I should employ, still. Hah! They think they control me like a piece of wood to whittle away at, but they are so very wrong. As they have yet to find out from their rotund spies, I have something to…well, how shall I put it in English? “Motivate them”.
September Ninth, Day 5475 Of My Life: Dawn is breaking, and I am sweating. If I did not hurry along the evolution of my planet, due today for a government review-of-progress, I am a dead man. The government expects me to have basic fish by now, and I am still in the early Mesozoic! Okay, I must add some nitrogen bubbles, cyanosomes, and more oxygen, lots of oxygen to speed the process…and heat! Now we have something, I am sure. But what is this? In the fresh condensation on the shimmering glass, a very strange phenomenon is occurring. In liquid letters, a slow, invisible hand is drawing out my name in the glass vial. But I am alone in my room, for sure! I glance nervously about. Surely this is impossible! Maybe it is a miracle, as the old religious texts would have it. What happened with a miracle? What is a miracle, exactly? Why, a miracle is a message from some deity, of course. But who is the deity, and why are they speaking to me? On the glass:

Zxephyl, you’ve gone too far. I am Alexander Oparin, I am you hundreds of years ago…same experiment, same ambitions to kill off all opposition by creating my own savage beasts. I had the same plan to enforce my will…until the message you have just received came to me. You see, the universe, your universe, is a bubble inside of mine, mine is inside of others, and on for infinity. You have joined the ranks of the Keepers. You now have a catalyst which will continue on, infinitely. You are Life, creator of worlds. Now I am Death, the destroyer of worlds. We hold a delicate balance, Zxephyl. My creator could destroy me, and you, currently residing in my extensive set of shimmering glass vials, the representation of your delicate lives. You may die at any moment from a slight atmospheric change. Keep that in mind. However, should you become lax and forgetful, and perhaps destroy your own developing biosphere, a tremor runs through our infinite and archaic ranks. My creator, and indirectly your creator, Hammurabi, once told me through his messages what I find is the most eloquent appraisal of the situation: you kill, you die, and so it must be. You will grow to love your patriarch role, as I have. Your partner, your hatchling world, will teach you things. But you must not interfere, unless you eventually develop your own Keeper inside of your world. The Great Primeval Soup, that which initially created us, tells us this through its flow. Good luck…


I was aghast. My life, once so important, is now infinitely trivial and valuable at the same time. My family and friends are meaningless flecks on an incessant beach. I did not want this responsibility. I pined for stability and family, not a vast macrocosm. With a final sigh, I made a quick decision for the greater good. I was ushered into the Government Headquarters, was reviewed empty-handed without my project, and sentenced to death for insubordination and lack of sufficient progress. I was put in front of a firing squad whilst I desperately thought of the ironies of life. As those fatal bullets, suddenly so carefully aimed and sighted, came rushing towards my head, I realized these simpleton objects had no meaning. In fact, the very lead of the bullets was manipulated into being by some scientist, created by some scientist, etc., etc. But once I died, my fledgling world would die, and then Alexander’s world, my world, and Hammurabi’s world, and so on in a chain reaction that would destroy the universes of our universe. Alas, I thought ruefully, Alexander cannot interfere without still dooming us all. No matter. As the terminal bullets broke through my skull and my heart, I made one last mental effort. Somewhere, in some desolate or bountiful land, a being is watching our worlds implode. What work wasted, but the universes will finally be free of humanity, at least…and whatever deity or scientist manipulated gases into our beings is reveling in his freedom of responsibility and consciousness. Freedom from existence, I thought, as my brain was penetrated and ripened with blood…ah, what bliss it will be…free from responsibility…