It wasn't exactly comfortable this time of year, but he liked the way wood felt in his hands. Not many people used wood stoves these days, but he preferred the smell of them. Liked living out here where it was quiet and the stars were still well visible. No mana pollution on this world. Mana? What was mana? Connor frowned hard and turned to observe his surroundings, feeling a wave of vertigo striking him, an indicator that it was time to call for a doctor's visit perhaps.

The yard, with the towering oak fit with two swings because Magnus had insisted that he get one of his own, just like his sister. Benny and Micah were content to share. They were good lads. Three sons and a daughter. What a wonderful family he had, they were all so funny and full of personality. Growing up to be more like their mother, he hoped.

Huh...? Connor brushed his calloused thumb to his face, wiping away a tear. Must've been the holiday blues. Times like this were bittersweet for him and always had been, but he'd never remembered weeping over it. I'm getting sentimental in my old age, I guess.

With a chuckle and a grunt, he gripped the well used handle of the axe and split another log. Taking in the pleasant chill of the wintry air and cleaving through another dozen before feeling that ache in his shoulder that told him it was time to give it up. Youth was wasted on the young, they said, and they were right. He smiled now, rubbing at the sore socket of his arm and sinking the blade of the axe in the stump. Gathering half his load up and turning toward the house. He'd never been wealthy, but his father had left him with enough to keep his children well fed, his long career of killing had done the rest. How lucky he'd been to find them. All angels in the flesh.

Night had fallen over upstate New York, and the air was so still he could hear the beating of his own heart. He liked it like this. Quiet. Only broken by the gentle hubbub of those still inside, enjoying the warmth of his hearth and laughing. His hearth. His family. His friends. There were odd moments where he would just stare at them sometimes and wonder how. How? How does a man get so lucky? He liked the quiet, if only for the fact that it allowed him to hear their sound all the louder.

Everything was good.

There was not a single person on this dying Earth that was more fortunate than he.

“Connor?” A voice came, such a pleasant, bright voice. Full of warmth and familiarity. He loved that voice so much, wanted to scream to the whole world how much he loved it. It'd always been that way, his... Who? Can you hear me? They'd met in college, a rather cliché story of a romance begun in academia that seemed prised to last a lifetime. He hoped so. All he could think about was how he could make her happy, and she did the same. Who? “Come inside. You've been out here for an hour. Our big strong man never complaining about the cold, you'll get sick and you're missing all the fun!”

She laughed, and a host of butterflies flew free from the walls of his stomach. He ached for her every second of every day. The mother of his children. The literal light of his life. She was huddled there in a thick sweater, shivering and rubbing at her arms to ward off the chill. Blue eyes like summer skies, shining with intelligence. Hands that could relax his back and put him to sleep with a single touch. This couldn't be real, he'd been doubting the reality of his fortune for as long as he'd had it, gripping all the tighter to keep it in place.

“...Astrid?” Connor asked, turning his neck and squinting in the poor light. Who...?

“Of course.” She laughed again. “Who else would I be, silly? I'm not sure how I'd feel about your mistress materializing out of the snow to see how you were doing on Christmas Eve. She can have you every other day, but no holidays.” Astrid joked like that often, she had a mischievous nature when it was just the two of them, but she was stern with the children. A good mother, and much more intelligent than he was. Gifted since the beginning, someone beyond him – and yet she'd been content to 'settle'.

A gift.

There was nobody better.

“You didn't even bring your jacket...” She frowned. Clinging to his arm like a buoy, ceasing in the warming of her own just to check all of his extremities with a squeeze. So... The renowned doctor herself sacrificing her career in medicine to take care of the kids. So thoughtful, constantly concerned with his well-being. It really wasn't that cold, but it meant a great deal. Everything she did meant so much it was impossible to articulate how important she was. Even when times had gotten rough with the pandemic, she'd never complained about working and raising the children.

Connor was like his own old man, though not the best father if he had to be honest, but he wasn't hard on them either. A bit too soft. She made him look better, the way she complimented him and lifted his every fault up to turn it into a blessing. He was just a bit... Distant?

Who?

“Sorry, I just feel a bit foggy right now. I thought some fresh air might clear my head.”

“Oh, and did it clear that head of yours?” She beamed at him brightly, rubbing her red nose into his shoulder. Sometimes he needed his alone time, but it was 31 degrees Fahrenheit outside and he was wearing nothing more than a loose, long sleeve t-shirt. “Did you finally figure out the mysteries of the universe?”

Connor chuckled, his lips splitting wide in honest amusement. He'd been wondering about those for what...? Ten years now? Then the virus had come and wiped out nearly thirty percent of the human population. He still wondered at them always, and felt no closer to the answer. His mentors were all gone, older men and women passed away like the rest. Perhaps they had answers on how to fix their current predicament, but Connor was just an engineer. Not a genius. Not like Titus and Gideon had been. They wanted them to develop a passable solution for colonizing the stars when humanity could barely manage a trip to Mars, let alone station fully autonomous agricultural stations around Titan and Venus.

“Not yet.” He joked. “But...”

“What is it?” Astrid asked, brightening in her expression. He was so smart, so talented, but his upbringing had ensured that he'd never truly realize it. Too humble in all the wrong ways. But eventually, she honestly believed he'd find a solution. Not for them, they were the privileged, what he worried about was everyone else. The Pan-Pacific Republic was doing just fine, but the Europeans were on the brink of another mass recession any day now. People were literally starving to death in the 21st century and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The rest of them were still dropping dead in the middle of the street to a virus with a four hour incubation time that killed seemingly at random. Grinding the economy to a halt, everything was drones now – lest it spread further.

“Nothing.” Connor shook his head with a soft sigh. “Just an idea, but it's Christmas eve. I can get to it after my well earned holiday.”

“Yes you can.” She caressed his back softly, guiding him back to the house. “I know you will. And everyone has been waiting to eat dessert because you decided to go and chop wood in the middle of the evening when we already had more than enough.”

It wasn't a long trip, he had a big yard but trees were everywhere so it didn't take long for them to find themselves back in the doorway. Connor realized how cold he'd actually been, stomping his boots on the rubber mat and brushing the snow from his sleeves.

“Dad's back!” Micah cried, doing that dance he... Did, something from a video game popular with his generation. Flicking his wrists and gyrating at the hips and knees, back and forth. “Dad's back! It's lit, let's go!!!”

As if he hadn't been gone for so short a while, they were... All unique, that was for sure.

“Hi dad.” Benny beamed up at him, bouncing energetically. Unlike that particular eccentric in the family, all of his other children were blissfully well behaved. Then again, Connor remembered the trends of his own generation and in all honesty – they hadn't been much better. He still remembered how his younger brother had convinced their sister to quit smoking. Chili powder in a cigarette... Rascals, all of them. His brother had even thrown a roller skate across the street and hit their mother directly in the forehead, that was something. But then again... Connor had done the same thing, frustrated over losing a game of mini golf... Same thing, a different implement.

Nobody was blameless here, a little dancing and constant references to whatever 'pogging' was, was hardly damning.

Otherwise, his children were so... exceptional. Statistically, they were all about the median height and weight for their age, well above the median IQ. None of them was a disappointment, though Micah had his moments, Astrid always joked about his future. He was the smartest of them all, just a bit wilder. A career as an artist in his future rather than an engineer, maybe. If there were still artists, and it was Connor's job to make that a reality, a job he was not qualified for in the slightest. Constantly left wondering 'why him?'.

“I wasn't gone that long.” Connor laughed, lifting his son into his arms. Five years old and he still liked to be held, but there was nothing wrong with that, their mother had taught them to be affectionate. How to communicate their feelings properly, unlike their father. Astrid was so... Lord above... How? How was she so perfect? She had given him all of these wonderful children and they all loved him so much, and he in return. Four of them. Micah, Benny, Magnus, and his (though he wouldn't admit it) personal favorite – Isabella. She was bright, knew how to play to his weak parts and get her way, ended up spoiled but she behaved herself because that was part of the games she played.

Three sons and a daughter, he wished he'd had more girls. Perhaps there was time yet for that, Astrid might be convinced.

“But we missed you!” Benny squeezed his neck. He was the second youngest. Micah was eight, Magnus was six, Benny five, and Bella was also five – Benny's twin. Connor felt like they'd had kids a little late into life, but it'd given them a nest egg to keep them all comfortable and happy. Able to afford their dalliances and give them what they wanted without struggling, perhaps that was a sign he'd done right.

They'd been together for a long time, and Astrid had never broken her vows to him even after all the things he'd done in the past. A hired killer was what he had been, but it had been for the government, some considered his veterancy some kind of... Act of heroism.

“I missed you too.” Connor squeezed back with one hand while his other rubbed Bella's hair gently. She didn't come in for the hug in the presence of company, she was a shy one but very much a 'daddies girl'. He loved her the most. Parents weren't supposed to have favorites, but he did. Though, as mentioned, he'd never admit it. She looked just like her mother, while the rest of the filthy goblins looked just like him. The 'choice', if there was one, was obvious, but he loved each of them with all of his being regardless.

“Come on man!” Steve. Who? 'Uncle Steve'. Tyr knew him from... University? Yes, yes of course, he was Connor's best friend throughout school. He and Thomas, of course. Connor wasn't close to his siblings, geographically at least, one lived in Norway and the other was in...? Honestly? He didn't know. India, last he'd heard. The Indians were pioneering the most advanced aerospace tech in the world, and the Asians were revolutionizing propulsion engines, so Hunter was probably between one of the two. Somewhere. He didn't talk to the family much, but they were all busy. It wasn't like there was any bad blood between them, people just went their own ways. “We wanna eat!”

“You already ate.” Astrid tutted, but with a gentle smile to her husband she went to the kitchen to grab the dessert that had been waiting for Connor's arrival. Tom insisted they wait for him, despite the fact that the man didn't like desserts and rarely ever ate sweets. Who...?

But despite their calls for his attention, Connor felt... Off? He gently lowered Benny to the ground, kissing Bella on the forehead and staring at the wall opposite him. They lived in an open, 'contemporary' home with hardwood floors and lofts rather than a standard floor plan. It all felt so straight and flat, too geometric all of a sudden. Each wall and partition was set at a perfect ninety degree angle and he didn't know what material the walls were made of. Oh... Sheetrock. They were all sheetrock and plaster, making for better interior insulators than plywood or paneling. Why was it all so straight? It was dizzying to stare at the corners of the wall and wonder at what great artisan had constructed them. Tyr had... Who? Connor had built it with his own hands. How, though?

When had he learned how to build anything?

“Babe?” Astrid called from the dining area, poorly disguised concern on her face.

“Come on, bro!” Tom cried. “I need me some of your wife's cherry cheesecake!”

“I have a name, Thomas.” Astrid corrected him in that bright tone of hers, but there was an edge to it that pretty quickly shut him up. They'd all been friends for two decades. Everything was so warm. The family Tyr had... Who? Even if not related by blood, Connor was happy to know them. Too lucky. Nobody was this lucky. He was so happy, so content to exist. Why? So many people suffered every day all over the world and yet here he was, overindulging, and for what? Eating cheesecake, at a time like this?

“Come.” Astrid appeared behind him suddenly and slapped him hard on the ass. “Eat the damn cheesecake and quit being a freak.” She hissed, gently and very suggestively biting his ear. Tom and Steve would be staying the night in the house with the kids, leaving them plenty of time for their own activities. She'd kept mentioning it all week. It made him blink out of his fog and realize that he might have been neglecting her lately, guilty in that realization, but she'd never complained.

Too many problems, not enough solutions. But that wasn't her problem. It was time to focus on being a better man rather than an issue that couldn't be solved. Not by someone like him. He was a mechanical engineer, what was he supposed to know about 'quantum physics'?

He wondered at his current state of mind. Feeling out of place, like he'd woken up from a dream and didn't quite know where he was. Slowly it came back to him. The taste of pecans and a fatty Christmas ham. Fluffy mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Not the canned stuff, homemade. Astrid was talented at everything, the ideal partner. Why did she make him so uncomfortable in this moment, then? He loved her to such an incredibly visceral degree, but the obsessiveness of it frankly terrified him. Never in his life had he felt that emotion, why now after fifteen years of marriage? He wouldn't be given much time to consider it, though. Like every night, his phone rang.

Even on Christmas Eve.

“I'm sorry.” He whispered to Astrid, kissing her forehead and sincere in his apology. But she understood, always did. Saving the world and all of that. Telling her how proud of him she was.

“Just wake me when you are done working.” She smiled mischievously, squeezing his rear again – and not so 'suggestively' this time. “I had a special surprise planned for you for the holiday, but it can wait.”

“Mom!” Micah cried, staring at his parents with abject disgust. Much to Brenn and Tythas' amusement, both of them chuckling. “Gross!”

...Who? Steven and Tom, right? That was their names... No. Steven and... Who was Tythas?

“It's Christmas.” Connor sighed into the phone, hoping the dunce on the other end could hear his exasperation. Even so, he was already moving briskly down the hallway toward 'his' workshop. Calling it a lab seemed disconnected from his real vocation.

A long staircase leading into the bunker that this home had been constructed atop. Top secret, after all, that's why he lived all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. It was of the utmost importance not to let the other nations of the world access this kind of data. Everything was closed network, no internet without porting the simple WiFi network through multiple VPNs. Micah always complained about how 'laggy' the internet was. Connor thought he might just be bad at his particular video game of choice, but he was still young. There was time to improve, maybe he'd be a born gamer man one day, or whatever they called it. Who knew what that child wanted to do with his life? Still so young, he had time. Connor hoped for it, at least. Nothing was certain these days – and he'd been cast into a man that was constantly waiting for tragedy from one source or another.

“And I'm the leader of the free world, we don't get holidays, captain.” His voice didn't sound too amused either, it seemed a bit worried, but something was off about that, too. Like the call had started mechanical and filled with static before stabilizing half way through his sentence. “I need a status update, the situation has... Changed.”

“You know how much I love hearing that...” Connor hummed, tossing his phone onto the leather sofa in his subterranean study and punching a series of codes into the keypad in the wall behind his desk. 13251, 72012, 41052, every single time. It was... Irritating. Connor was pretty sure that if the Pan-Pacific Republic decided to invade his personal domicile they wouldn't find much challenge in a simple keypad, but it was what it was.

Astrid called this place his 'lair'. It had initially been a laboratory where over twenty people had once worked day in and day out, living in the attendant facilities, but now it was just him. Not because he was talented, he was a glorified assistant, the guy who had experience working with his hands and the government clearance to be here in the first place. Doing little more than repairing the mechanisms of various machines, brewing coffee, getting them breakfast and making sure they all behaved. Lathing steel in the garage and fixing shorted wiring. He'd liked that though, it was simple and the team dynamic they'd had made him happy.

But for some reason, as fate would have it, the Cradle killed everyone who came in contact with it, eventually. But not him. And it was a lot more than the twenty original staff who'd died in an attempt to study that bizarre relic. One mankind had no part in creating, someone from somewhere else had.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Dr. Pellos had said that it was 'archeotech' from a long dead space age civilization, which wasn't actually all that rare after all. They'd found over eighty crashed satellites that were clearly not human in origin all over the moons of Jupiter, a few on Mars, and presumably more resided in the core of the gas giants themselves. Only one was in working condition, just the Cradle. Not a satellite, but what they believed to be a terraforming device, though instead of planets it 'terraformed reality'.

Like... Well, drama aside, like a god. God, with the capital 'G', science fiction beyond science fiction.

It was incredible, simply placing your hand within the artifact and 'thinking' something loud enough would make it happen. Granting wishes, but it always took something from somewhere else, that much was clear. The monkey's paw of a sort. It generated energy like nobodies business, an infinite amount of it by all measurements – if such a thing were possible – with no measurable reaction to induce that kind of energy output. Only, it refused to be harnessed in any other way than what it was intended to. The metal it was made of was unknown, so hard it couldn't be studied, a perpetual engine of sorts.

Dr. Pellos had wished for his wife back, she had passed from thyroid cancer some seven years prior to the date of his request, and naturally – it took from him. She'd appeared, and was still alive to this day, one life for another. He'd had a moment to consider what he'd done, and he hadn't regretted his choice. One last embrace for an old man hugging his late wife, inexplicably appearing in her early 20s, passing away with a smile a moment later. That had been heartwarming, but the others...

Jerome had wished for a billion US Dollars. He was an incredibly intelligent man, had even drawn up a two hundred page legal contract after claims the item was a 'monkey's paw' and tried to solve for all possible ways it could go wrong. To cut a long story short, he'd exploded. Every single dollar had been compressed beyond natural density in his stomach and turned him into a fragmentation grenade of 'Benjamins'. And a lot of blood, as one might imagine. It had taken Connor weeks to get the gunk out of the gantry circling the Cradle, and all the fine machinery besides. He'd found a tooth just last week, lodged in the compartment of one of the fluorescent lights.

Cho had kept it simple, 'so simple it couldn't possibly go wrong!'. That's what she'd said. She was a medical biologist of some sort, and expert on the human brain or... Something. It had been her first day, and Connor hadn't been anything more than 'the mechanic' back then. But he'd seen it. She 'wished' to be happy. Screaming in manic laughter until she was bound to suffocate, and before she could be sedated she'd asked the alien technology to reverse the gift. So it did, a little too much. It had 'taken it all away'. A person with no concept of happiness, what she'd wished for next was unclear. But she'd put the gun it had given her in her mouth and pulled the trigger before anyone could react.

After that, Kevin had killed himself with no need for the machine, said he couldn't take it anymore.

Once one made contact with the Cradle, it wouldn't allow any to leave its proximity. If you tried, it'd bring you back, wholly unharmed and healthy. Unfortunately that wasn't known until Connor and several of the original team members had already come close enough to be ensnared. About 1.13 meters, and it caught you – tried and tested by any means of transportation – and they always came back.

Thankfully, his family was completely safe and the facility with its elevator was at least fifty meters from the house. Trial and error had trapped a lot of people like this. It's range was exactly 1.2 kilometers to a quintillionth of a millimeter, if that even mattered, but the precise nature of this 'rule' was immeasurably impressive. That is forgetting the fact that it could bend space time and move biological organisms with no time delay or loss of function, but he wasn't a damned scientist. Go beyond that distance, and you'd end up right in front of the machine in the blink of an eye.

“So...?” Ah, the president was still on the line, chirping through his headset.

Connor didn't know how to give a status update, he was in well over his head. Not everyone had died to the machine of course, the plague was it's own separate entity – obeying no known virological science, and some of them had just disappeared seemingly at random. Current science indicated that the plague had come from the Cradle, though nobody knew how or why, a result of something or other.

Connor refused to accept that, considering the Cradle couldn't cure it. The only thing it couldn't do.

Even those who studied the device remotely had vanished from thin air at random. One of them had been found on Mars and... That's where it got a little weird. When one said 'he was found on the surface of Mars', another might assume 'his body was found on the surface of Mars'. But that wasn't the case.

He was found on Mars, completely healthy, naked, and capable of breathing in the atmosphere. What happened after that was unclear, Connor was not privy to that information. He'd been working for DHARPA after his stint in the Army, but there was still a ladder for that sort of intelligence. He could assume, though. The horrifying implication was that there were just random people floating in space somewhere, unable to die. That man in particular, Tyler was his name, was completely at home in any environment they'd placed him in before he'd disappeared again. As if everything was an earth-like atmosphere. Even cold vacuum.

“I'm not really sure where to begin, but...” Connor cleared his throat, shaking his head to ward away the thoughts. “It's still operational, as before it grows in capacity every day, yet there are no signs of changes in mass, density, or even the number of photons detected inside the casing. It radiates absolutely no energy, and takes none either. It remains self sustaining, and as always, it gives me whatever I want...”

He looked at the list and almost wanted to have a laugh at it if not for the absurdity of everything. 'Necessary' tests – he'd had some fun with it. There were a list of notes he'd taken, and perhaps proof that he was the least appropriate person to give this sort of power.

* 100 Trillion Chinese Yuan

* A chicken with diabetes

* Bring Steven Hawking back to life

* Kill Steven Hawking

* Bring Steven Hawking back to life, I thought it wrong that time

* Kill the real Stephen Hawking, as in the physicist – not the guy from Tacoma

* Bring the real Stephen Hawking back to life again

* Make me immortal and invincible

* Remove my immortality and invincibility

* Make me immortal and invincible but allow me to die when I want to – wow, this really works!

* Steal Chairman Xiao Heiyun's underwear (the pair he is wearing currently)

* Increase the mass of Earth's moon by a tenth of a percent

* Increase the mass of the moon by... (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 percent)

* Decrease the density...

* Ensure that all Hispanic males on planet Earth remain at the peak of their physical health in the realm of typical human biology until the age of 84, at which point they revert to their natural state

* Make all milk on planet Earth taste like orange soda

* Reverse that last request, sweet Jesus that is not a good combination of texture and taste

* Give all ungulates the ability to fly without otherwise altering their biological composition

* Undo that, uh....

* There is now an incredible number of dead pigs in eastern Kansas, ensure that these are all returned to life and perfect health and remove all memory regarding the incident from everyone who witnessed the event in any capacity, except for myself

* Give the North American Red Fox the ability to speak fluent Japanese, but only in a stereotypical caricature of a Yakuza gangster accent

It seemed random, the list went on for hundreds of various iterations and tests, some minor and some major. Connor could create or make anything he wanted, giving him the power of a literal god. He'd always been Christian, so it was important he still considered Yahweh himself 'the' God, in his mind. Faith was important, though he'd never insult the faith of the other religions either, he wasn't centric on that one faith.

Big and small things to test the limits of the machine, but there weren't any. Limits, that is. Granted, it had been quite a stir when old men belonging only to one racial subset had woken up young and fit again. It hadn't simply improved their health, it had dialed back their biological clock without taking anything in return, making them something akin to superhuman, they couldn't even be injured. Obviously, there were implications that any problem could be solved, but this would be explained later...

They'd tried to assassinate Connor. Quite literally, he had too much power. The United States Government had taken his family hostage and held him at gunpoint before putting two big ones in the back of his skull. .50 BMG anti-tank munitions, and it hadn't left so much as a scratch. See, the thing about someone who'd served in a particular branch of the government's military that had 'never existed' was that he'd seen that coming the first time the machine had worked for him and him alone.

They were immortal too, his family. And he held the button that could bend reality to his will at a moments notice from anywhere within those 1.2 kilometers, reaching out to a seemingly unlimited distance beyond. Everything worked. The only thing he couldn't do was leave the space without bringing the cradle with him, that rule was inviolable, and he couldn't remove the plague from existence for whatever reason. If you got it, you died, even if you were 'invincible' via the machine, they'd tried that too. Ethics had taken a sort of back-step in lieu of saving the human race, and that was a shame. But it was their reality.

Naturally, the people responsible for that debacle were removed from the picture. And from life. Fifteen senators, the vice president, and some odd two hundred or so people involved. Other things had happened, and they'd been fixed as well. Because they knew that if they didn't make changes in their approach, the machine at Connor's fingertips would. Anything was possible.

He was their new god, and very few people knew he existed, he'd like to keep it that way.

“I still...” Connor sighed, he wasn't a genius nor was he a scientist, and had adamantly refused to wish for knowledge. It's not like they could force him to do anything, in any case. Let someone else have it. Increasing his IQ for example might turn him into someone else. Make his brain work differently, rewiring his sense of self. And he didn't want to be someone else, he didn't want to kill Astrid's husband. And the machine didn't answer questions, it simply gave someone what they wanted. He'd refused a lot more requests besides that one, one being to disarm every military force on planet earth save the United States and her allies. Some had been... Worse. He'd killed many people but he'd done that because he'd thought he was doing the right thing at the time, and he wasn't their personal boogeyman anymore. He was in control. “I still think the real measure is intent.”

“How do you figure?” The president asked.

“Think about it. The Chinese Yuan was to destabilize their economy, which could result in millions of deaths if they hit a mass recession. Unrest, rioting, looting, the work of lifetimes gone up in smoke overnight. It was impure, so it took, and as you probably observed – Menge, who originally wished for it, suffered a great deal in the process. Compared to Pellos. Dr. Pellos wished for his wife to return, which was a pure wish in and of itself but it either violated some rule or had a component of selfishness in it that the machine didn't approve of. It thinks and therefore knows, I believe it is alive and is sentient beyond anything we as biological creatures could understand. Isn't that why you call it The Cradle of God? Maybe it just wanted to see what we'd do with it? A cosmic test of sorts.”

“Spirituality has no place in science, captain. That can't be it, but there is some merit in the machine being an AI and having a conscience.” That was uh... Huron? He was some big shot in the field of quantum physics. Something like four PhD's and many magazine covers in between. The man behind modern stellar travel, coming out of nowhere after the US had been outstripped technologically by so many nations on the earth, to revolutionize their whole system practically by himself. Though it had actually been the Korean's who'd made all of his math work, they were the best when it came to that sort of thing these days, the theoretical. And the Brazilians had built most everything else, alongside the Indians there were no better engineers in the world. Only Nigeria could compete with their aerospace composites. “You're talking about magic, and if you quote Arthur C. Clarke again, I'll...”

“In any case...” The president interjected. They were still afraid of provoking Connor, and that much was quite evident in the amount of face they gave him in their daily conversations. “You've made yourself immortal and invincible, which is inherently selfish. You could say that it was out of necessity, right? But when you extended that to your family, it became just as selfish as Dr. Pellos' wish. What about the underwear fiasco on the diet floor? The Chairman was injured, intelligence suggests that certain parts of his genitalia had to be reconstructed surgically. Thankfully he is none the wiser and is still pointing fingers at the Japanese. That hurt someone, did it not? An international incident came of it, and a war might still.”

“I don't know why you're all so spooked.” Connor sighed. “Maybe it's because I don't actually want these things? I don't know. It's not genetic, we know that, or else the clone we made would have survived his wish – and he very much did not. Either I'm special, and the only one this machine will ever use, or...” Her pursed his lips, unsure where he was even going with this. Where was he going with this, actually? He wasn't a scientist... He was over his head.

“Or what?” Huron asked. This was rather ridiculous, these weekly reports they'd forced him to sit in on, but there was nothing more to be done – he certainly wasn't about to observe the device himself lest he be sent into the sun or something worse. It had been four years now, with Connor asking the machine and being given whatever he wished for, with no apparent side effects. They watched as the man facing the viewing screen gave them eyes into the facility, raising his hand toward the camera. A minuscule flame flickering on the tip of his finger. Nothing bigger than what a handheld disposable lighter might produce.

“Okay...? Did you ask the machine to help you light your cigars? I'm not following.” The president commented, but Huron was quite interested in this. 'Everything' was hyperbole. Connor had, for example, asked for wings strong enough to fly – and the machine didn't give them to him. It couldn't completely alter human biology, or more likely – it refused to do certain things beyond a template. At least not by request, obviously something had happened with their suit-less astronaut that went against this supposed rule. Lending support to the theory that it could think for itself. But it could influence everything else, as long as it was somewhat realistic in terms of their current understanding of physics, even change the mass of a planet.

But it couldn't, as another example, create life, they'd tried that to develop new crops.

“You didn't ask for that...” Huron concluded, leaning forward and staring in apt wonder at the scene in front of him. “Did you?”

“No I did not.” Connor shook his head slowly. “I've been able to do this since the Cairo uprising, back when my unit was trapped in the sepulcher in Giza.”

Huron considered his words for a moment, but didn't throw them out offhand. There were people who genuinely believed in wild theories of the Annunaki or attributed the works of some ancient humans to 'aliens'.

And while few knew this, Huron did. The place that they'd found this artifact was a field containing well over a billion mummified corpses below the ice. The entire planet containing a subsurface layer of untold amounts of dead, and they definitely weren't 'human'. Carbon based, but too genetically divergent despite being of a similar hominid species based on what data they could gather. Six fingered, and all signs indicate a massive war was what had killed them, most still frozen in combat with one another.

“Some irony in that, I think.” Huron chuckled. “If I recall correctly, you were thought dead after a statue of Ra, the Egyptian god of the sun, collapsed on you – no?”

Connor nodded. “I was, and the significance is not lost on me. I was pinned underneath that statue for fifteen days without food, water, or any light except that which came to my finger. My body was crushed, my legs were gone. I eventually sawed myself in half with a knife and crawled away. Passed out, and they found me whole again. Nobody asked why I wasn't wearing pants, and I left it out of my report for obvious reasons – it is strange, but worthless beyond a small spark.”

“That might've been important information, captain. If not back then, then certainly now.” The president said that, but he chuckled. The world had truly gone tits up on them. FUBAR, they called it, and he'd never felt the acronym more appropriate than right now. Right before his very eyes, Captain Connor Wolf was using 'magic'. “If I remember correctly, your service record does have some rather astonishing feats even before that. Shot twice in the head, in a raid in Afghanistan. Later buried. Found alive some fifty miles from the site in the middle of the desert.”

“Mmm.” Connor nodded. “I suppose that's why they call me Zombie, sir. A bit shocking nobody thought it pertinent to ask how, I never hid anything from the boys asking question.”

“Can't believe I'm saying this, but God save us.” The president sighed, feeling all his forty eight years of age and then some. The last six of his predecessors had died in a span of less than three years cumulatively, and now here he was – but for those actually in control, the machine was all that mattered. And Connor was somewhat of an old friend, it hadn't been him who'd tried to have the man killed. Even thinking about that was just absurd. If it had been him, he'd have dropped Connor in a vat of molten lead and let him live the rest of his immortal existence unable to communicate with the machine. He needed to speak and think the words, presumably, but if he couldn't talk...? The idea of sending a hit squad to kill the commander of one of the best hit squads they'd ever had was rather... Idiotic? Some irony in it, in any case, raw stupidity – the type that ruled the world these days. “It's time. We want you to try and terraform Mars.”

This was the first 'stretch goal' of sorts. All wishes, until now, took energy from somewhere – it didn't just create things out of the blue even for him. Connor of all people had been the one to remind them of that. What if, hypothetically, he went beyond the predetermined limit of his energy capacity and ended up destroying Earth to create life on Mars. Hence, they'd been going little by little, measuring the effects of the machine when it was used on other planets. Thus far, the biggest change they'd performed was to turn the Mars satellite Deimos into a solid block of gold. More gold their entire planet had, while observing said element on earth.

That was of course after they'd done the same with less useful elements, and again – nothing had happened. No displacement in taking the mineral from their own world or the obvious issue with exchanging mass, potentially creating the largest bomb ever imagined by man. Except for a very confused team of Dutch pilots in the region who watched it happen, gone before they could properly capture the phenomena, nothing had come of it. No negatives that they could tell. It wasn't that they'd confirmed the machine wouldn't take, it might've simply done so from another planet.

For all they knew, somewhere in the universe an alien had just watched a mountain of gold disappear before their very eyes and return some minutes later. The machine had no delay whatsoever, well beyond the accepted limit of light speed.

Changing things on Earth was not the plan in the short term, not anything crazy. The United States had no interest in Mars officially, with this machine they planned to push everyone else in that direction and finally make use of the Cradle to end all possible threats on their home planet. Since Connor wouldn't end those threats directly, that was fine, they would fix climate change and use the Cradle to build a new global society. As it stood, they had a good twenty years or so at best before they were back in the middle ages. There was practically no oil left on the planet, and that was but one resource they couldn't find in space.

“Wake up.” The president said, a deep, droning, and vaguely familiar voice. And despite that, Tyr was sure he'd heard it before. Static, more nails, tapping. Monotone, androgynous. Who? “Can you hear me?”

“...What?” Connor turned back to the monitor, it flared with static for a moment but nothing seemed to be out of order. Power fluctuations were pretty normal around the machine, but mostly just in the facility, they just didn't know why exactly. The insulation, possibly, there were never any outages so it was never a real problem.

“I said it worked.” The president replied happily, and Tyr Who? had the presence of mind to notice that it was ten minutes later than it should be. Had been. Would be...? Never was.

“I did it?” Connor asked. “Really?”

“It would appear that it might have had an effect after all.” Huron observed. Connor's vitals were reading just fine but there was a bizarre tick visible on the corner of one of his lips. “Go ahead and get some rest, or watch the news. You might have just singlehandedly saved the human race, Captain Wolf. Of course, you couldn't have done it without me. You're welcome.”

Huron.

8 21 18 15 14

3 and 2

5 and 7

Wake up to reality.