Flies of amber shadow danced in the air above like a tiny aerial ballroom of thousands. Their buzz filled my ears and their vigor made me grin. They were going to lay their eggs on the mulberry below.

Alone they descended, each of them, to create tiny pyramids. After the last egg, then to lapse and become fertilizer for the plant as the wings above sent a breeze to roll the dead from the leaves.

They were aphnic; perfect, mine. I called the little silkworms 'my children of the dawn'. Their webs were as light and as playful and innocent as newborn spiderlings. Their swarm was a tapestry as they cocooned their vegetable prey, as a colony of gypsy moth larvae might, if left to Nature's plan. My plans for the aphnic would prevail.

"If God watched the moth as she danced in the air near the flame..." I mused. "If only the moth knew of God's plans. If only."

I could hear it, in the silence of their wings: "God's plan? Your plan? I know this."

I had created them from the building blocks of life. To them, I was the source of their world. My new world, in a home of glass, a microcosmos. All I had to do was open a window and let them go forth and multiply and be fruitful. I would be their god, I would show my wrath, my mercy and my glory. My new world.

Pacing back and forth and waiting for the third birth of my children. Why should aphnic be born three times? Would anyone disregard that such rebirth was truly a work of calculated perfection? The aphnic were born from an egg, a cocoon and last from their atavistic arachnid stage. It was the final development when they matured their wings and grew their eggs.

Mutations of the sensitive eggs, at the third stage, manifested. The 'spider' would develop a gland that it calcified a variety of toxins, diseases and parasites I introduced to the second-stage aphnic. When it could fly and lay eggs the membrane would become infused with the calcified gland's memory and harden with the changes to the fertile cells.

This gland, harvested from living aphnic, prevents their development of any immunities and ensures their offspring will have to start again with collecting samples from their environment. The genius of my creation is that this gland can be made into a drug that is compatible with the human fetus during the first trimester. Any toxins, diseases or parasites that the aphnic can resist would imbue our unborn with their immunities.

Such a child would be grown in a controlled incubation. Such a child would pass on their genetic improvements most effectively to an exact copy. The clones would be perfect, my creation. What then, would be the purpose of a woman carrying a child? What then, would be the purpose of the body of woman? The new children would be physically perfect, without the aging and emotional weakness of sexuality. They would be gifted with the longevity and consistency of a perfect human, absent of gender.

The drug, as a serum, a pale pink liquid, was meant not for the metamorphosis of an unmutated adult. I knew it would alter my cells anyway. The mutagen had properties of a virus, reencoding DNA rapidly and to shape the host into something else. There was no way for my body to reject it, unless it killed me during my second puberty.

Holding the serum to the light I felt dizzy. I had never expected to be able to craft such an elixir, let alone benefit from its divine power. It should not come possible, yet stem cells and my own ancient designs had met and made the impossible into the possible. So often I had seen such a thing happen. The immorality of Science and the greed of its priesthood often made nightmares a reality.

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The fruit on the vine was ripe. I held my moment in emptiness. I stared at the syrupy bit still coating the inside of the test tube. The taste was like almonds and the smell of grass and perhaps a hint of sweetness, an aftertaste. Sickly sweet and subtle.

I held it up to the light, noting the tiny bubbles that had formed around the edge. I felt a triumph before the first pains. I felt as though I were a god and I had just created myself. I had become a god, finally. I could control my world for the rest of my existence, which would be extensive.

I had always believed in myth and was rewarded for my faith. If there were no other gods, it no longer mattered. I had become a god. My life would not end.

I had taken one little sip, I had drank deeply, I had known the substance. My mouth burned and my body began to cramp and twist. I lunged and fell and gagged. The world I would know, as a god, swam like drunken dizziness. Indeed, I had drank too deeply of it. I had touched divinity and become a thrashing and churning body of agony, a mind of swirling madness. Spider's venom.

When I opened my eyes, I could only remember a hundred hours of suffering. I blinked and tried to stand up. I was weak with thirst and crawled to the sink. There I drank again and became full, the liquid balancing within me and the excess not waiting for a controlled release. A god in a puddle of piss answered the shrill cry of a phone. Was I a god?

We had some kind of conversation. I wasn't there for most of it. My head was buzzing and felt like it was filled with spiderwebs.

"What Science calls a blasphemy!" I heard myself reiterate my rephrase of my colleague's complaints.

"What Science calls a mutagen, Dr. Magdalene." My colleague sounded worried.

"I call a breakfast smoothie." I chuckled weirdly and hung up.

Most of the changes began slowly while I vomited and slept. I noticed that my appetite and strength came back quickly. At first I just felt the vitality and the vigor of it. Then my senses began to grow more acute. This more of a torment than it might sound, for my mind could not process and contain such an amount of observations. Not at first, so I went a little mad. A cruel hunger overtook me, predatory and spiteful. Everything looked like food, even the mulberry.

I thought about the Silk Road, the Crusades and the time of the Secret. None of it bothered me anymore. I had become the new Silk Road and Secret. There were no more Crusaders. When I realized I would not become some kind of giant spider battling warriors in Medieval armor in my burning living room, as I had dreamed, I could only laugh.

The great change of my body did come, though. My rebirth. I gasped, pulling what I had spun from my face. I stared at the sores and rot of my limbs. The cold memory told me I had deliberately spun a cocoon around myself. It was snowing outside.

I discovered that forty-six days had gone by and I had hibernated somehow, growing and changing. Actually, it was more like fermenting and dissolving. I looked like I was back from the dead. The strangeness overwhelmed me and some part of my mind intent of survival, some animal part, took over.

I was sitting there, twitching. I stared at the pyramid of eggs. They were large and translucent. I saw my actual children in them, twisted parodies of aphnic and human. I could not remember the Secret. Then I looked at my work. Aphnic were made from the building blocks of life. I had made them.

I looked at the red cross on the white shield. A Crusader ready to destroy and ravage the unholy. One god or another. I realized there would always be a need for fire.

Some part of me was not me, controlling me, being me. I was not me, I was this thing. No longer human, no longer myself, I could not be a god. I could not be human anymore.

I must, as I have some thought left, recall what work a god had. I must recall where a human reached out and touched God, and God recoiled in horror. I must say all there is left to say about what I have done to this world, what I have created.

There is still fire. Fire comes for me and for all of it. The world I made must burn and in-the-end the unhatched must be destroyed. It is the only way to regain my humanity.