When I started work on the “mirrored life” project, I didn’t expect the results to be so swift and changing to our entire species. As a young scientist working in genetic engineering, I had envisioned the perfect outcome for this breakthrough research and development into creating life from scratch. The project focused on synthetic cellular structures, mirroring that of our own genomes, and tweaking it slightly to produce a better result. It was like our team was, essentially, becoming God, creating life from our own engineered synthetics.

Synth-life is what the media dubbed it, and it pretty much stuck once it got around the world. Our first trial of creation wasn’t a success, it lacked cohesion and broke apart within days of growth in the lab. The second attempt was much better. We had the AI help us in creating a stronger protein sequence, giving the cells a greater resistance to mutation or degradation, it learned to adapt and countered any virus or bacterial infection we introduced to it. Everything looked promising, thus far, and we were ready for the ultimate test.

We produced four children, at the behest of most of the global scientific community, feeling that this was a dangerous and unwarranted experiment that could lead to major consequences for all of humanity. I thought they were just jealous of our progress, being the first to create a new life from our own genius, but as I reflect on it now, many years later, I think they were correct in calling us out on it. The children were perfect—too perfect. Not only could they out preform us, physically, but they had a mental capacity ten times greater than our own kind. They were a new breed of human, a synthetic human, an evolved generation that couldn’t be even classified as part of our own species.

The four learned to breed fast. Four became twelve, and from twelve came fifty, and so on and so on. The fact that could self-will their own growth from infant to adult in a matter of days was disturbing. Their multiplication was unprecedented. The Synth-lifers started to interbreed with other humans and the changes to their evolution became even more superior. Humans, the original species, was on the verge of extinction. The Synth-life out numbered us and continued to grow, taking over many jobs, including mine. I’ve been a scientist for over thirty years, and now, I’m deemed redundant.

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You would think being one of their original creators would have given me special privileges, especially for job security and financial benefits, but no—my position was terminated and taken over by an AI supercomputer that the Synth-lifers created. It would now run everything and oversee any scientific research. Instead of an actual lab, with physical equipment and resources, it virtually created it in multiple “Sandbox” environments within its own mainframe. That way, nothing was wasted, and there was no danger to anyone if the experiments got out of hand.

Perhaps that was something they learned from us, from our mistake in creating them. Had we not actually created them in real-time, with real genetics in a physical lab, that humanity would not be so devastated as it is now. Humans are almost gone. Synth-life has become the new owners of Earth and beyond. Yes, they took to space, and expanded outward. A dream that was more ours than theirs, originally. But, like any species, growing and evolving, they wanted to ensure survival and spread out across the galaxy.

I envy them. No, it’s more than that, I deeply hate and resent them. I’m one of the few original humans left alive. I have no where to go, no money, no home, nothing but the clothes on my back and my aging body to look after. I wish I knew then what I know now. A regret that I must live with till the end of my time. If anyone reads this last message of mine, human or synth, I hope they will not think less of me. What I, and my colleagues did, wasn’t done out of our stupid hubris, but for purely scientific reasons. We were curious. We wanted to discover and improve the lives of our kind, not replace and end it for another.

I am sorry for everything, and to all of my fellow human beings. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen the way it did. Life, it seems, is just too unpredictable. It can’t be controlled or contained. That’s the folly of any scientist thinking that it could be. I think God knew that to be true, and truly, the joke was on us for even trying to be one as well. If only the Synth-lifers were just as humble, but no, they are just as curious as we were. Now they want to recreate an entire planet, a synthetic world, to build star systems from scratch. Good luck to them on that, I say, at least I won’t be alive long to see it. But, oh, to see their faces as they get replaced by those new creations, now that would be worth watching. A life for a life, bittersweet justice, and an enjoyment that seems totally befitting for a human.