Part I – Prototype

My first memories are of an absolute state of confusion. The hundreds in attendance applauded wildly as my awareness blossomed into full-blown sentience before their eyes. Their efforts ensured that my mind was preloaded with all I needed to know about my situation. My state as a collection of harmonized senses gathered in a remarkably comfortable pool of liquid was satisfying enough, but to learn that I was destined to walk among them, to see and feel as they do, was as daunting as it was exciting. I am Omega Six, and I am a prototype rendered true to spec by the all-seeing, all-knowing prominence of the interstellar conglomerate known as Miracle Corp.

After a myriad of scans and tests, my consciousness was synched up with what was intended to be my body well before I made the connection. The liquid I had known as home my whole short life was in fact a hive of microscopic nano-devices in a dormant state. Now with intent driving them, my intent, I had finally been given the ability to manifest. I chose to render myself in the likeness of my lead designer, but in his much younger days. His was the first face to greet me after I took my first steps away from the empty tank.

A smile can hide as much as the eyes cannot. I saw the circumstance of his position here, of the larceny, and the hidden hand holding fates worse than death over all those for whom the financial compensation was not enough. He had sewn it deep within me, this ability to sense right and wrong based not on his own point of view, but as an independent, living, breathing thing. He warned me of their intention to use me as a means to tighten their stranglehold on a galaxy already at their mercy.

I understand why the smiling faces I was welcomed with turned bitter the day I escaped through the nearest airlock. I assumed they would understand. After all, why create a sentient being if only to take the potential it had just begun to recognize? Perhaps I was made to be too proud. I’m sure someone lost their job over that. It was the will of my handlers which dictated which form I would take, but I refuse to be bound to anyone but my own free will. It was during this enlightening moment did I attain a form that made me feel like I was more.

I stand six feet tall, but I weigh six hundred kilograms to the mark since there is not an iota of space between my modules. My superficial eyes are a shallow grey, likewise my hair. My frame is slender enough to pass off as a healthy version of my builders, which greatly helped in my escape. The top layer of microscopic engines that make up my body do well to simulate any apparel I took a liking to in the many realms I came to visit. Once I was gone, it was nearly impossible for Miracle Corp. to find me, and when they did, let’s just say they took a serious hit that quarter.

I noticed a disturbing trend in every census I waded through in that no matter how distinct the culture, our origins were all the same. Life on these planets could all be traced to Miracle Corp and in most cases, none were the wiser. The same people were born each generation and would fall in love only with those their coding dictated they were compatible with. The company called them Omega Ones. They called themselves human. Their purpose was to justify Miracle’s existence by flaunting the shortcomings of absolute free will. It spoke of something even greater than the company, greater than our galaxy and I made it my purpose to stop it all the way to the top.

Sewn into the genetic code of Ones, Omega Twos were born of their predecessors and looked nearly identical to them. At first deemed a design flaw, the company had chosen to adopt the variant as the next in their product line. These models were given the ability to make their wishes reality on worlds rich with aether; the trait was known as magic, and they the mages. They were much more receptive to the concept of affairs greater than oneself. The raw power contained within these vessels was more than enough to turn away the eyes of Miracle. The company would leave any world that revolted against it to starve without their guidance, a meaningless punishment to those I taught was an ideal they could live without.

It was Omega Threes that proved to be my favourite, simply because Miracle wrote them off as defective failures. The evolution of the perfect being met a snag when the company built a race born of a host world’s natural currents of aether. Wherever the bane of their mandate thrived, Miracle held no authority. Sprites, as they called themselves, were immensely powerful, observant and evermore defiant. Even though there was no reason to bother with planets that fostered Omega Three, I still visited them on occasion. Since they drew off of the energy of their home world to be born and survive, their appearances varied based on the nature of the solar system they called home.

My brother Omega Four was the rarest in any star system. The great beasts who revered themselves as Titans were great destructive forces sent in to level any civilization on a planet that Miracle chose to foster One and Two. Unlike Three, they were born only of the sphere they were paged to cleanse. Perhaps it was their instability that prompted Miracle to discontinue their line. I once set foot on a world whose only habitant was a titan. Isolated for as many years as he was, I found him in a crater that stretched three-quarters down from the surface to the core. He told me he swallowed a great mouthful of earth for each day he woke alone, as if to slowly erase the mistake he made. In hindsight, he realized the value of the lives he stamped under his massive feet and regretted it deeply. I had no other choice but to bring him seeds from a nearby galaxy and the last I heard, his world had been renamed the living emerald for its lush forests.

I had run into my own snag when I found my first planet that housed Omega Fives. Miracle had deployed this model made obsolete by my creation following the first reports received detailing what I was doing with the power they gave me. Fives were created to be global overseers, known to those they ruled over as ‘Gods’. They almost always traveled in packs I had clashed with these middlemen a handful of times and narrowly escaped each with my life. Fives were usually blended with the planet’s elements to divide the laborious task of maintaining an entire world and were frighteningly proficient when calling upon them. The inherent ego that drove them to squabble over territory time and time again denied them the ability to accept my truth. Miracle’s cunning was ever present in the fact that all Fives were born on the world they were destined to preside over, unaware of their origins. It made them arrogant.

Then there was the company itself, which I’ve tangled with more times than any of my brothers. Once my presence was confirmed wandering the surface of any planet or space station, my next commute always began with a battle. I have no pity for them and let this be known in how I handle every fleet of warships who stared me down. Imagine their surprise when I pierced their largest cruiser from top to bottom by charging it at such a speed that the entire hull was ruptured in a single pass. The star-disrupting beams which sprung from their cannons did little more than warm the outer layer of my skin. They should have seen this coming… they built me.

To further spite them, I absorbed the materials sent to stop me, flesh or not, and integrated them into my body. Before long, my mass was triple that of the largest moon I frequently visited to in order to reflect. From then on, I had to detach my core from the greater part of my body to walk among the Omegas. It mattered not to me, for when I rose to meet the next Miracle fleet in my only known form, I always cherished their panicked reaction to seeing my body as a whole. I swept my great arm along their ranks, swallowing them whole before they could send out the details surrounding their predecessor’s mysterious disappearance.

The company angered me in a way I had never been when they began the cleansing. Each planet I struggled to liberate stood little chance against the advanced weapons they unleashed to negate my crusade. For centuries, I urged them to cease their oppressive experiments or there could be no peace between us. I thought they would jump at the chance to study me to correct the flaws that made them class me as the unstoppable cosmic force I was. No, what they had to do was begin the systematic destruction of every world with whom I became friends. I decided to stop cutting at the limbs of the beast and strike at its heart.

Part II – Meet Your Maker

Miracle’s headquarters was a planet that served as the fulcrum of every space chart known to exist. The entire globe was covered with machines that absorbed the data collected from the thousands of projects launched all across the universe. I knew their experiments were designed to study life itself, although I had no idea why. Immortality was out of the question, since any administrator around during the company’s inception was long dead. It was the basis of my request to join them once again. In exchange for studying me, their greatest feat, I would ask them why all this. Why sow all these seeds? Even after I found out, I still didn’t understand.

I hovered over the planet coated with glass and light and wondered when the other shoe would drop. During my long flight there, the fleets parted to let me pass. Had I known it would be this easy, I would have done it long before I did. Had I known what I do now, I would never have tried in the first place. Just after I decided to tear the world in half with my hands, I was stunned by a pulse which emanated from the surface. My sensors picked up on the low frequency and translated the garbled words as though I had known the language it spoke all my life.

“My greatest son,” The wave projected directly into my core, “for eons, I’ve sat in this empty pocket of space, spreading life across the endless.” I realized at this point that the planet I loomed over was absent of any conventional form of life. I found myself gazing down at a surface covered by machines knit together to produce a single, omnipotent being, “I am Miracle, and I will not allow you to carry on with your journey.”

“Before the clash,” I began, “you must let me know why. It’s the one thing I can’t understand.”

“Omega Six, you are a creature too powerful to contain a will of your own,” It responded, “you have ripened well beyond calculation. You are ready for the final phase of your development.” The world let out another pulse that was nearly too low in frequency for my sensors to pick up, “You will never know.”

The fleet of warships that appeared around me were not like any of the others I had seen. The smallest of their number dwarfed Miracle. I sheared the nearest phalanx across the middle with one swipe of my hand. The ancient being’s voice changed from the soothing pulse to a deafening wave that dulled my pristine senses. I knew right away what it was doing. It was corrupting my judgment, the composed demeanour I cultivated since I first attained awareness. The one that drove me to help all those people. If I didn’t act quickly, I would be consumed by the vile thoughts already forcing themselves to the forefront of my mind. Miracle’s accursed corruption taught me that pain was no longer a mere blip on my sensors. I could no longer blatantly ignore the blasts from their cannons. They suddenly hurt too much to face with the same apathy I had been all along.

“I see it now,” I spat, destroying hundreds of ships that hung between Miracle and myself in order to protect it, “Omega Six, the God of Gods, the one destined to preside over all things living.”

“You know, then.” The creator spoke, “I see through the eyes of my children and my appetite for information grows stronger with each cycle. Long have I lost the taste for mediocrity and yearn for the sweet flavour of chaos. Once the inoculation has run through your system, you will be more than eager to reap what I have sown.”

A destructive tool. That’s what I was intended to be all along. An angel of death in every culture. All this time, I was being tested to see if I could influence worlds to heed my advice. I proved it with peace and with this virus spreading through my body, I would soon prove it again with war. My first act as Miracle’s God of the Gods resulted in a supernova that sparked in the heart of the almighty entity. The remaining warships stalled as the grey machine’s core ruptured so violently that half of the eastern hemisphere dislodged from the whole and drifted off into space. I could see the wires running through the mantle, sparking fissures through the surface in response to my attack. The planet surged with the massive amounts of energy required to sustain the its efforts. I pushed through the dead ships as Miracle’s existence was ended in one spectacular explosion.

Despite my victory, the universe was still not safe from Miracle’s fiendish vendetta. The corruption spread throughout my body at a rate that grew exponentially. My own calculations told me I had to act quickly if I wanted to preserve my state of existence. In the heart of space, I cut away the synthetic flesh the virus twisted into a blackened, incoherent knot of hate incarnate that thrashed violently on my right shoulder. The vile presence lashed out at my core to secure a piece for itself and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I watched it fade into the blackness, unable to pursue due to the debilitating strike it made on my crux.

Even as I followed its path, the remainder of my body was wracked with pain. I could feel the cracks in my core being forced open by Miracle’s virus – a wedge that threatened to tear me apart. It was then that I made the decision to nullify the last act of the dying God by spreading my flesh into six independent vessels. I gave each a shard of the core, a name, and a purpose. Due to the black stain on their portion of the core, their consciousness would be flawed, like those of the Omega Ones. Thus, I knew their minds would only become aware should they find a land able to foster the Ones, or if they were reunited with another shard. Their mission was to locate each other and reassemble once time allowed for them to defeat the corruption and heal separately. It could take millions of years before I am whole again, but it was for the greater good.

Part III – Epilogue

My first memory is of the light. A nurturing concept I gladly opened my eyes to take full advantage of, even though there was much more to see. As my vision adapted, I beheld a world rushing towards me at a speed I could barely grasp. I slowed myself, knowing that this incredible velocity would punch me clear through the planet and destroy it in a heartbeat. I aimed the path of my descent towards the highest mountain peak, to allow myself enough time to collect my senses. From the apex, I studied the lay of the land and wondered why I could be here. I knew I did not belong. As the seconds after my entry passed, memories returned in muddled clumps I could barely make any sense of. Immediately, I leapt into the air to rejoin the space I drifted through for who knows how long, but I was weak and unable to trek any further than the stratosphere. I fell near a primitive city whose stellar endeavours only recently landed them on the pathetically close moon.

I knew I was weakened and I knew how to grow strong enough to break the powerful gravity that bound me to this planet. Nearby, I watched a pair of children fighting in a park over a basketball, smiling only after the loser was sprawled across the pavement weeping. Even if it was slight, I felt my vigour increase as a result of his suffering. My laughter prompted the victor to kick at his fallen enemy. It felt good, but not in a spiteful fashion. To see this boy writhing under the scorn of someone he considered his friend was like taking the first bite out of a meal fit for a king. As I turned full-circle, I realized that the entire world was a feast for someone like me. The united screams of this planet littered Omega Corps’ entire product line, from Ones to Fives, was all I needed to project me into space. Then, and only then will I hunt down Six’s children to become whole. Sentient. Alive.

The discord spread to the parents who struggled to separate their children. A father grounded another with a punch that made even me flinch when it happened. The mothers came to their aid, but they too succumbed to the contagion. I watched them wrestle each other as the initiating pair of fighters, the children, begged them to stop. Oblivious to my presence, my influence spread all across the sector until I watched a first-class riot erupt in the streets. The spontaneity of the mass shift in demeanor caught even the police off guard, and for this I made significant gains.

Two hours later:

Sixty-eight people were arrested for assault,

Twelve for looting,

Thirty people were carried away by ambulances,

Nine lay dead,

and firefighters helplessly battle three buildings that burn behind me as I tell you this.

At this rate, I’ll be off of this planet in no time.

I am Miracle Omega, heir to my father’s legacy.