Disclaimer: I don't own Shadow… Would be creepy if I did…
Mistakes and Creations
Everyone makes mistakes. It's part of life, that's what my creator, my father always told me. But when I screw up, I usually do so on the most spectacular level… Twice I've nearly destroyed everything, yes twice, maybe even more; my memory's such a mess. So many lives were wasted on my account, both figuratively and literally… I can't help but wonder, was I worth it? I was after all just a string of letters, letters that won't even spell my name before their lives flooded into me. I dread to think how many lifetimes were spent in my design, a cryptic code painted across the minds of so many people. My father was not the first, nor will he be the last. Since Watson, Krick and Franklyn discovered the structure of DNA I have, perhaps, been inevitable, just part of that insatiable human quest for knowledge. A piece of flotsam on the tide of human invention. In the past humans reached for the sky, then for the stars… now, with me they reach for life, to make themselves into creators. Where will they go now? Will they continue to try and perfect life, unwilling to learn the lessons my fragile being tries to teach? Will they finally engineer their own destruction?
Humans never know when to stop. Nothing is beyond them. I ask them to spend a day in my fragile mind… some would jump at the chance, lust after the power I contain… some, it is true, envy me. If I could, I would gladly switch places with them, but then, what would I be unleashing upon the world? Others, sadly the few, do not lust after my power… but most of those are afraid of me. Humans hunt what they do not understand. I of all created things should be easily understood. The blueprint of my existence is stored on their computers, intricate, to the very last letter. Even so there are elements they cannot understand, elements they cannot copy, things I don't know about myself… well there's a lot of that. It makes me angry that others know more about me than I know myself.
All things are created. Maybe in that respect I am not so very much alone. Although the circumstances of my creation were a little less crude than the usual manner, with nothing left to chance, I was created in much the same way as the other beings that share this blue jewel world with me. It could be argued that I too was forged out of love, if, of a different kind. One thing I have done is fuel a healthy debate. I gather it still raged around me as I slept away a lifetime… at least until all those who would defend me were wiped away into silence and ashes… 50 years is a long time to spend sleeping… may as well be an eternity. Those I love are mortal, even I can't push back the ravages of age, or hold time in my black fist for long enough for it to matter… They made me strong… but not strong enough.
Is it any small wonder I hate them? My creators turned their backs on me, disowned me. I, like Frankenstein's monster "the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion… to be kicked, and trampled on". I once thought of myself as Pinocchio, the puppet, now I know I am more like Doctor Frankenstein's creation. Fully formed and hopeful of mercy I knelt before my creators and they feared to look upon me. As I reached out to them, those who would become my masters, for warmth and comfort, they shrugged away. Only one was willing to take my frozen shape in his arms and pity that which he had made… but he's gone now. Ultimately, I and my younger brothers were his destruction. I like to believe he did what he did for the love of me… But… I know it was more fear… What can I do if even the one I once called father grew to fear that which he created?
I am so much like Frankenstein's monster… For so long I watched the people of Earth through a glass window, a thick divide, impassable on my own. Ever learning, ever curious… ever hopeful… Then when I finally had the chance to meet those who had occupied the first flights of my fanciful imagination they turned in fear… Perhaps it would not have been so if my own heart had not held so much hate. My most fundamental mistake and flaw.
Did they design me to be this way? Despising everything, angry and hurting all the time, or did they and my circumstances mould me that way, into this Machiavellian? Or is that just my fault? Did they engineer my fur to be black with streaks of blood, or was that just a happy coincidence. Crimson eyes are notorious for poor sight… was that simply another technique to inspire fear, to make me terrifying…
Why when there are so many unwanted lives already in this world was so much spent on creating me? Surely it would have been better to help those already in existence than create another… another virus on the Earth, another mouth to feed, another spark to burn the rainforests. There are so many unwanted lives… now I have become one of them myself… after everything so many went through to create me… I am simply a miserable, unwanted life. I hope my end holds more promise than that of Frankenstein and his monster… and will not be so lonely and so cold…
I am not the Ultimate Life, I am an accident, a plague upon humanity, in all its arrogant glory, a reminder of what happens when civilization goes too far. When creation goes wrong. I am what they made me to be, a weapon, a weapon with a mind that makes mistakes. Look at the sky, my legacy is painted there, another of those most spectacular of errors… I don't do anything small do I?
Am I wrong to blame myself for all this? Most people would say no. I don't believe I am the kind of creature deserving of mercy, or pity. Is that why humanity hunts me? Because I and my counterparts have done so much ill? Do they seek litigation for my sins? It seems it is right for them to seek revenge for the hurts they have suffered but not for me to do the same. Why are they so different? Who made them my judges? Why do they reserve these rights for themselves, without extending them to others? Perhaps because they are arrogant.
Am I wrong to say that of my creators? Should I simply bow before them accepting all they wish to deal out to me with passive submission? Serve them as a slave… I do not think I would be so heavily punished if I were to do their evil bidding, no matter what that entailed, than if I was to make one mistake on my own. But as I have said, my mistakes are never small.
I have tried so hard to make things right! To repair my sins-to repent… But nothing I ever do seems to be enough. I just make one mistake after another, and create bigger messes to repair. I try so hard! I just seem to end up getting myself into more and more mischief… I am so naïve, so easily led. In the past I would trust anyone… anyone with wise words and a smooth tongue… It was my undoing… that and my anger. Now I fear to trust anyone… lest I be manipulated again. Don't think I'm trying to blame my failings on others, I'm not… The faults are my own, I know that much…
Now I struggle to know what to do with myself. Where to go, who to be… Being myself obviously won't work. If you want to ask why, just look up. There's your answer, in pieces scattered across the heavens… The moon wasn't always like that was it? But because of me subsequent generations might think it was. That wasn't even my first mistake… I still remember their screams… In my nightmares… Yes, I do have nightmares… More than you might think…
Even I can't change the past. I try to think of a brighter future, but find it to be little more than a fanciful dream. I wonder what my next gargantuan screw up will be… But maybe the first mistake was my creation, and whose mistake was that?