Man's history began with fire.
He wasn't even really breathing as he shot in a direction he could only describe as forward. His heart was pumping, and he could feel air passing into and out of his lungs, but his body was numbed by his own anticipation. The console to his right told him all he needed. 500 kilometers to his destination. In just a moment, he'd be welcomed as the youngest member on the most advanced space station ever built by human beings.
He could practically see it, despite the lack of windows in his little pod. Vulcan Space Station, mankind's operating base for all future space exploration, populated by people of many different ages, races, and mentalities.
It was a dream. From the moment he stepped on that station, he would be on the front lines of discovery, working alongside Earth's best and brightest.
All that we are began with that simple moment where we took nature's fury and contained it.
His suit was bulky and strange, forcing him to take long, ponderous strides. In order to make space for the pneumatic thrusters and the tubing to his plasma torch, The arms (elbows in particular) stuck out to the sides more than he was used to. The equipment on the back gave him a hunch, weighed down by a large gas tank and a massive portable reactor. It felt more like a walking tank than standard safety gear, especially when he saw how huge and lumpy his shadow was.
He took a heavy step towards the bay doors as the prep crew beckoned him towards the edge of the station, he and two others dressed in similar suits. The crew buckled themselves and their equipment down before locking in the room.
Saul saw the doors shudder for just a brief moment before they launched open, taking with them the entirety of the air within the exit bay. The crew stayed put, but the engineering suits were yanked out with little ceremony.
Saul watched as the station in his peripheral vision pulled away, leaving him in the void beyond it. Impossibly far, in all directions, was empty space. The ultimate void of the heavens, easily swallowing him whole in its vast grasp. Nothing and no one, forever in the distance.
A concerned question from the chief brought Saul back to reality. He turned back to find his fellow engineers already opening a panel and warming up their thermal cutters.
Of course. He had a job to do.
From that moment, we learned and grew. No mystery was too great. No goal too distant.
He saw the tension in the room before the source. Hushed tones filled the air as the crowd in the center of the cafeteria split, revealing an Omnic in a lab coat being helped towards the medical bay by security. In the opposite direction, an armed guard dragged out a crewman, who was loudly complaining.
As Saul sat down with his meal, he picked up bits of conversation. The human bumped into the Omnic, which immediately led to an argument. Words turned to violence and the Omnic was struck down, leaving a dent in his cranial carriage. He would need a great deal of work.
It's nothing, Saul had thought. Just a little fight. It happens.
With this ambition came hubris. Not long after we mastered our earth, we turned to the stars.
The news was massive when it hit the station. A miniature asteroid had drifted close enough to Earth for Vulkan to drift over and trap it in a gravity cage, keeping it suspended while cutting it open. Somehow, there was a biological growth inside that had been flourishing without oxygen or water, instead feeding off of a gas on the inside of the asteroid that was capable of regenerating itself without additional energy. It was a monumental discovery, one that flew in the face of energy scarcity and defied the first law of thermodynamics.
It was astounding. Infinite energy was within grasp. No longer would fuel and energy dictate the limits of technology.
The future had come.
It was too far. We stretched beyond our natural bounds, a defiance beyond our meager existence.
Saul was taking cover as the shouting got worse. No one had thrown anything yet, but being seen wouldn't do him any favors. Just around the corner of the wall he was pressed against, he could hear venom being spat from both sides. No one was offering a ceasefire.
Saul was mentally debating whether he should walk in there and try to convince someone to stop fighting when he heard that fatal sound. The harsh, sudden sound of breaking glass.
Saul blinked, then peeked around the corner, curiosity and concern overcoming him.
Green. So much green. On the floor, the walls, the people. Bodies began running, but the green was spreading. A cloying, festering mass, almost like moss or rotten fungus, crawled rapidly along every available surface.
He had heard about this. Z-33. Classified bioweapon.
He ran. He ran to the only place he knew, and that was the engineering wing.
Our mastery became our doom. Our hubris was our fall.
He was sweating as he wandered down the shaft. His suit, his coffin of titanium alloy, scraped along the walls. Light greeted him, taunting him as he lumbered his way towards him.
Behind him was the end. Blackened walls and charred bodies, reaching towards him in the search for salvation. Salvation granted to them by grasping flames. There was no more green on the station, for it was slain in his crusade. In his hands were not tools, but implements that granted him the power to destroy the evil gripping his former home.
It wasn't enough. The green would come again, swallowing up all that he had done. His great effort would only last him long enough to grasp the power of the heavens, taken form in the center of Vulcan. A reactor with enough radioactive emission to destroy everything.
He could see it now, towering above him. It was glowing gently, waiting to be set free.
Failsafes disengaged. Coolant blocked. Redundant systems destroyed. The stationed shuddered, as if it could feel the end coming.
He watched as the light grew, threatening to envelope him. In its grasp, the station would fall, evaporating in the atmosphere as all biological life onboard was incinerated.
He dropped his holy torch, letting it hang from its gas tube as he fell to his knees. He felt the shuddering of the station, knowing it was just beginning to break orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. If all was lost, Vulcan's creators wanted the wreckage to be salvaged.
He was to disappear with the station, wreathed in flames and released from his torment.
It would be beautiful.
We end as we begin.
With fire.