Chapter 1
The green world isn't dying, it's dead. Verdant pastures fizzled beneath the heat of an industrial sun. Lush forests shrank away from the metallic teeth of blade and saw. Opal oceans swelled and became sick on the drink of modernization. This all happened in the past. Before any who now walked the earth had taken a breath. For generations, a child's first breath filled their gasping lungs with the mixed toxins of their ancestor's sins.
What green remained on the earth was preserved only as a memory. An obituary to the wild that once was. To the mind that rises in the dawn and passes away by evening, the wild appears to still have substance, to still be real. Its landscapes stretch beyond the horizon and the contented soul sighs internally. "This will shrink in my lifetime. But even then it still goes far." Complacent, and aloof, he deludes himself with fantasies of a better future. Never realizing that the present he lives in is the nightmare of ages past.
Worse than the complacent are the driven. Those that cling to the vestiges of green and plant their banners on the last living hills. Grief has destroyed their understanding and robbed them of vision and enlightenment. With both hands and with the full vitality of their hearts they fight for a world that is already gone. Daily they sing at the funeral of the green world, only they do not wear black as in mourning, but clothe themselves in the colors of the sky, lost totally in fantasy. Whereas the complacent are traitors both to their race and the world, the protectors are traitors only to that which they strive to conserve. The former deserve scorn, the ladder death. For only in that ultimate end will they awaken to the reality that they have given their souls over to the guardianship of Hades. The green world is dead, its gates are made of bones, it's sentinels are relics.
So thought Dr. Robotnik as he stood atop his terrace and looked down on a valley filled with metal. His base stretched the entire breadth of the mountain range and his refuse pile of spoiled parts filled the valley from the lowest depth to nearly halfway up the mountain. It was a testament to his singular industry and indominatible will. By his hands alone, perhaps an entire generation of technological development and waste had been achieved.
His legacy and impact had already eclipsed that of any scientist. By the unfeeling hand of evolutionary destiny, the champion of competitive selection had finally been decided. The trophy had not been awarded to the bear for his claws and speed, nor the lion for his ferocity and power, it had skipped the wolf and his pack, and passed over the shark and its razor teeth. After a millennia long contest, the ivory crown was finally bestowed upon man, but not for his thumb, or his reason as so many before had figured. It was to his mind, the brain, the ultimate weapon, the strongest tool, the only one capable of ordering the entropy of the universe and bringing control to a void that had so long mocked the very concept.
At the height of this victory, Dr. Robotnick stood alone. Though the multitudes would cringe at the presentation, only a fool could deny that he stood as the vicar of his race. In his mind rested the cumulative scientific knowledge of all humanity combined with the great breadth of innovation that he had made himself. So far did he surpass, usual genius, Dr. Roboktink was not treated as the scientist of old, as a freak, meant to be consulted one moment and then hidden from the next, funded one day, and then abandoned the next. He was outright feared and despised. The gravity of his superiority weighed on the proud and made them shun him.
Dr. Robotnik did not mind. Community had saved humanity once, in ages long forgotten it had fueled humanity's first endeavor to distinguish itself among the species. Those days were long over. Genius, pure, unfiltered, demoralized, uncaring genius was the currency of power now. The rest of humanity did not know yet, there were signs all around them, but most of his race were slow and utterly distracted with toys and gadgets. It made no difference, unlike the great evolutionary steps of the past, this next one would not require the combined effort of the species. In the past, humanity was led along, unconscious to the guiding hand of selection. Now they were in the driver seat. Humanity would go where they wish, evolve how they wish. Selection had died a long time ago. When humanity first learned how to grow more crops than they needed to survive. Struggle and competition faded from natural circumstances. Humanity was so accustomed to these school masters that they afflicted them on themselves. Wars were fought to create struggle, to force competition. Scarcity became a god, worshiped for its ability to force evolution and progress.
Over the centuries, a few misguided fools arose who questioned the validity of such means. They wondered why the human world could not create a lasting peace. Competition would die, struggle would die, but wasn't peace and prosperity a worthy cause for such losses? The human response was clear. War was the answer, war at a scale never seen or ever dreamed. For the first time the race was united in a common struggle and a common competition, but something strange happened. There was no victor. The final attempt at human fabricated evolutionary conditions was a complete failure.
The struggle and suffering were real, but the competition had changed. Machines fought the wars now, technology, not valor of strength determined the winners. In the end, the smartest, the unfeeling geniuses provided the means in which entire cities could be devastated in an instant. For those who had the eyes to see, the game had changed. Some saw machinery and weapons as the next evolutionary arms race, but they were shortsighted and foolish. The true race was that of the human intellect. The mind, fully evolved, fully endowed with the promise of human potential, is the greatest power in the universe. As the holder of the greatest mind, that made Dr. Robotnik the universe's son, the child of entropy, the order of chaos, the great builder and mastermind, the chieftain, rightful king and emperor of all life on earth.
He had the power in his mind to take hold of evolution's reigns and change its course. With his singular effort and will, he could direct humanity's course towards a perpetual future of unending growth and prosperity. Under his guidance the summit of their glory would have no end. The reach of their empire would extend past the stars, through the bubble of the universe, its fingers would extend to the reaches of different dimensions, into the multiverse, into all. In the end, Robotnik would find the end, or at the least fill every corner of possible being with his own image, an imdonimatible testament to his legacy and the necessity of his existence. In a universe with such random life, he would force his life to matter, and not in some metatheoretical way, but on a cosmological scale, he would be.
All of these thoughts brought him back to the green world. Just beyond the borders of his base, he could see a spot of green. Beyond his mountains he knew there was unconquered, unspoiled land that stretched out for miles and miles. To the conservationists, this land was sacred and needed to be protected. The animals who lived there deserved life just as much as Robotink. Yet they were not alive. They lived in land who had died long ago, and they were simply the echoes of another world. Robotink was alive, truly alive because his thoughts were bent towards the future. Those that remained in the past were stagnant. If they preferred to be stationary, Robotink would be pleased to transfer them into the state of perpetual motionless; death.
The green world rested on the borders of his base, just as it ever rested on the borders of his thought. Dr. Robotnik was never short on ambition, but he was ever short on energy. To fuel the engine of his industry, he demanded swarths of power, a demand that far exceeded the usual outflow. In the past he had terraformed entire mountain sides into oil oceans where he could zap the environment of what fuel it could give him. But he always eventually ran out of energy.
What Dr. Robotink required was not a few thousand leagues of natural earth to dry up, he needed the entire earth. His fellow humans would resist him at first, but in the end it would be easy to take control of their lands and transform their cities into Eggtopias. The citizens would live in luxury, as his machines drank the earth of its resources. Resistance would slowly crumble as many realized that the complete mechanical takeover of their world is only the natural conclusion of centuries of industrialization. The conservationts would fight the hardest, but they lacked power. Dr. Robotnik would ignore their signs and their feeble attempts to change him using non violent means.
With relative ease, he could control nearly sixty percent of the planet. Yet that still would not be enough. At scale, Dr. Robotnik needed the entire planet in order to fuel his intentions. What no one believed, even his few human allies, was that at a large enough scale, Dr. Robotnik believed he could shift his energy dependence. If he was in control of one hundred percent of the energy outflow, then with his management he could reduce the human collective footprint. Such a reduction could salvage the damage done to the ozone and give the earth an extension on its eventual destruction.
Yet the cost would be the complete ruin of the green world and therein lay Dr. Robotinks greatest obstacle. While he stood at the summit of the random and uncaring generation of selective traits, another stood at the mountain peek of seemingly ethereal power. Though the green world was dead, it's champion was very much alive. Against vast armies, robots that towered over cities, bases that could destroy entire planets, and wave after wave of the full brunt of Robotnik's genius, he conquered. In stark contrast to the gray, dreary, metal coated world that was Robotnik's, he lived in a world of color, vibrant, lush. While Robotnik was pressed so hard by the weight of his burden that all cheer and good humor had passed out of him, and anxiety had eaten away at his physical health until his body failed, the other had no cares at all, no anxieties weighed him down and it was the great vigor and ability of body that made him special. Robotnik's life was a prison, encased within bars of expectation he had made himself, the other knew nothing but freedom and fun.
Dr. Robotnik pondered the deep things of the universe and the ultimate fate of life. The other wondered when his next adventure would be and got restless if he had to stand still for ten seconds. Robotnik ruled alone, lived alone, and suffered alone. The other was always surrounded by friends, each more willing than the last to throw themselves before their hero, willing to sacrifice their all to him.
This hero, this champion of the dead green world, this wall against progress, this rebel of the empire, this thorn in Robotink's flesh, his name, and his smirk was always present in the back of Dr. Robotnik's mind. At the end of the doctor's every plan and scheme, at the end of his every nightmare, defiant in the face of his armies stood, Sonic the Hedgehog.