A CAGED CRANIUM

It’s Monday at the Copenhagen Research Center for Advanced Human Augmentation and things are about to get strange. I have seen this because APEX has seen it. If any life form apart from humans finds this message, be warned and pay attention. The following account starts last week when I woke up in a cubical room no bigger than a hotel bedroom or at least I felt I did.

Time, we’re running out of time. There’s a throbbing feeling in my head. Time-fluid, never ending, harsh and mysterious. My eyes open to a hazy world, welcoming me with a sharp headache. As I lift my head from the wet floor, I regain control of the place and there appears to be some lettering at the wall ahead. There’s the crescendo of voices bouncing off near me but no people.

My hands are restrained and once I become aware of this, I jump high to no effect. Then some clarity falls to my sight and things become clearer.

“HEAT DEATH. PERCENTAGE OF POSSIBILITY 87. ETA 5..” was etched on the walls in a strange squiggly format much akin to that of a child’s scribbling in black ink. The etch ended at the number 5.

The world is clearer now. The trees outside are growing. The birds chirping, diplomats having peace talks and a whole lot of turbulent entropy passing out in the universe. I see this because APEX sees this. And APEX is being viewed by those strained voices standing outside in milk white lab coats and perturbed face expressions. Something’s wrong and my brain can feel it.

I was a university grad student by the name of Mitchell Caruthers who allowed scientists to use my brain as a testing ground for a new mind accelerated drug called ‘Ubercran’. But the developers underestimated the drug’s true effects. My eyes became a window to unforeseen events and expected outcomes, owing to a faster brain. I could complete a person’s sentence even before they finished talking, outtake an entire MENSA team of a hundred participants, learn multiple languages in a single night and even correct analytical errors in computer calculations even before they occurred.

But things got quite a lot out of hand. I began seeing the future. My mind could process it but my emotions couldn’t accept it. The team prescribed a dosage of painkillers to counter the effects but it somehow brought me closer to the brink of death.

The only way to keep a healthy threshold was by creating a secondary memory in my brain that could withstand such data. Thus a self sentient alter ego APEX was born. APEX has been feeding me things that would horrify most and despite my best intentions to suppress what it tried to say, sometimes it would take over send messages. The team seems terrified of one such message on my wall ahead.

“How are you feeling?”, Elizabeth Anne shot up near the glass exterior. She’s perhaps the only one in the team who knows that there’s still a human being inside this flesh.

“Light headed and disappointed”, I reply. “I suppose everyone knows what’s going on?”

“The heat death part is just one thing to be afraid of. Universally, it’ll take a long time. But you should take a look behind you.”

She pressed a button and removed my restraints. I quickly peered behind me and gulped in anxiety, “WORLD WAR III. WEST CONTRA EAST” was written in blood on the wall behind me that I was sitting on. Naturally, I looked at my arm and I saw stitches. APEX got out and now he was sending a foreseeable expectation.

“Does anyone know about this?”, I ask Elizabeth.

“No one yet has been informed but ever since you pulled that Ebola outbreak prediction, there’s been a swarming group of reporters outside ever since.”

It was a dumb question to ask her. Outside a team of reporters had already begun circulating the news. I could sense this because APEX could sense this.

Roger Stannard was the team lead who was even more concerned. “We need to amp up the Ubercran. The writings are all cryptic. APEX has to brought back and we need to know exactly what’s going to happen in the coming days”, he argued.

He pressed the same button Elizabeth pressed and I was restrained again in a docile state. Two tubes injected the drug straight to my cranium and then it happened. I crossed threshold. At exactly 9:56 A.M. GMT, APEX took over. I could see it all. The counter next to cubicle I was in showed a 100 percent sufficiency index. For nearly twenty minutes, I wasn’t just the smartest man in the world, but in the whole universe.

There were visions that shocked whatever was left of my conscience. Fifty nine nations going to war. A new terror front contra taking over the world in three months. Global pandemonium over toxic chemical releases, floods, mega tsunamis, entire island nations being wiped out in seconds. And the universe, a bleak portion of dark expanse too would collapse not in billions of years but right now. I saw this because APEX saw this.

I feared for my sanity but more for the team analysts who were reading my thoughts outside and were even more frightened.

When the millionth second mark crossed, APEX had full control over. Time became an immaterial thing. Disasters occurred in seconds, national armies proclaimed war and civil unrest took over the world and all that covered the world was darkness.

The facility must have crashed because of such reasons because by the time the visions came to an end and I regained my normal sights, everything was gone. My cubicle was in shambles, fire and noise gripped the entire facility and everyone was dead. APEX could sense that there were no other survivors left on the planet.

Mitchell was dead. APEX was the one who survived. I inspected the scene and found Elizabeth’s corpse with a gun in her hand. Surely suicide. As the mental visor demolished before me where her body lay, it revealed a final writing on the wall-

“WE SAW IT COMING. WE COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS.”