The Omega Project
I have made a few changes near the end.
"You are a terrible person!" She yells.
"I'm aware of that." I replied simply.
"What event, what thing mentally damaged you so badly that you're forced to violently push people away!" She yells again.
"Do you really want to know what happened, really? You seem like a nice, normal young woman. I don't want to scare you." I say, sadly what comes out of her mouth next is the last thing I want to hear.
"Yes. Open up for once." she says.
Ryan Hawthorn. I'm stuck with her until she either leaves my base, or dies. Great.
"Sorry, I'm not willing to show the reason I'm such a jerk, at least not to you." I snap.
I'm not one for sentimentality.
"You are the WORST person I've ever met. No, you aren't even human. God, I cannot believe I'm stuck with you. You are inhuman." She says.
"You're right, I'm not human, at least not completely." I say.
She turns, and goes back into her room.
As I said before, I'm not completely human. I'm human, and pretty much every other living thing thrown in there. Energex called me the Omega Project. I still don't get the title.
Energex, they found me dying on the side of a road after being hit by a car. I was 16, and had no clue what they were. They said they would make me new, whole again. They said they would give a new life.
3 years later, I was released. I wasn't human any more. I was a test subject. They wanted to know if a human could survive having their DNA laced with the patterns of thousands of living things. I lived.
Sadly, that life had a number of side effects. I shed my skin once a month. I can see in the dark. I can echo locate. I have heightened senses and endurance. I no longer need to eat because I can use photosynthesis. I can breathe Oxygen, Carbon, and water. I don't age. That's why I hate almost everybody.
They made me to run their planet. Demeter, my pride and joy, I raise the giant forest now located on it's surface. I run the Oxygen harvesters. It exists in the first place to produce oxygen for the Humans, who have become so polluted they can't survive without Oxygen tanks.
I'd been on surface for 45 years when Ryan came along. I trained her. They were worried that my solitude would make unstable. I was already unstable. She is nothing but a pain. Now my only peace is that which I find in my greenhouse.
As I walk through the trees I can feel a slight breeze. Rather than go the my green house, I head to the nearest oxygen harvester. It's working at a higher level than the last time I check it. I check the others, and they are too.
I sprint back to the base. Ryan is sitting in the Rec area playing chess. She looks up as I run by her.
"What are you doing?" She asks, following me into the Communication Room.
"I'm contacting the Company. We have wind." I say to her, frantically pressing buttons as the slow process starts.
The atmosphere here is around 85% carbon, 10% oxygen. The thing is, less than one percent of the oxygen is actually breathable, and what is breathable is too high in the atmosphere for Ryan to breathe. A carbon-nitrogen-hydrogen-bismuth mixture is what takes up most of the lower atmosphere due to the way they are bonded. H2C1N4BI7 is the chemical thingy. I don't really know too much about it. The trees (and I) have been filtering the air for a while, and finally the elements have separated enough that the oxygen is in the lower atmosphere for Ryan to breathe. the trees and I don't need that much oxygen because we can filter it from water. My trees are special. The air mixture tends to react badly with the air.
"What does that mean?" She asks.
"REALLY! Are you that clueless? It means we can go from solar to wind and I can start planting more trees. I'm contacting the Company to have wind turbines sent here." I snap at her.
"Geez, sorry. I was just asking." She says.
I connect, and explain the situation to the engineer people on the other side. They're happy, I'm happy, Ryan is clueless. This is going to be a long day.
After I'm done briefing the Company on the status of the planet, I head to the main control room. It's a large room that is used for controlling the base. I shut down the Oxygen tank infeed, and open all the vents. Walking out into the main hall, I see Ryan freaking out at the noise.
"RYAN! What are you doing? Quit freaking and come eat."
"What are we having?" She asks.
"Food." I say.
"Yum." She says.
After eating the mush they give us, I stand and walk over to her.
"Come with me." I say.
"Why? Where are we going?" She asks.
"You are going to show me how to operate a harvester." I say.
"You know how to do that, why do I need to show you?" She says.
"Because you need to know this, I am making sure you know how." I say.
"Oh, you trained me, I obviously know how."
I shake my head and start walking towards the now open Airlock. She follows me.
When we get back to the base she starts looking at me expectantly.
"What?" I ask. It's kinda freaking me out, the look on her face.
"We have time don't we?" She says in reply.
"Fine, to keep you from asking me again and again, I'll tell you my story.
"I was born and raised in the Capitol. My parents didn't have much money, but we were happy. They died of the great plague when I was 12. I started living on the streets at that point. When I was 16 I was holding up a corner store when the owner shot me. I ran, and was hit by a car that was owned by Energex. They found me. They implanted my DNA with thousands of plants and animals, and sent me here after training me. I don't know how they did it, only why. That's it. That's why I'm not human. I can do a thousand different things that only animals should be able to do."
I know it's only 9:00 am, but I'm more tired than I have been in years. I go to my greenhouse.
The mixture of oxygen carbon and nitrates in the air always calms me down. Thousands of almost black flowers with white "stars" hang from the roof in vines. I call them night blooms because they look like the night sky. I took five years and thousands of different flowers to create them. That's why I like them.
I water and feed them, and crack open the vents to give them some fresh air. I sit here for hours relaxing.
