[COMPLETED]
[WATTYS 2022 WINNER]
James Quinn can't die. Actually... that's not true. He's died many times - somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 - only to be reborn as himself to live his life over again.
For millennia, he's had to endure this c...
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July 11, 2235
Seamus Tanaka peered out of the 4 by 8 inch window of the steel plated door. It was a twisted joke he'd had with himself for years: And how is the Earth doing this morning? Still dead? Oh well, I'll try back tomorrow...
Omnipresent clouds of radioactive aerosol and soot blocked the sun, stole its heat, and perverted its light, tinting the world copper. The landscape, once the luscious and green campus grounds of FermiLab, was gray and flat, but for the charred nubs of two small buildings in the fore and a forest in the back. Still, it was the closest thing to natural light he'd ever experienced and something about it drew him to ground level and this tiny vantage.
From within his head, there was a TING. But he wasn't ready to go back.
Then there was a voice. "Dr Tanaka? You are needed in Observation."
He sighed. "Can it wait?" The voice had been of one of the younger tech's. If they were going to drag him back down because James slipped on a banana peel, he might lose it.
"I'm sorry, sir. We have a problem that needs your attention."
"Seamus?" interrupted the voice of his wife, Amara. "It's serious. You need to come see."
Seamus frowned. Amara wouldn't panic or hyperbolize. "Okay," he said. "I'll be right there."
"Take the elevator, not the stairs, hon." Amara added.
Seamus smiled and stepped past the staircase and into the elevator. He preferred climbing the stairs; feeling the blood pumping in his legs and the strain of his muscles; acting out an ancient evolutionary drive to train himself for the elements, even if the elements themselves had perished long ago. But Amara was right. A forty minute climb was a five minute elevator ride and this was urgent – supposedly...
As the lights of the elevator shaft flew past, Seamus thought back. It had been nearly ten months since they'd begun Project Savior. In that time, they'd analyzed just over 240 universes with the help of their sub-quantum processors. The AI would flag significant moments in James' lives to be reviewed by low level technicians who would pare it down for further review by the directors. Of course, the only part of his lives that mattered was what came after his death. But studying events within his lifetimes could potentially offer clues toward the nature of man's downfall. Admittedly, Seamus also relished the vicarious wonders of the sun, the rain, and field after field of live vegetation. There is no heaven but the past...
The elevator passed the Agriculture and General Population levels, then came to a stop at Engineering. Seamus walked out of the elevator and down a hallway. He turned left down another, then right and into the 5,000 square meter Observation Room.
In the corner of the room to his right were a gallery of chairs in rows, three by ten, filled with science officers and bureaucratic representatives in heated and chaotic debate. On his left was the control terminal for God's Eye – not my choice of title. In front of him, on a raised platform taking up the majority of the space, was The Arena.
