Apology at the grave

I was the one who killed your mother. The ‘promotion’ was just an excuse, ‘taking care of our future’ was just an excuse, ‘duty’ was just an excuse, they were all no more than excuses, all to serve my selfish wants for glory. I was vain, foolish, for thinking I needed to be the one to succeed in developing that virus, to be the first, the greatest. I was mad with ambition, naïve with arrogance, obsessed with immortality.

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I think she knew how dangerous my work was. True, while that fear could have been credited to the secretive nature of my career in the military, I think what shook her core was what the research did to my character. I had made a mistress of my work, infidel with the destructive power it could bring. Day and night I spent in the lab at the base, perfecting the artificial creature of my obsession. Six years I spent studying its form, its ways, molding it to become the monster it is today.

I made your mother move to the Settlement. Haha, I still remember it now. We spent the first night together in our new house dancing to our wedding song; too tired from the plane ride and unpacking the furniture to go out and celebrate, we instead had a romantic dinner of frozen foods, with static-ridden love songs playing in the background from that cheap dollar-store radio. She spent the entire night congratulating me, telling me how proud she was of me, how excited she was to begin a new chapter of our lives together, all to hide her fear of the future.

From the first day I could tell she was unhappy; after all, she was the only one living on the Settlement who was not delusional with the possibilities my work could bring. “Eternal life!” they had said. “Imagine the lives it could save!” they proclaimed. Fools, they might as well have believed in hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, or the fear of long words. You see, it was not that your mother hated the living; it was that she understood the purpose of death, appreciating its power as much as she did life’s. At the social gatherings, when all everyone could talk about was my research, they made an outcast of your mother, a fish out of water in a land of foolish human beings, married to a coward too afraid of sharing her fate to stand up for her.

Sometimes, I question why she loves me so… a pathetic man feverently in search of the respect of those around me, yet blind to the opinions of those who matter the most.

The purpose of my virus was to keep life going against death. Moving through body fluid, the virus would work its way up the spinal cord into the brain, producing electrical charges from its metabolism and essentially restarting the dead organ. Yet, no matter how I approached its schematics, the virus could only restart the brain stem, the area of basic life functions, but not the cerebrum, the area of the brain responsible for the person nature, character, and memories. In essence, I could only revive people’s bodies, but not their soul, and it was this puzzle that turned me into a worse monster than the virus itself.

But everything changed when I found out your mother was pregnant with you. I was becoming a father! It was then I realized that as I made a mistress of my work, I had made a child of my creation. No longer did I care about what others thought, about the power and glory; all that was on my mind was the well being of you and your mother. I took days, sometimes weeks, off of work to take care of her. It was during these days that I was reminded of my vows as a husband to take care of his wife, and it was during these days that our love was rekindled.

Yet life always catches up to us doesn’t it?

The virus evolved. Being an artificial creation, I did not think it possible; as I grew from the exposure to your mother’s love, it grew from exposure to mine. At its conception, I regrettably neglected its possible potency for its ability to bring life, an incorrigible mistake. Even then, the bigger surprise to me was not my creation outsmarting me, but that no one had thought of it before. Were they too, obsessed with defying death, suppressed their better judgment? Had my work become that of a God’s in their eyes?

I believe this was why the military gave me the promotion in the first place; unlike those living on the Settlement, they could see the virus as both a savior and a god of war. Countries, destroyed inside out by their own people, a new class of bioweaponry. Because our country was surrounded by nations twice as large, the government needed a weapon to “ensure national defense,” a lie to take the virus by force.

Since the Settlement was a community funded by the military for its employees, everyone was aware of the government’s true motives. So when the government officials arrived to acquire my life’s work, the ensuing scuffle between the two factions led to the virus’ accidental release. I am not sure how it happened, for I was at home with your mother; I had thought that if they had come to take it away, they were cleansing me of my past as a failure of a scientist and a failure of a man.
Despite all the precautions I laid out, all the effort I exerted to stay one step ahead of the virus, I could not save those in the Settlement and, most of all, I could not save your mother.

I did my to care for your mother, all the while working day and night to find the cure. Feeding her, clothing her, bathing her, hoping to both atone for my sins and save the woman I loved. But in the end, it was you who kept her alive. Because I had spent so much time around the virus, my immune system was able to keep up with the virus’ constant evolution, an advantage I passed onto you; therefore, because she was pregnant with you, your immunity kept her alive. You, the manifestation of our love together, protected her from the destruction I had caused.

She wanted to die, I could see it in her eyes. The pain was excruciating, her body contorted with suffering, destroying her once beautiful countenance. I wanted to grant her wish, to kill her out of mercy, but I was much too weak. When all else had failed, when everyone was dead, she was the only one I had left.

Haha, I’m sorry my dear, I guess we were both pretty terrible parents huh? While I destroyed the world in which you were to grow up in, your mother could not overcome her suffering to fight for your life…

I cannot hope to ask for forgiveness

I’m sorry… so so sorry…

Rest in peace.