Vengeance Lost

by Mark Ayers

It didn’t matter who it was with.  
She had cheated and hurt him just like the rest of the world, and they would all pay the same.  His day of retribution would come; of that he was sure.  His name had been known around the globe and he was determined that it would be known much longer than that.  Truly he was righteous, the meek would be his avengers.  Starting with a pair of lowly beetles, he had done it, making genetic changes, he had achieved wondrous mutations, colors, spines, and large, almost a foot tall for the males, and very voracious.  He worked feverishly, knowing that soon his vengeance would be satisfied soon.  Every fifteen minutes, he would walk and then climb and now almost crawl to his booth. His creation, his discovery, a machine to manipulate time had been ignored and laughed at when during its presentation his subject a rat had been electrocuted from a static buildup.  How many times he wondered.  How many trips to his booth had he made in his struggle, as he glanced at the dusty mirror across his lab, fifty years?  At least for him, the outside world?  His calculations put it at between 8000 to 10000 years. “Must finish” he thought. They must… they will meet a fitting fate.  He snapped his attention back to the cages, almost large enough, more than lethal enough; they were his babies, his beauties, his creation.  His vengeance.
They had laughed at his project, and pulled his funding.  Over and over he had cursed them in his successes.  He would have the last and final victory.  One last breeding cycle, one last trip to the booth, and he would be ready.  Beautiful glistening the creatures moved… a successful mating, an important point, the first few mutations had resulted in creatures so altered they could not successfully reproduce.  He felt himself clever, even resourceful. They would pay.  He giggled to himself as he thought of it.  The great plan, the scheme, it had been a thing of beauty the years of design and preparation and planning.  The trusts to keep his lab up and running for 10,000 years, at least to them.  She would be dead, but it mattered not.  The world that created her would pay.  The outside field had slowed his aging and the booth would protect him when the outside field was turned off and the effects of time caught up to his creatures and ultimately the world.   He entered the booth for the last time.  Pushing the green button, the door slid closed.  He had already checked the field voltage and gravity field.  His watch alarm was the next thing he was conscious of.  Three seconds, a short wait for the passing of mankind, fitting he thought just enough time for their doom.  But no, he would make them wait longer.  They would get 8 minutes, the time it takes light from the sun to reach the earth… A good time indeed, he thought.  Even as he sent out his message of doom for the world, He knew that he wanted to see it for himself; the destruction had to be complete.  Funny though, no feelings at all came as he opened the cages after cutting off the outside field, he was protected inside the booth and watched as his creatures were released into the world.  And finally he was alone.  Sudden waves of pain, and hatred for his love, and the world that had betrayed him, screamed in his mind.  He knew he must see.  Knowing he would have mere seconds to survive, as time would catch up, he leapt from the booth and enthralled, nearly jumped through the door… 
 He collapsed. Even as time caught up, he became conscious of his mistake.  Not that he was dying, that time was killing him, but rather what a horrible fool he was.  That while he’d been using time to grow and change his creatures, time had also been growing and changing humans.  Life racing from him, he gazed blankly… as people, now easily 15 feet tall, stomped and squished his creations into oblivion.  
Vengeance lost.

​