Never was there greater a fear than being alone. People are always searching for riches in money, material, experience, but many times we forget that none of it would mean a thing without the people closest at our side. If we lose those closest to us, we lose ourselves. One may gain riches, fame, and all assortments of splendor, but what did he or she give up? Nothing can be attained without loss. And loss is something Cain knows very well.

...

An opulent city. Levitating structures, towering buildings, and machines glowing a vibrant green and blue. Mechanical contraptions are constantly moving, projectors and screens fill the senses with advertisements: machines to clean, build, fix, even those with a mind, but no soul. Behind the shining tint and the mask of revolutionary invention, there is an empty air. This city is not like other places. It is far more advanced, to be sure, yet lacks the warm homeliness, the sounds of people passing to and fro, the aromas of perfumes, pastries, nature. Instead, the air is stagnant and cold, reeking of antiseptic, and soundless, save the faint humming of machinery. This place lacks joy, comfort, and a certain distinctive realness. It lacks humanity.

Within the tallest and grandest building, a figure is hard at work, melding, programming, hoping what is to come is worth all he has lost. Our protagonist, Cain. Every now and again straightening his unnaturally white lab coat, he completes his tasks in a dim laboratory lit by a sun that falls earlier every day. Through the light of this setting sun, there can be seen robotics separated into orderly piles, desks, tarps, a wall of transparent cabinets, and a woman sitting in a corner of the room. Her eyes are closed, she is not breathing, but she is not dead, nor is she alive. She was once real but is no more. The man never once turns her way as he builds off of a circuit board, a vacantly staring robot hovering and jittering beside him, as it pieces together some kind of propeller with needles for hands. The man passes a metallic desk, presses one of a set of glassy cabinets, and pulls out a flask filled with a gleaming blue liquid. He discerns a framed picture, harboring memories of the life before. There is the man Cain once was, yet unscarred with a shadow of dismal thought, and there are two other figures. The man falters, stares at it a moment, his eyes welling, then turns it over in shame and ensues his work, unable to keep his mind from wandering to that great day, that bitter reminder.

At first, his mind had been on other things: the change in the air, the forsaken coming fate, his role in this dismal future. They stood at the shoreline of a beach. They were the only ones there, and the spray, the breeze, and the silence gave way to unmatched tranquility. His wife pulled him closer. That girl splashed in the waves. His wife chased him in a spirited game of tag. The girl tickled him, and they tumbled, laughing, into the sand. They were close and free, then the future had to take hold. The serum had to be made. Either way, the life Cain knew would be stolen from him.

Cain sits the flask down. He trembles weakly, but a fervid resolution surges through his veins. He swipes a card, and a door slides open. The man walks to the other side and gazes upon his handiwork. A pale, white dome is the room he now inhabits. Simple, clean, silent. At the room’s center, there is a vast and vibrant cylinder the height of a tree. Only one left, his thoughts ring out. His last project would come to fruition. It needed to.