Cain returns to the first floor, exits the building, the eyes of the robots inside following him. He and these machines both have something in common: they are void, soulless. He shivers, enters his car. It glides above dimly lit, empty streets. The darkness seems to befall sooner each day and the silence is thunderous, deafening.

It feels as though some invisible hand is reaching inside him, pulling up the regrets that he has forced down for so many years. He killed them. He killed them. The people of the city, his friend, and her.

Clara.

Cain sees a woman directly before him, gliding on nothing, glaring at him with a face of terror that had been thoroughly etched into his memory. He swerves the car. It slams into the windows of a building, glass splinters around him, then he hits the breaks and the car steadies.

He looks back.

He sees a traffic light hovering in the air. There is not a woman present, there are no people at all. The traffic light’s only purpose is to give some misty illusion of the contrary.

Cain laments bitterly, his voice heard only by empty walls. There is not a single solitary person left. He is a visionary, a guardian struggling for something that is out of his grasp. If only Clara were here, she could tell him everything is going to be okay, as she always did on the dark days when that terrible sickness was at its worst. If only she did not leave him alone. Perhaps then, things would be better. Perhaps, he would not have lost himself.

Cain opened a bright orange door, then stepped out of the hospital room and into a hallway. He walked toward an exit, the color drained out of him. There was a certain rage in his eye, a flash of anguish, but not defeat, never defeat. It would not happen; he would not let it.

A woman stomped down the hall toward him, fury surging through her as she clasped a sheet of paper in one hand and a folder of metal in another. It was Clara.

When the man saw her, something changed in his demeanor. A darkness shadowed his features, hidden by an almost petty fake grin. The man and the woman looked back at the orange door. It was closed. “You know, I wonder why you made me go to our clinic. Their knowledge is vastly limited, unlike my own.”

The woman held up the paper for Cain to see, briefly inarticulate with loathing, confusion, and something else that was too indistinct to be seen. “Why?” The man said nothing. “WHY?!”

On this paper, there was, surrounded by scribblings of equations and notes, an image of a vial with a liquid compound emanating a bright blue. This was the new life serum, the essence that would only take.

The man was briefly speechless. He found his voice, speaking with intentional dryness, masking the hurt, the reality of it. “Why. Why does anyone do anything? Progress. See, that is the true key. While we may all pass away, the effect of what we do lives on. There is a line that separates progress from the makers of progress; what I am doing is getting rid of that line, providing a sameness, and to make the world a better place.”

“They’re gone,” Clara said quietly, numbly, hardly able to process the man’s words. “You betrayed all of them. Is that making the world a better place?”

“I did not betray but simply altered what is shared. You know, we humans share fifty percent of our DNA with plants. Fifty percent of what we are, they are.” There was a certain carelessness in his voice, a bestial disregard for what his actions truly brought about.

Something broke inside Clara. “YOU’RE A MURDERER!” she shouted, rough brokenness within her tone. She furiously clawed at Cain with her nails. She got one good swipe at him before the man took a hold of her and held her to the ground. Some doctors began to approach. “Help!” the lady cried out, but they did not seem to hear and simply passed.

“They work for me. They all do,” Cain laughed. “And besides, no one would dare cross me. I’m the one giving them life and I can just as soon take it away.”

Clara’s face was filled with the same dreadful expression that still lingers in Cain’s memory. Her horror stemmed from familiarity, yet illustrated a cavernous distance as if she were looking upon a stranger, a monster, not the man she loved. Of course, love is a funny thing. Whether it comes loud and swiftly or quiet and slow, the wrong act can rob it of a person in a matter of moments.

Clara left Cain that day. She never came back, but eventually, he found her and took her away, just like all the others. All the others, who either lost themselves in willing action, fear, or force. For you see, Cain was wrong. They would cross him, and he made sure they would pay the price for it.

Nothing has been the same since she left. Cain even tried to replace her with a replica of steel and wire, but it was never quite real. Nothing could be the same as his Clara. If she just could have understood, then he could hold her one more time.

But she did not understand. No one did. This unwelcome thought turns his sentiments sour. It makes him more determined, carves out another hole in his heart. They’re wrong. You did what needed to be done. You did not kill but altered. And for everyone’s benefit.

He cannot get that look out of his mind’s eye. Those wide, tearing eyes, that mouth agape, that sickly color.

It’s 4:15. He has time.

Cain thinks of a station and the car’s radio begins to play a pre-recorded tune. (Only the uncivilized would use buttons when the machine could read their minds and satisfy them.) He tries to drown his worries in the rhythm, tries to picture the people, the life that once was. The woman on the radio sings an elegant tune. Cain imagines what her life was like, what her friends, her conversations were like. It had been so long since he had talked to another, whole human being. He forgets what it is like. Now, he can only carry everything within, as it boils and harrows, no escape from his mind. When the song is over, a man speaks on the radio. “My, wasn’t that just a lovely song by Miss Stella Altrone, and a lovely morning, too. Not too much traffic with our cars on the airways today, the sun is shining, the weather is at a nice seventy degrees. Make sure to get out there, folks, as we continue on to our next song.” A jazzy melody begins to play, but just as soon as it starts, it is cut off, and there is silence. A ringing sound rips through the speakers and pierces Cain’s ears, and when it stops, he hears Clara’s voice again and again:

“You’re a murderer! You’re a murderer! YOU’RE A MURDERER!”

He clutches the wheel, winces, squints. You're imagining things he tells himself. Snap out of it! It continues.

“YOU’RE A MURDERER! YOU’RE A MURDERER! YOU’RE A MURDERER!”

“Make it stop!” His voice echoes desperately through the soulless city but to no avail.

He grabs a piece of metal equipment from one of the pockets of his coat and begins thrashing into the speakers further and further, until finally, they go silent.

Cain sighs. He is in a cold sweat. He leans back, rubs his eyes, looks out the car. Everything is still, serene, but also inauthentic, unreal. There are no trees, no flowers; there is no grass, no nature to be seen. That is not quite it. There is something else about this city, something more sinister. It dawns on him. The buildings were once not a city. They were once-

His thought is interrupted, for he sees something. On a large, square building, otherwise indistinct from the others, there is a reflection of Clara, staring into him with solemnity. Cain closes his eyes, pinches himself, squints. She’s still there. She glides from one building to another, jumps out of the reflection, and vanishes.

Cain clings to the wheel, his eyes flitting, body rigid. Where is Clara? Is she real or in his mind?

“Fifty percent of what we are, they are,” a mocking voice reverberates. She is sitting right next to Cain, in the reflection of the window. His head feels light, his body cold. He hits the accelerator and speeds for his lab. Clara flashes between reflections and Cain aimlessly twists and turns in fear. That sickly figure stares continually deeper inside him.

“Where did all the people go? What did you do?” It demands this thunderously.

The car races straight through a building. Glass, papers, automatons, chairs, and dividers seemingly rain around the man in a hectic frenzy, but the car holds its own, as this newest model should. The car breaks through to the other side, and when it does, she is directly before him, standing on nothing, glaring with hate and dejection, but no longer trepidation. Cain veers downward, and when the blur of speed and vertigo subsides, a jolting “thud” sounds, the car trembles and warps, an airbag ejects from the wheel, and all goes black.

A scene fades into view.

A memory before his betrayal of the people, his wife, his friend, even before that fateful day at the beach. In the ancient times when zoos were populated by real animals, a zoo was where he ventured. Children, running spastically, and parents, struggling just to keep up, made up the populous. Clara stood in a crowd of children waiting to see a lion roar, and Cain stood at a concession stand.

“What’ll it be?” asked the lady at the stand.

“Oh I’ll have two pink sparkle very berry ice creams, please,” said Cain with a mix of enthusiasm and embarrassment.

“Two, for you?” The lady frowned, perplexed by why a grown adult man would want a pink sparkle very berry ice cream.

“Why, I quite enjoy them.” The lady gave him a weird look. “But, if you must know, they are not both for me. One is for her.” He pointed to the crowd of excited lion watchers.

“Suuuure, bud.” The lady snorted and handed him the ice creams.

Cain did not mind. Not that day. That day was perfect. That was one of her only happy days, and the warmth and glee of it had been contagious.

She was the reason he had done all that he did. It had all been for her.