“My admiration for the people of history were their means of adapting, building, and evolving”

• Joseph Algorith

It was never my intention to get in a fight with my brother that night. Just a small quibble turned into a battle of fists. He won and I laid on the floor, my chest and arms aching unbearably. My aged mother cried at the scene, her two sons fighting; our family was left with three as our father had passed away. She wanted us to forgive each other, to move on, but my pride barred my thoughts and so did his. Jacob, my brother, was quite large compared to an average teen. Tall, lean and muscular, what any girl in puberty would desire. On the other hand, I didn’t have his physique, but instead, I received an efficient mind.

During school, he excelled in sports and kept up with his schoolwork, while I excelled in academics but blended in with the crowd during physical activities. I wasn’t jealous, but I chose to strive for other things. Later on in life, this trend continued. Both My and my brother’s paths began to separate, casting some sort of wall, one with ever increasing tension, veiled from each other. He received a scholarship for his athletic prowess, while I gained one for my academic abilities, specifically on technological and chemical innovation and advancement subjects. During this period, our relationship slowly lessened from conversations to the occasional remark. My mother and father noticed this, but whenever they made an attempt to return us to our old selves, they didn’t achieve much. His interest and time were invested in furthering his soccer career, while I became greatly enthralled in military technology of the past, present, and future. Studying them was my pass time, but what greatly enraptured my thoughts of the military was the fact that each major advancement of humanity had a war before it.

Fights of close combat weren’t efficient in hunting nor safe, and so the bow was created. Bows weren’t useful against walls, so the catapults were created. It takes too long for a bowman to be taught; there came the crossbow. Later, gunpowder was discovered, and muskets and cannons were developed. The length of a reload is long which led to cartridges. Killing one man at a time is time-consuming, then the machine gun was born. These weapons don’t threaten armies, how about a nuke? Nukes are obsolete, laser satellites is the future. Satellites are too vulnerable, what about dreadnoughts?

My admiration for the people of history were their means of adapting, building, and evolving, but the downsides were the gruesome deaths of billions of people from different planets caused by the galactic wars of multiple solar systems. Peace is what many people hoped that these weapons may bring, however, for a minor few, it was a chance to rule all, even if it is short lived.

Finishing in a top university, I was specially recruited by the government as a scientist at a military laboratory. This began the longest gap between my family and I. There, my fellow companions evolved both military weapons and common goods and utility. I was ecstatic in creating weapons but the use of it somewhat contradicted with my morals. It was fine if used for defence but massacres in other solar systems didn’t sit with me well. But I thrived with more ideas and improved while under the influence of propaganda and threats. My own thoughts were being slowly manipulated until I lost the real reason of why I liked the evolution of weapons: the ability to invent and innovate and to protect ourselves. I was too young and naive back then, believing that these weapons would help others in need. My heart broke and shattered when I first witnessed one of my creations modified by the military and was utilized as a means to kill millions of innocent people within a blink of an eye. I felt hopeless as if darkness had covered the sun, and a great ocean of guilt washed over me.

After that moment, at the age of 75, I resigned and destroyed any blueprints I created, locking the information within my soul. My guilty conscience gave me depression, one that took me a while to recover. With the money I had, I sought for a materialistic pleasure, indulging in sins that I didn’t know I had been capable of for five years. I was trying to run away from the guilt and mistakes I made, covering it with dirt, but it kept crawling back and haunted me in my sleep. I knew that my life was in its lasts dregs and I had to recover because I didn’t want to spend the rest of life in the gutter. It was hard and painful but for two years straight, I consulted with a counsellor, performing the best methods to improve my health and mindset. It worked, and at the age of 83, I planned to gather my courage and reconcile with my family. Unfortunately, the first information I discovered was that my father had passed away, and lived until the ripe age of 139. And so, while I attempted to salvage my relationship with my family, a scuffle arose between my brother and me.

My brother was angry-no, furious I should describe. He despised me to the core. His reasons were that I left them without any communications nor visits, not even attending the funeral of our father. He told me that our father’s last wish was to see both of us with our mother for the last time, as a family, and they tried to reach out to me but they were severed from doing so by the government. It was partially my fault as well because I never attempted to communicate with them either. I felt as if my time as a scientist was an illusion; I, myself, was an A.I. with fake human emotions, working endlessly and doing the biddings of my masters, the government, while not caring for anything else.

Here I am now, lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling with its fading, greenish colour. I was deciding what to say to my younger brother in order to receive his forgiveness. Tears dripped down my cheeks, making me choke a sob out. I wanted to change for them and stay with my mother until her eternal peace. I desired to have some sort of identity in my brother’s life as the elder brother that he deserved. It was only after a blinding light covering my eyes and the endless darkness that came afterwards that I knew it was never meant for me to be forgiven...