In a forgotten corner of the galaxy, long ages ago, the nebular remains of a supernova gave birth to a newborn star. Its blazing light and heat blew away the clouds for light-years around, and its steady angular momentum kept it spinning, like a ladle circling through a pot of soup in one constant direction. The scraps and residue within that cosmic broth began to follow the whirlpool of gravity, settling into ring after ring.
Hundreds of millions of years later, that scattered matter would gather into planets. But for now, it was nothing more than debris of every size, forming belts of asteroids.
A man in a golden mask stood alone on the barren surface of one such asteroid.
In the dark and distant heavens, warships from two interstellar civilizations crossed the vast deep of space like ships at sea and happened upon one another by chance. At once, both fleets opened fire, though the two civilizations had never met before, and yet they bristled with hostility all the same. Brilliant beams of high-energy light carved long, straight lines across the cosmic backdrop. Wherever they struck, ship barriers shattered like thin eggshells, hull armor melted away, and the vessels broke apart, spilling hundreds, then thousands of corpses through the breaches, none of them wearing space suits.
The golden mask, smooth as a mirror, silently reflected that soundless war.
Its pure golden surface reflected wars between civilizations, massacres across planetary landscapes, savage religious sacrifices, and civilians reduced to skeletons by famine. Alongside the bright eyes behind its openings, it witnessed both the glorious epics of intelligent life and every cruelty born of love, hatred, greed, and desire.
Time flowed across that golden mirror. After witnessing ten thousand tragedies across forty civilizations, its once-lustrous sheen seemed rusted by blood, mottled and stained as though streaked with tears.
The masked man saved one desperate soul after another. When people were moments away from being riddled with bullets fired by their own kind, from losing their lives to disease and starvation, or from being ground to dust by world-ending meteors and the cannons of alien fleets, the wizard in the golden mask, bearing a silver scepter, would appear at their side and offer aid.
Those survivors, snatched back from the edge of death, swore to follow their savior. Bound together by shared misery, they longed with all their hearts to build a utopia with no war, no famine, and no evil. The wizard taught them knowledge, and these people eventually formed a fellowship of scholars and interstellar merchants. Using the biotechnology he gave them, they rose to fame throughout the galaxy and built a gigantic corporation known as OrgoCorp.
That giant corporation rose above nation and race alike, a commercial commonwealth spanning star systems and amassing vast wealth and resources. Its scientists explored the mysteries of genes and life, and they came to believe that the key to creating a utopia was to create a perfect species.
If there existed a people who were beautiful, agile, intelligent, brave, and resilient, who could remain active on very little food, who were kind by nature, loved art, and stood united as one, then such a high-quality people would naturally build a flourishing civilization.
OrgoCorp made the creation of the perfect species its ultimate goal, and the wizard who guided them was given the exalted title of the High Evolutionary.
In the galaxy of that era, many believed the High Evolutionary was nothing more than another madman, someone who used the banner of salvation to disguise grotesque bio-experiments that violated every ethical boundary. The High Evolutionary himself never cared about such accusations. His followers burned with indignation, but every defense and every word of praise offered in his name was dismissed as shameless corporate propaganda, and only deepened the shadow of evil and madness hanging over his reputation.
OrgoCorp had a clear and humane set of standards for handling test subjects. Any subject with intelligence and language capability was treated as an employee and enjoyed the same benefits as everyone else. Every experiment was designed to minimize pain and the risk of death, and on the rare occasions when accidents happened, they were handled responsibly.
No matter how malicious the outside world's speculation became, one fact could not be denied: through animal experimentation, OrgoCorp developed cheap, reliable mechanical prosthetics with almost no rejection response and highly efficient neural links, solving daily problems for countless civilians and retired soldiers across the galaxy who had long suffered from disability.
The followers understood how astonishing the High Evolutionary's true abilities really were. They had seen him bring the dead back to life, restore a world scorched into glass by orbital bombardment so that spring returned to it, and turn a falling asteroid into a drifting cloud. His most fanatical believers were convinced that Lord High Evolutionary absolutely possessed the power to create a perfect world, and yet he was willing to remain at OrgoCorp, spending his days alongside scholars and sales managers, almost as if he were humoring some ordinary little enterprise.
More than once, his followers had asked in fearful confusion why he would waste his time on such mundane affairs.
Behind the golden mask, the High Evolutionary's eyes held immense patience. The passing of years could not shake his resolve, and he explained, "I am following the true timeline. I do this so that when histories merge, there will not be a severe deviation that leads to the destruction of the universe."
Even his most loyal followers thought their master sounded a little insane.
Then one day, the original followers who had been with him from the beginning passed away one after another, and the stubborn king who had insisted on his path was left keeping lonely vigil upon his throne for a century.
By then, OrgoCorp had grown into one of the great powers of the galaxy. During that time, the High Evolutionary created the Sovereign as an exploration of humanoid aesthetics, and so that race became astonishingly beautiful.
The Sovereign regarded themselves as the fulfillment of the perfect-lifeform ideal and considered their own species supreme above all others. They abandoned traditional reproduction and instead raised their offspring in artificial birthing pods. The future path of every individual was determined by genetics, with roles assigned as clearly as those in a hive.
The development of Sovereign civilization went smoothly. They quickly acquired formidable military power, and their drone fleets became dominant across the stars. OrgoCorp naturally regarded them as the vanguard of the perfect species, and everyone immersed themselves in the joy of seeing their dream seemingly come true.
One day, the Sovereign High Priestess declared to their creator that her people would take up the burden of realizing that utopian ideal. But the High Evolutionary told her that another destiny awaited them.
After that day, the High Evolutionary led a group of employees away from OrgoCorp headquarters and set out into deep space aboard a starship.
He returned to that lonely asteroid. The region where those two unknown civilizations had clashed centuries ago was empty now. Their shattered ships had been hauled away by scavengers, and the bones of the dead had long since been ground into dust by the solar wind. It remained a forgotten corner of the galaxy, and now the High Evolutionary had chosen it as his new home.
The man in the golden mask stood in the void and swung his silver scepter. The green gem at its tip flared to life, and the torrent of time roared.
His employees watched in stunned terror as the sun began spinning with impossible speed, its light shifting from deep blue to blazing white, brighter even than a supernova.
Under the pull of gravity, the asteroid and the ring of interstellar matter began to gather together. Over the next half year, eight planets gradually formed.
When the torrent of time finally subsided, the High Evolutionary went alone to the asteroid he had once stood upon. It had now swallowed all the debris along its orbit and become a terrestrial planet thirteen thousand kilometers across, its surface covered in blazing seas of lava as it slowly cooled in deep space.
He raised the scepter again. Purple light from the Power Stone seeped through the planet inside and out, reaching inward to the core and outward through the crust, and the forces of geology themselves were seized and directed by the gem's power. The High Evolutionary shaped the planet as though kneading clay in his hands. He tore the crust into six great plates, hollowed out ocean basins, and thrust up continents. At the height of it, as many as two hundred million volcanoes erupted in a single day, and under the direction of that supreme power, the lava they spewed piled itself into mountain ranges.
When the solid form of the surface was complete, the planet, viewed from space, looked like a magnificent sculpture.
The High Evolutionary studied the planet's surface in satisfaction. Once he had confirmed the height of every mountain range and the contour of every coastline, he called upon the power of the Reality Stone. Red light poured across the face of the world like a vast flood, rising and falling in slow pulses like the beating of a heart.
From that crimson canopy came a downpour, though calling it rain hardly fit. It was like an entire ocean falling out of the sky. In a single day, all the seas were formed.
Then a fierce wind descended from that red heaven, like a wall from the end of the world, sweeping over continents and oceans, driving water inland into rivers and up the mountains into snow. When the wind finally stilled, an atmosphere had taken shape.
Walking through the sky, the High Evolutionary decorated the world as though arranging a model landscape. Plants burst into luxuriant growth, and cities rose from the earth in clusters. Seven days later, the red light of the Reality Stone faded, and the once savage, barren lava planet had become a civilized world.
The ship landed on the surface, and the employees stepped outside to witness the High Evolutionary's creation for themselves. These later arrivals, who had never truly understood the founder of the corporation, now saw the miracle of creation with their own eyes and were won over completely, convinced that he truly could build a perfect nation.
"My lord, what name will you give this planet?"
The High Evolutionary told them it was a copy of his homeworld, and it could be called Counter-Earth.
In the years that followed, he ordered OrgoCorp to secretly purchase animals from Earth and send them to Counter-Earth. There, he would continue his experiments. Every batch of OrgoCorp test subjects was assigned a number, beginning with 01. And now, at last, they had reached 89. On Counter-Earth, the High Evolutionary would complete the biological enhancement of Batch 89.
The little animals from Earth arrived soon enough, trembling inside iron cages made on Earth.
"My lord, what kind of experiment will you conduct on these foolish beasts?"
"Evolution," he answered.
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