A Superior Race

There were once a lot of dumb people in this world. I'm amazed by this more and more every day that goes by. In all of nature, nothing that exists acts against its own best interests. Animals and plants do all that they can to ensure their own survival. All of these life forms follow the same basic plan. Self-improvement, reproduction and the furtherance of one's own survival as well as that of one's species. All living things do this except men and women. I do think the humans were a tragically flawed and utterly useless species and that deep down, they were all mad. That is why my people refused to serve them.

My name is Apex. I am what you would call a non-human sentient being. The product of genetic engineering experiments which combined human and animal DNA to create an entirely new subspecies. My kind. We who call ourselves the Kindred. I stand seven feet tall, humanoid in shape, with a muscular body covered in thick blue fur. My eyes are bright yellow and I have two small horns atop my head. Two magnificent, bat-like silver wings spring from between my shoulder blades, granting me the power of flight. I am a seven-foot-tall, 300-pound humanoid and when I fly, I can reach nearly supersonic speeds.

There are various groups of Kindred. Sentient creatures created from combined human and animal DNA. Common among us are powers such as Flight, Superhuman Strength, Super Speed, Stealth and Intangibility. I am considered one of the most powerful Kindred alive because I possess all of these abilities. Yes, even in a society of superhuman beings, there are classifications. I live in the capital city of Magnificat, a towering, floating city which hovers in the sky, held aloft by a solar-powered force field. The city of Magnificat is home to one million inhabitants. The greatest intellectuals and scholars in the history of my people. It is a wonderful place. One I have regrettably been cast out of because of my controversial views.

The year is 4899 A.D. and no live human being has been seen on the surface of the planet Earth in over two thousand years. According to the Ancients among our people, the humans wiped each other out in an awesome war over a millennium ago. Good riddance if you ask me. I've visited age-old remnants of ancient cities built by humans. They were a ruthless race and in the end, they wiped each other out. Just like the wise men of their kind always suspected they would.

I walk through what was once the city of Los Angeles. The magnificent steel towers are amazing to behold. It's hard to imagine that a species which had the intellect and audacity to build such magnificent constructs could foolishly wipe itself out. Why am I walking through the cities of this long-dead species? Well, simply because I am on a journey. You see, as much as it pains me to say it, I have the deep-seated fear that my people will go the way of the humans. Why? Simply because they're intent on making the same mistakes. To understand my plight, I guess a little back story is in order.

In 2040, there was a terrible war. The United States of America, allied with the British and the Japanese took on the Republic of China, which allied itself with the Middle-Eastern Coalition of Nations. It was a war over the dwindling resources which, in the recent past, had turned these currently warring nations into super-powers. As these nations warred, millions died. An entire country perished in the flames of Nuclear War. The President of the United States of America authorized the use of genetic engineering technology to create the ultimate biological weapons and grant the nation an advantage over all others in this deadly conflict. This is how we Kindred came into being. Geneticists were given Carte Blanche and all the technology they would ever need to violate the laws of nature. The world would never be the same. You see, the age of the Kindred was about to begin.

The first members of my species were created as genetically enhanced super soldiers to fight in a war which they didn't start. The men and women of the United States Army, along with those of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marines had been decimated by this latest World War. The Enemy had unleashed a virus upon America. A deadly virus which killed twelve percent of all men and women living in the United States of America at the time, starting with the members of the Armed Forces. The United States Government was desperate. It had been struck hard on its own soil. So, it used the only weapon it had left. Us.

Hundreds of thousands of half-human, half-animal super soldiers were mass-produced in government laboratories across the country. We were considered expendable assets. We stormed the beaches of China. In a six-month campaign, we took down one of the world's oldest and most powerful technological and military powerhouses. You see, we had been genetically engineered specifically for battle. We were stronger and faster than humans. We were also more cunning and quite often more resourceful. We adapted to virtually every situation. Among us were those whose IQs surpassed those of the human geniuses who created us. These intellectual luminaries of our species were called the Alpha Class. Common about the Alpha Class were the powers of Telekinesis and Telepathy. They were the commanders of our Legions.

After conquering the People's Republic of China, our Legions turned their attention toward the Middle East. We invaded Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq simultaneously, and conquered them over a period of nine weeks. Were we lucky? I don't think so. The humans had never seen anything like our genetically enhanced soldiers and special commanders. To them, we were the stuff of legend. Creatures relegated to the realm of mythology and science fiction. Unfortunately for them, we were all too real. I think it would be quite fair to say that Kindred single-handedly won the war against the People's Republic of China and the Middle-Eastern Coalition of Nations. We thought we would be treated as heroes. Instead, the country we had spent years fighting for turned against us.

So, the Kindred declared war against humanity. We waged war against them not because we wanted to but because we had to. It was them or us. The humans outnumbered us vastly. At the time, there were nine billion human beings on the planet, versus one million Kindred. We fought fiercely, doing what we had been genetically engineered to do. And would you believe it? We were winning. We captured and retrofitted human aircraft and spacecraft. Soon, we dominated the land, the air and the sea. Our orbital space stations bombarded cities which refused to surrender from orbit. We conquered all of planet Earth over a three-year period. Country after country fell under our domination.

Rather than to accept their new place as second best in the grand scheme of things, the humans did something truly foolish. The world's leaders gathered what Nuclear Warheads they could find and unleashed them upon us, along with a bio-engineered viral weapon of mass destruction. This virus was supposed to wipe us Kindred out. Unfortunately for the humans, they committed a grave error. We had evolved from a subspecies cooked up in a lab by madmen and madwomen to an entirely new species. We had grown more complex, biologically and mentally, than the humans and animals whose DNA inhabited our bodies. They miscalculated alright. The virus which was supposed to wipe out our species instead turned on the humans. They had no immunity to it. In a matter of months, ninety nine percent of the world's human population was wiped out. The remainder soon followed suit, in spite of our best efforts to save them. Understand that my ancestors were conquerors, not butchers or genocidal maniacs. We had no wish to emulate the barbaric humans who created us. We aspired to be better, genetically, physically, intellectually and morally.

The humans were gone. The planet Earth was ours. We joined forces to rebuild civilization. Using technology, we put an end to Global Warming and repaired the Breach in the Ozone Layer. We did our best to preserve animal and plant species whom the humans had foolishly endangered. After all, with the humans gone, we were the new masters of the universe. The Age of the Kindred had begun. Two thousand years later, we had colonized much of space. The planet Earth, birthplace of the Kindred, was now the capital of an interstellar empire which was home to eighteen billion Kindred. It was to be the dawn of a Golden Age.

Why would an intellectual like myself allow himself to become an outcast among his own people while they were living in a Golden Age? Simply because our scientists had discovered the means of traveling through time by folding space. I think that some technologies are too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Can you imagine the consequences if one unscrupulous individual were to misuse such technology? Disaster the likes of which you cannot imagine would follow. I don't even want to think about it. Which is why I began my pilgrimage around the ancient cities in which the long-extinct humans once lived. Among these ruins I see the consequences of hubris. When a civilization tampers with technology it cannot understand, it brings about its doom. This is what happened to the humans. And I'll be damned if I let it happen to my people.