Welcome to Gaia! ::

Police find the apartment abandoned, coated with the dust of several months, its tenant vanished. Among the clutter and strewn papers they discover the journal, many pages missing or shredded, the only clue to the whereabouts of its author. On the inside cover, faint and smudged, it reads, "This journal shall serve as documentation for my theories, experiments, and discoveries, which will push the boundaries of modern science, and shake the foundations of human understanding."

Written beneath was a name, but it has been scratched out.

The journal continues…



Many of the journal's early pages are gone or illegible, ink washed out with strong chemicals, pages pasted together with dried blood. At last, far along in the book, a set of pages has been preserved, some lines and words laboriously blacked out. It begins…

"Today I have made a grand breakthrough. My research into ██████████ has revealed a key process which has not yet been tested. I have kept it carefully hidden from my colleagues at ██████ ███████, and have decided to set up research in my own attic. Some of the methods I will have to employ are of questionable moral implication, but necessary, if I am to be successful.

"Perhaps if I had pursued medicine over medical research, if I were less of a scientist, I would not have the stomach to do what is required. But as a man of science, given the opportunity to know the unknowable... I am resolved."



A large section of the journal is blacked out. Scribbles and bits of text to the sides reveal it may have been a set of equations and schematics. The next entry is dated several weeks after.

"At last, I have my equipment running, ██████████ ████ ████████ and the subject of my experiment is ready. ████████████████ ████████ ████ ██ █████ ████████. ██ ████ █████ and collecting the components proved to be the most difficult; the ████████ assembly itself was straightforward, even enjoyable in a strange way. I suppose it is improper to admit so in my documentation, but I trust that those of you who have read this far are like-minded scientists, and you can understand the pleasure of seeing through a grand idea.

And such a grand idea! Such a miracle I will perform, in only a few short days, a miracle on par with the work of God himself! Mankind will rejoice when this discovery is known, when this, the greatest enemy of man, is defeated, and soon all worship will be turned to science and knowledge and truth! Oh imagine, the day in history when death itself was no more...

Ah, but I get ahead of myself... First, yes first, the experiment must succeed. It, HE, must awaken."



The writing has become an erratic scrawl, describing at first the construction of additional machines, waxing poetic about the miracle of the human body, much of it redacted. Suddenly, the text becomes vicious and dark, the paper indented from the strength of the man holding the quill, the ink too heavily applied, smeared and run.

"I have failed," it writes.

"Everything went as expected. ██ ███ ██ ████ and all equipment functioned as it should. According to ████████, there should be a new life lying on the table before me. My creation, my child... Lifeless, still.

Perhaps, there is truly something unknowable about the creation of life, something that is truly only for Man's creators, for whatever beings might exist on a grander plane than ours. Perhaps man can bring all the components together, but still, we cannot bestow the most vital piece. Is there truth to the concept of the soul?

If there is truth to it, then... my God... into what territory have I trespassed?"

"What... what have I done?"

The next several pages are blank.



At last, on the final page, there are the last few lines of text, written in the same hand, albeit far more calmly. The policeman reading discerns that it must have been written after the redactions and destruction of the book, before it was abandoned on the floor.

"I must make one final confession. I have destroyed as much of my research as I could, to make this right, to make it so it will never be repeated, before I go. I was not able to bring myself to deconstruct my creation... I have left it on the table in the attic. Do with it what you will, it will no longer matter to me.

"I confess... In my former documentation, I lied about how I procured the... components. I had tested the procedure on animals before, and found that it was ineffective once the bodies were more than 12 hours old. I was eager... prideful... so sure... I could not wait for the bodies to appear in the morgue on their own. The odds of enough people compatible with the experiment all dying within a few hours of each other were astronomical. And so…

"I have listed the names of four men and one woman below.

"Let it be known... I meant well.

"Sincerely,

"The Doctor."

The police strip the apartment, and the attic above, and find traces of a paralytic toxin. Later, the doctor's shoes will be found on a nearby riverbank, and police will conclude that he took the poison and walked into the water, driven by the guilt and horror at what he had done. They will also find evidence that despite his attempts, some of his machinery had continued to run long after he left it, and finally surged and burned out.

However, this is all the police find. The abomination mentioned in the journal, the construct that never woke, had vanished, just as its father did.

Many years later, the journal will disappear from police evidence, and never be missed.