They thought it was over, but along with the riots and the flames, there came a new threat that was beyond comprehension. At first, it caused them to think about what they had done, the philosophies that they held beyond their own conscious thought. But by then, it was too late for many.

The earth boiled with pain and suffering. The agony was profound, and the cries echoed throughout heaven. The new vision of Eden had been fouled by the tainted hand of man, and all was just patient waiting until the fiery pits of hell opened fully, and those drunk in the wine of immorality plunged ever deeper into their own painful pleasures.

But there were those who had greater vision than the flesh that stared back at them in the mirror. To some, the glory of humanity, the divinity of man, still held something, and transcendence above these fiery pits was not only a desire and a passion, but in the power of their beliefs, it had become a reality.

A group of individuals had the resources to make something beyond Earth. They gathered these resources, and they became the new pioneers. Theirs was a desire not to embrace the flaws of humanity but to overcome them, to evolve, to become something greater than the animal man. And when they crash-landed on a distant planet, he knew that this world was destined to be much like the last.

The spaceman exited the pod, alone. An accident aboard the ship had massacred his fellow passengers to this planet. He was uncertain whether the other launches had produced any succesful landings, but the gore that stained what had been his home for months now hinted that they had not sufficiently calculated for all variables. Yet, with Earth set ablaze in violence and animalistic chaos, what choice had they? To live in a world embracing corruption, a world corroded and utterly destroyed not only superficially but deep down, in its beliefs and philosophies, what choice had they but to hope for a better world elsewhere?

He cautiously exited the spaceship. The air here was, according to his tests, breathable, there was at least that. But there was a certain melancholy to the atmosphere, even though it was thick with green foliage. He did not quite understand it until, after walking a bit away from his pod, he looked back and, seeing a trail of bloody footprints following him, he understood.

In pursuit of escape, he was now alone. Truly and utterly alone. Gone were the simple pleasures like support, conversation, love, hatred... there was only him and vegetation that seemed to move in a mocking wave.

How had it come to this, he wondered to himself. He was a master at understanding variables, at anticipating random outcomes. It had won him reverence as the great artificial intelligence, a joke that greatly annoyed him.

"Alone," he said, mouthing the word for its feel on his lips. "Alone."

He contemplated the meaning that this had for him. There was no new colony, there was no new humanity. As far as he was concerned, the human species was in a far distant world, betraying and procreating itself into oblivion. The irremovable poison had melted the ice-caps, floods had taken away much of human-made constructs, and what was left was nothing more than an army outpost, something to be fought over, something to be conquered or surrendered. Here he was, as the human species vanished into oblivion, but there was hope yet.

"There is more than this," he said to himself, finding his eyes a little more moist than he would care to admit. "There is a great afterlife, where our souls will create a landscape worthy to be called God's Creation!" And he knew this edifice could only be created if he truly had a will toward the divine. This was an obstacle, something to overcome. He always overcame: this too shall pass had always served him, had always given him something to wish for. A world free of obstacles, free of pain and suffering, but a world which could only be appreciated if pain and suffering, obstacles great and magnificent, were experienced and understood.

Does the man born into riches understand the gift of financial wealth? Does not the pauper, who has struggled to eat and live, not appreciate the gift in a way much more profound than the child of a great and powerful investor?

And now he had nothing. But it was alright, it was dandy, for upon this nothing sat the greatest gem. If he understood what it was to have nothing at all, no one or nothing, than he could appreciate anything that was given to him.

This belief had served him on Earth, but it could not serve him for very long on this empty planet. He ate what he found edible, he slept under shelter he found suitable, but there was a hole in his heart, a longing for something greater, more powerful, sitting deep within him that he could not shake. This is no way for a human being to live, he told himself, knowing his sanity to be ever-shaking. He began talking to himself simply to have something to say, and when he caught himself worshipping the great god of vegetation, he knew that he needed something to be fulfilled. But still, this starved spaceman continued onwards, ever-searching for that powerful and divine something.

And she came to him. It was a surprise to him; he was walking along, marking his path on a piece of paper that loosely resembled a map, and she rushed in front of him. When she saw him, she stopped, and smiled. He had felt the emotion of love before, but now he truly understood its ability to overwhelm, for the moment he saw a fellow human, he dropped to his knees and began to sob incoherently.

"Are you real?" he asked her when he brought himself together. "Are you... are you real or am I going crazy?"

She answered with a smile. "I feel real, at the very least." She lifted a hand up to his face, and gently rested it on his cheek. "And you feel very real to me as well."

He had always laughed at the idea of being lost in someone else's eyes. He always found the idea of eyes as a window to the soul absurd. The dynamics of light on the eye made it impossible for an eye to be anything other than beautiful. The worship of the eye had nothing to do with the soul, but with a love of sight, a sensation that kept us, as a species, mostly free from harm. But staring into her eyes, he understood.

He was overwhelmed with emotion. He laughed as he cried. Suddenly and without warning, he ran up to her and kissed her intimately. All his passion and his pain, all his suffering and his ecstasy, transferred from his heart to his lips. It was not a sensual act-- this had nothing to do with the plebean urges of the human biology-- but something that only a being who had experienced true nothingness could appreciate.

But she ran away. Faster than he could hold unto her, she ran away! And he followed her. He ran after her, and once or twice he swore he heard her laughing. Oh, love of love, he felt his heart overflow with passion and sympathy. A smile sneaked unto his face and before he knew it he was chasing her clumsily, falling on the obstacles she knocked into his path.

"Wait!" he yelled, and she stopped for a moment, turned around.

"I have something to show you," she said while still smiling. "I have something to show you," she said again as she began running away.

He followed, watching her with glee. His imagination ran away from him, casting before his eyes visions of a colony that he had never seen, from pods that had survived. He imagined children running around, or men and women interacting not with lust or greed, but in a natural state of mutual support and protection. He imagined a world without money or exploitation, a world without hate of each other, for there was nothing to hate over, but love and support, a large family brought together by lack and need. He imagined the world, back on Earth, at its beginning, when there was enough land to support a family without fighting and competition. He imagined a world before jealousy of finances and culture brought about colonialism and imperialism, when desire for the Other was a necessary offshoot of an incredible growth in population and decline in resources. He imagined a world where resources were seen not as social status but as just that: resources, for the hive of humanity to feed themselves upon. He didn't care whether the system was democratic or socialist; he cared little whether the predominant religion was his own or another, so long as they cared for each other with the divinity that any religious belief worthy of worship demanded.

He followed, and did not see where he was going. He did not see the pathways that he had cut for himself weeks ago. He did not see his own footprints as he followed her, because he did not care about his surroundings. His mind was too focused on hope and potential to see exactly where she was leading him.

She stood in front of the pod, and at first, he still had visions of a new colony. "So this is it," he said softly to himself, "this is the new Eden." He walked up to the pod and the stench hit him, waking him quickly out of his revery. He was in such a hurry to discover this new world, to remove his own fears and pains, that he had not buried the bodies.

She stood in front of the pod, smiling. "I am your dream," she told him. "You are not alone here," she said, and as he watched, he realized she was right. Walking out of the pod were other human beings, and he did not have to peer inside the pod to know that they were, in physical composition, little more than a red bloodstain across the hull.

This was his hope, this was his belief. It came to him in as much of an empirical way as possible-- he had very little reason to deny the truth of what he was seeing. These were angels, hopeful beings who had faith in the divinity of humanity, a faith so strong that it kept their existence beyond the limitations of their flesh.

He should have been happy, but he was not. He fell to his knees as these vespers of what was once human floated around him, filling him with security. Where he hurt, he felt no more pain; the hunger he felt dissipated as these forms surrounded him. And yet, still, his tears flooded his face.

He was the last king of men. His empire was nothingness; his empire was in a world he could not touch. The term "King" had become a derogatory on Earth. The "patriarchy" was a corruption, but he did not feel corrupted or evil. What he felt was the glory that comes from understanding that your belief is a true one.

He felt loneliness. To prove to humanity the existence of the soul, all it took was the destruction of itself. And then, existing in a form beyond comprehension, it was understood.

He did not have to look into the pod to know that there was a disaster of flesh and rot that had once resembled the visage he could see when he looked in the mirror. He did not need to look at all. He understood that there was no passing. He truly had become the king of nothing; he truly was beyond want and desire, beyond flesh and imperfection, and still, to have this great power, he understood fully what cost it had brought.

His cries still echo in heaven, in the past, present and future. He has died a million years ago; he will die a million years in the future. He is the star that can still be seen lighting the knowledge of its own explosion.