Chapter 4: When All I Loved Was Lost to Despair
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{ The one once known as a God, reveals an all too human heart scarred by the world }
The silence following The Nameless howl of agony, was in ways far more oppressing than their fight to the death just moments ago.
Then, he started talking;
Long time ago, where it all started while despairing over the state of the world and the path mankind had chosen, The Nameless had those that gave him hope and drive to struggle through it and a place of solace where to rest.
A wife who had supported him, whom he had tragically lost giving birth to their child.
His child, was the world to him and for many years despite all the challenges were the happiest times. Yet, whenever he thought of the world that awaited growing up...
Something had to be done.
For their sake he and many others he considered friends had undertaken a task to change things, to try and find a way of saving what could be saved.
In the course of this over long years, they accidentally discovered potentially a way of travelling through time, which led to them keeping what they had found utterly secret for they knew if this became known to those in power...
They secluded themselves from the world to work on their discovery, and his child grew up there with him.
However, the more they researched their discovery, the full weight of its potentially uses and consequences was a heavy burden on them all.
His child too having grown up became part of the team to help them. Such a bright, smart kid, fast learner and boundlessly curious. Yet, also an idealist to an irritating degree at times.
The Nameless had been the realist, and the debates between them about the state of things and how they could be changed were stalemates, for they were just as stubbord as each other.
One wanted to save everyone, but was realistic about it and knew it wasn't possible.
The other wanted the same, but idealistically wanted to actually save everyone.
As the method of harnessing their discovery for actual use came closer, 18 years since the day it was found, from which 8 had been spent secluded from the world, the debates about actually going through with it became increasingly divisive among them for countless reasons.
Chief among them being that only one could be sent through.
Not to mention, there was no telling what would actually happen to the person who would go through with it or if they could come back at all, or if there even would be something to come back to.
The Nameless had been among those who didn't want to use it, having grown fearful of its magnitude and dangers, his child was not, believing it could be used to create a utopia where no one needed to suffer anymore.
But for him, it very well could have been that behind all his logical arguments the real reason he didn't want to use it from fear it would actually work; that his life with his child would cease to exist.
Changing the world sounds ideal, but reality and gravity of that notion when you have the potential tools to go through with it...
That's a different animal all together.
He loved this world, there was no doubt about that. He wanted to save everyone, but being a realist held him back from fully committing to it.
In the past, he had been the type who would have ran into a burning building to save anyone left behind without regards to his own safety.
He was the same way even after getting married.
Yet, when his wife died giving birth, the thought of doing it again, to risk being seperated and leaving his child behind... made him freeze.
He was conflicted.
But then, things went to hell.
During a routine test of their method, an accident occurred causing it to become unstable and the test team was caught in it.
Rescue attempts were extremely risky, but for The Nameless that was irrelevant; for his child had been part of the test team.
Despite risking life and limb, a part of the test team was still fatally trapped, his child among them.
They eventually succeeded in getting them out, but the cost...
His child was fatally wounded.
While he had been risking life and limb to get them out, his child had done the same on the other side to keep those trapped alive.
Only, luck had simply run out.
Despite all medical efforts, the injuries were simply too severe.
All he could do was hold on while his child barely managed to utter those last words, that haunted him forever on.
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Following the loss of his child, The Nameless was bereft of motive or reason to keep going.
Even the work they had been doing was now on the verge of collapsing, for the accident had not only wrecked most of their equipment but also left the survivors demoralised.
Many who had been against its use left the facility, disillusioned.
Those who opted to stay and keep working did keep at it but without The Nameless, who was effectively the head of the project guiding them their motivation was faltering.
As for him... well, do you even need to ask?
It took a month before he even left his office for more than 10 minutes. Even then all he did was wander around the hallways like a ghost.
Then, one night he had entered the test chamber by himself and started up the method of going through time before anyone realised it or could stop him.
He wanted to travel back in time to the day of the accident and stop his child from dying.
Yet, no matter how hard he tried the method would not work; he couldn't travel through.
Further study suggested that there were restrictions to the method itself. Top among them being that The Nameless cannot go back in time to a period where he himself already existed.
In other words, he would have to go back past the point of his own birth, maybe even further.
For him, it felt like a sick, cruel joke from fate; the method he had been working on to save mankind could not be used to save the one person whom had mattered the most to him.
He had never been a person to even entertain the idea of suicide, but the following days made it feel a really tempting notion.
In the pits of that despair, where he had been ready to give up and end it all...
Those last words that haunted him, would trigger the first domino that led us here today.
He couldn't save his child, but maybe instead he could save everyone else and make the utopia of their debates a reality, to keep the memory alive.
Finding his resolve, he threw himself at his work. It wasn't enough to have the method if there wasn't a destination, so going through historical archives like a man possessed he determined where to jump to exactly to begin the restoration of mankinds path.
Those who had stayed with him were at first relieved that he was back, but as time went on they had began to be wary of him.
Obsessed, wasn't strong enough a word to describe his behaviour.
It seemed as if all those arguments he had made about not using the method had either been a lie, or that he wasn't the least bit concerned about any of it.
Like he was drifting away, that humanity was becoming just a concept to him and not actual people.
Some of them had even started coming up with different methods of using their discovery to perhaps aid the people today, that it could very well be used to help mankind pull through the endgame rather than avert it.
Sufficed to say, this resulted in a number of heated arguments between the staff and The Nameless.
They were friends, who had all helped raise his child one way or another and had felt the loss like it had been their own.
Now, it was as if they weren't on the same page, or even the same book anymore.
It eventually even ended in a violent confrontation between him and a staff member, who had been with The Nameless the longest.
This was the breaking point.
No matter what, The Nameless would not budge on his intent of going through with the initial method to save mankind by re-writing history, while the others wanted to use it to help mankind as is.
Or rather, he knew all too well that they still had people in this world they wanted to protect.
That they were giving up on their mission in order to pursue what had been taken from him.
The Nameless would not wait any longer, he had had enough of the farce this mission was becoming; If he had to do this alone, if he was the only one who still believed in the mission... so be it.
Using his executive priviliges, he isolated the facility in order to go through with the method. The others tried to talk him out of it, but he was no longer listening to the words of 'traitors'.
Mankind as is was a lost cause, nothing would change that. Only hope, was to re-roll the dice and this time come out on top.
Setting the travelling point, the method opened the door through time and The Nameless went through.
For a fleeting moment, he had actually hoped it would fail and he would simply die.
Upon arriving and beginning his mission... well, you know how that went.
What we didn't know, was that the first time upon seeing overall history did not change.
In his despair he had lived through the centuries until the age he had originally come from arrived.
That was the last time, he had allowed himself to hope; he had tried to find his parents, his wife, friends, anyone whom he had known in this era.
He had hoped that despite the attempt to re-write history failed, he could at least find a way to save the people who mattered the most; maybe this time he could save his child... as well as his wife from the complications during giving birth.
Yet.....
There was no one. The people he had known did not exist, neither did his wife.
Even he himself; his parents hadn't even been born, so he himself did not exist in this day and age.
His wife, his child, they were truly gone; he would never see them again and this world had no memory of their existence.
He was an anomaly, something that didn't belong.
The only thing that had remained, was the endgame.
It was still happening.
The ability to travel through time, back to the point where he had first travelled to had stayed with him.
It required lengthy preparation and effort, but he would do it.
The mission, to avert the endgame was now all he had left; if his wife, his child were lost to him for good...
Then no matter what it takes, he would save this world, save mankind. For that was his purpose.
As he travelled through time again, on that day he truly became The Nameless.
Leading us to where we are now.
And the rest, in a way, is history.
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