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The Hamrelstein Institute

Chaos within, evolution without.

By Kellis Charles LewisPublished 7 years ago 7 min read
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Photo by Nathan Anderson

Log: Dream 5/25/2017 12-1:45 PM

We were in a large dark room lit only by several various terrariums containing mundane or exotic plants and animals and we were writing something down about them, their DNA, what the telomerase was... When a teacher began speaking to us aloud.

He said to listen and pay attention to the words that were said in the next room, and that this was why we needed to know these things.

He began letting curtains up to reveal a laboratory modeled like a classroom behind us, filled with trays of Petri dishes and vials with different colors of fluid, some looking viscous and others moving. There were about 20 children, probably ages 13 to 15 all of different ethnicities. Our teacher said to make sure they couldn't see all of us, as they turned towards us. Some were smiling, some were upset, others were tight-lipped, their lips becoming lighter from the blood being forced out of them.

There were about 15 windows, 10 of which were now covered, leaving the five middle windows exposing the classroom.

Bored, I walked around until I came to one of the older gentlemen in our class, crying on the far left of the dark classroom, directly across from the only door in or out. We made eye contact, but I walked away. Remorseful after a few steps, I stopped and turned around.

Asking what's wrong, he said his mother got caught in some sort of ice flow and that she was about to die. He said she already fell asleep from hypothermia and she didn't have long left. I hugged him tightly, thinking that she would feel no pain and I wished to speak with my parents in their last moments. As his two friends, a guy slightly older than me and a guy slightly older than him, walked up, I turned around and walked through the crowd watching the laboratory. A few people were writing, but it seemed that the kids in the lab were discussing the effects of the contents, bacteria and viruses, within the vials and Petri dishes in front of them.

Some were common, some were rare and exotic. Some I had never heard of before, and sounded alien. Someone in our class, probably discussing the same thing with someone else, said it was probably because it was man-made, a designer disease or virus.

I kept walking and saw the teacher's aide walking around collecting loose change in a coffee jar, asking the students for it as well. I asked, "what are you doing?" He responded, "getting ready, getting ready," before he hurried off to the dark blank wall in the front lines with terrariums on either side of the dry erase boards. I realized I didn't have my wallet and something told me to go to the older gentlemen, who were no longer there, but there were several wallets laying on the counter on one side to the sink and our IDs on the other, the cabinets above and below partially opened.

As I voiced my wonder of how my wallet got there aloud and checked to see if I still had everything, the older gentleman from before said there was a guy pickpocketing wallets, taking pictures of our IDs, and walking around taking pictures of us.

I turned but saw nothing. As I returned my gaze to the windows, the middle of the five showed us a cloaked skeleton of a person riding the cloaked skeleton of a horse galloping, the image slightly angled downward and towards us, facing the right; their cloaks had wide black and white swirls patterned with something. I wasn't surprised the windows doubled as display screens, but the image...

I couldn't hear all the words the lab teacher was saying but I knew what it was: A Horseman of the Apocalypse, Death. She said there were no others, and that biology always taught them that death would come for everything that ever lived, regardless of when, where, why, or how.

They were there to challenge biological death, and that more would follow behind them, because some would not survive.

I don't know if it was that teacher's words or voice that moved me to tears, but as I turned away to compose myself, I saw the guy taking pictures and wallets walking past me towards the wooden lab tables in front of the door. I caught up to him and still crying and sniffling, but eyes wide open, I muttered something to him. He looked confused and asked, "What? What'd you say?"

I said, once more, "don't ruin a good teacher's work." I repeated it again, "don't ruin a good teacher's work", until he walked to the back of the room coughing, my eyes never leaving him. "Don't ruin a good teacher's work. Don't ruin a good teacher's work. Don't ruin a good teacher's work..."

Suddenly hearing gasping, I ran to the middle of the group watching the students on the other side of the window screens. I asked what happened, no one answered. All of the kids on their side and people on our side looked disgusted and nauseous. I asked again, and someone said, they took something. Bacterias, viruses, they all ingested some. I turned back to the windows in horror, tears still streaming down my eyes. A girl in the back of the class began to stand, looking like she was trying her hardest not to vomit, both hands covering her mouth. Their teacher pleasantly addressed her, "yes dear? Do you have something to say?"

The girl cautiously lowered her hands from her mouth and when she was sure she would not hurl the contents of her stomach onto the desk in front of her, she locked eyes with her teacher and said, calmly, almost triumphantly, "we are become Death."

She began to cough profusely, as others began to sneeze or cough as well, some heaving trying to breathe and some convulsing from some sort of violent transformation in their bodies. The girl in the back vomited blood onto the back of the head of the boy in front of her and screamed, before the windows turned black.

They showed a dull pink double helix being attacked by one organism, then two, then many more, before breaking and revealing spinning glowing green discs. Stats appeared on the screens, showing a list of viruses and bacteria used to make the disks, their boosts, and their side effects. There was a deeply encrypted voice that spoke, "no, little one, we have become evolution. Proceed with Phase Two, Dr. Lewis."

There was static then a black screen, like it was all only a transmission.

Numbers and letters flashed on the middle screen before showing a name… I think it might have been Hamelstein or Hamlerstein, but as we waited in silence, a voice that sounded like Donald Glover began to speak over images and clips of old people smiling and laughing, then clips of the children strapped up in chairs, some of them simply crying, some, spewing some strange colored substance, goo crawling out of them and covering their faces as they screamed, horrible lesions on their skin that writhed like worms... but what came out of them weren't worms.

The voice said, "No, you won't be able to find this online. Thank you for watching this film, for witnessing the beautiful birth of this ambitious project, aimed to the elongation of the human lifespan and improving the human condition."

The teacher's aide began to cough.

The man who was taking pictures and wallets started coughing again.

"Phase One is now complete and Phase Two is now underway."

He began to sputter blood into his hands. More people were coughing now, their faces fearful.

"We thank you for your time, your upcoming efforts, and your impending sacrifice."

I heard a scream, then I awoke.

evolutionfantasyhumanityscience fictionhabitat
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About the Creator

Kellis Charles Lewis

Woolly hair, copper skin, silver tongue. @daekalwriting on IG, FB Watch & listen; the Angels are talking. #afropunk #noblesseoblige

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