Wish Fulfillment System

[ Cooldown until 'Isaac's Past - Episode 4' can be experienced has finished.

You can now experience 'Isaac's Past - Episode 4'. ]

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Wiping out humanity wasn't difficult by any stretch of the imagination. Still, there were many different ways in which it could be done, all with differing pros and cons. Because of this, it was necessary to weigh them against each other to find an optimal one.

An option that was readily available was using an engineered virus. The knowledge to do so was already wide-spread amongst humans and even the smallest details could be tuned in whichever way the creator wanted. Making it exclusively target humans and transmit incredibly efficiently? That was very, very easy. It wasn't even hard to erase any fingerprints left behind by the tampering, even for a relative amateur.

Still, there were far too many problems with this plan for it to be viable. If the virus' lethality was too high, even if it killed every single person that got infected and the world-wide reaction to it was slow, there was always a chance that it would burn out before all humans could be reached. Some would inevitably get away, maybe simply because they didn't interact with anyone else. The recluses would persist. On the other hand, if the virus wasn't lethal enough, it wouldn't be able to wipe out humanity. Nevermind potential vaccines, due to their differing genetic make-ups, some humans would definitely be immune to it, especially amongst a sea of more than seven billion of them. While a virus could mutate, sadly, it couldn't be engineered to only mutate into something extremely lethal after it had already infected every single human on the planet. And at the same time. While the possibility of that happening wasn't zero, it might as well be.

Another option was to study the field of nanorobotics and create nanomachines. Those were small robots whose sizes could only be measured in nanometers. They were incredibly tiny and would be able to easily make their ways into the bodies of every human on the planet undetected. None would be able to escape the cleansing if the code that controlled them was flawless enough.

However, even those had several problems that needed to be dealt with before they could be deployed. First of all, humanity's technology wasn't yet advanced enough to produce them. Secondly, the amount of money and resources needed to create the quintillions of them necessary to wipe out all of humanity was simply staggering. All in all, it wasn't unachievable, but it would take quite a few years of research and production to finally see results.

Another relatively straightforward option was to incite war between the planet's multiple countries, to fan the flames. This would be boredom-inducingly easy. After all, quite a few large scale conflicts were always on the verge of breaking out, only kept in check by a certain ruler's efforts. Still, if young Isaac was to throw a wrench into these plans, all hell would undoubtedly break loose.

This plan would basically have no cost at all. But yet again, it had a lot of flaws. Mainly the so-called 'weapons of mass destruction'. While nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs could indeed wreak a hell of a lot of havoc and were always touted to be able to wipe out everything on the planet's surface… that really wasn't the case. Humanity liked to overstate the lethality and destructiveness of its weapons a lot, it seemed. While an all-out nuclear war with no holds barred would most likely wipe out upwards of 95 percent of humanity and wipe clean vast swathes of civilization, all the while leading to horrible fallout that would be hard to deal with and deform future generations… it wouldn't truly wipe out humanity. Sure, some people would call it 'the end of the world', but as so often, these words would only be exaggerations. Society would crumble, sure, but the 'world'? Not even close.

There was one particular plan that caught young Isaac's fancy. A plan that would be a true 'reset button' for the planet, in a way.

All of humanity's history had taken place on an incredibly thin, cooled down crust on the outer reaches of the sphere that was planet Earth. It wasn't even that stable, seeing how the tectonic plates still moved around every second of every day, leading to changes in landscapes and earthquakes. Over the course of millions of years, all of this led to large changes on the Earth's surface. What would happen… if this crust disappeared? If it got entirely obliterated?

While sounding crazy at first, it was realistically achievable. After some calculations relying on the available data related to the Earth's crust, Isaac found that if he detonated specific amounts of explosives in tens of thousands of locations deep within the Earth's crust, all over the world and at specific points - all at the same time - it would create a certain resonance. Not only would the Earth's mantle be disturbed, even the Earth's core would be all so slightly influenced. All of this would lead to the magma within the Earth's mantle to become far more active and restless, heating up more and more of the Earth's crust and therefore affecting the tectonic plates. Many earthquakes and natural disasters would follow.

But that wasn't the worst of it - all of the Earth's crust would be at the mercy of the rapidly rising temperatures and be melted down again, reuniting the material of the crust with the mantle. Only after a couple of hundreds of thousands of years would the relative cold of space cause the Earth's outer reaches to cool down and form a crust yet again.

With that, all of nature and all things that humans had ever interacted with on the planet would be destroyed. Life itself would disappear from the planet, for a while. After this, all could start anew. Whether a 'highly intelligent' sentient species would ever be born again on the planet would be unknown, but at least everything would go back to the beginning.

Even humanity's strongest weapons wouldn't be able to achieve such a change, but a certain planet-wide resonance between explosions deep within the crust would. If everything was perfectly fine-tuned, that is.

Now, all of the aforementioned doomsday scenarios still ignored a certain problem. Humanity had already created various space stations which orbited the planet. To influence the astronauts stationed on them would be difficult with any but the last scenario. After all, there was always a chance for the astronauts to somehow figure out a way to recover.

But if the Earth went through major changes like the reforming of the crust, the atmosphere would also be affected, causing the space stations' orbit to be implicated. Even if one ignored this, the astronauts wouldn't be able to rely on rations from the planet anymore, leading to their deaths.

If the entirety of the crust hadn't been obliterated, the astronauts would still have the opportunity to gather plants and similar necessities from Earth itself. But if they were all gone…? Tough chance. Still, at the end, maybe a genius would be born amongst them and they would figure out a way to miraculously survive, only relying on what they could find in space. Which was pretty much impossible. Still, just hypothetically speaking, if young Isaac waited with his eradication of humanity until only male astronauts were in space, then nothing could go wrong. After all, once a species couldn't reproduce anymore, it was bound to go extinct. This wouldn't even take long, as the number of female astronauts was extremely limited, mostly due to a lack of interest from most females to undertake such endeavours. Even those that wanted to could often not endure the rigorous training, mostly due to genetic reasons. All of this was a shame. But it was also something that made young Isaac's job easier, so it wasn't something he would complain about.

With that in mind, he got to the drawing board and secretly hired a baffling number of scientists interested in researching the Earth's crust from all over the world. Doing so was relatively easy, as his money and influence had already permeated all of human society. Whatever he wanted to do, he could accomplish. Whatever tools he needed to procure or produce, he could get or make.

For the first half a year, his teams of researchers drilled at various spots of the Earth's crust, measuring its thickness and material composition. While all of this seemed just like a normal, everyday job to them, Isaac used this information to fine-tune the exact locations of his explosives and the amount of them that he would need.

After all of this effort, Isaac finally got his teams of scientists to drill the tens of thousands of holes he needed, at the exact spots. Nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary.

As there was nothing to do while he waited for them to finish their work, Isaac spent his days training his physical body to keep in shape and reading novel series. While he had stopped doing so for a while, with nothing else better to do, he fell back into his old habits in his abundance of free time.

While the sapling of loneliness continued to grow bigger and bigger, the seed of interest that had died in the past was revived from the ashes. It was small, tiny even. But fantastical, different worlds full of possibilities had an irresistible charm that young Isaac just couldn't escape.

He had already thought about travelling to other worlds before. Sadly, after considering all possibilities, he came to the conclusion that it was impossible. While other worlds might exist, reaching them from his reality wasn't achievable. And the specific worlds humanity's authors had created weren't even real to begin with, so seeing them was even more of a pipe dream. Even 'escaping the simulation' and other popular scenarios weren't feasible or accurate. They were a nice fantasy, but ultimately not real. At least not in his world.

But still, simply thinking about what he could potentially learn in those other worlds, what kind of interesting things he could encounter there, fascinated young Isaac.

Over the course of half a year, the drilling operations finally came to a close. Even all of the inconsequential experiments he had his hired scientists run to obscure his true purpose came to an end. Soon, all of the research sites were abandoned, the holes safely secured but still accessible.

After two years of a hermit-style life, young Isaac finally left his room again. Yet again, it was time to travel the world. While the person closest to him at the time, his secretary Mrs. Hopkins, believed him to check each of the scientists' experiments' results personally, this was as far from the truth as it could be. He had already created all of the explosives that he needed, only visiting the sites to personally deposit them deep within the drilled holes. Of course, he hadn't forgotten to connect all of them together. Wires lead all the way up to the drilling sites, where a world-wide wireless network of Isaac's creation welcomed them. During the planning stages, he had already created an algorithm that would take into account time delays during the data transmissions, which would enable him to detonate all of the explosives at exactly the same time, not even fractions of a second apart. If he were to be any less accurate than that, only failure would follow.

While he yet again travelled the globe, he noticed a peculiar change. Whenever he was amongst other humans, they wouldn't notice him at all. Even before, he didn't have any difficulties with blending into the background, figuratively speaking. But after all of this time, he had apparently grown so ridiculously proficient at wearing a 'mask' that other people would simply regard him as empty air. While subconsciously, they might still think that someone was in their vicinity, they wouldn't be able to pinpoint him no matter how much they searched. They couldn't see him.

This observation didn't really change much for young Isaac. Instead, it all felt natural to him. For all of his life, he had felt disconnected from the rest of humanity. They simply weren't on the same wavelength as him. Now, with his ability to completely cut himself off from them strengthened, it just clarified something that had always been a bit up in the air before.

Although a small smile played across his lips when he realized this, Ais knew that he was everything but happy. Neither was he sad. He was just lonely.

He had always been. Even when his parents were still here, they hadn't been able to understand him. He had felt very close to them, but in the end, even they had felt like a completely foreign species to him. Nobody had ever understood him. They all saw him as someone incomprehensible. He had always been different. He had always been alone.

The sapling of loneliness grew into a small tree.

If the next year had to be described with one word, young Isaac would use this one: weird. After all, his preparations to wipe out humanity had already been finished right after his journey across the globe had come to an end. He could eradicate everyone whenever he wanted. He didn't even have a problem with dying alongside the rest of humanity. This wasn't because he was suicidal, however. Instead, he just didn't irrationally cling to life. Still, he didn't detonate his explosives for a whole year.

The reason for this was a simple one. He had started to read more and more novel series, even web novel series. Even with his inhuman reading speed, there were far too many of them to read to ever catch up to all of them. The day just didn't have enough hours. Due to his mastery of all languages spoken on planet Earth, the sheer amount of stories he had access to was staggering. While the vast majority of them were either horrible, not that good or nothing out of the ordinary, that didn't matter. He chose to read them all.

This wasn't because he liked reading, however. Well, if one asked young Isaac what he 'liked', he would probably reply with 'reading'. The act of doing so was oddly calming as it allowed him to fully immerse himself within another world for a short time.

In any case, he only read all of these stories because of all of the fantastical worlds they contained and portrayed. No matter how amateurish, there was always the shadow of a world that could be found within them. He couldn't deny it. He was interested. Interested in worlds beyond his own. After all, he had already explored his home planet and had deducted far more about the universe and everything else than humanity as a collective ever had. And thanks to that, he realized that he wouldn't find anything that truly interested him here. He couldn't.

Oddly enough, stories about other worlds interested him. As they were created by this world's humans, they were a part of this world. So hadn't he technically found something that interested him in this worthless world?

In a way, yes. But also, no.

Young Isaac wasn't really interested in the stories themselves, but only the other worlds they let him dream about. It was like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey, just far enough out of reach that it could never eat it. This cruel torture was the closest he got to anything interesting in this world. These other worlds were something he could never truly see. As far as he understood, they weren't real.

During the year he focused on reading, a huge number of authors all across the globe suddenly got a lot of monetary support from a figure calling themselves 'The Librarian'. As always, many people began to speculate about who they could possibly be, even theorizing that it might actually be a group of people, seeing how many different languages that person would have to be proficient in to enjoy all of these different works. Still, nobody ever figured it out. As the amount of money that authors received from this mysterious figure was far more than enough to live their daily lives in peace and prosperity, a huge writing boom started, with many people who had previously not had the confidence to give up their day job switching to becoming authors instead. After all, anybody with even an ounce of skill got supported by The Librarian, there was no need to fear. There were many people on this planet with their own stories to tell. Due to the harshness of life, they often didn't get the opportunity to do so. But now, the floodgates had been opened.

All of this led to even more novels falling into young Isaac's proverbial lap.

Finally, on his 13th birthday, he pried himself away from what he was reading and took some time to reflect. Due to his indecisiveness, he had already 'wasted' close to a year.

Previously, he had weighed humanity's positive and negative aspects from the most objective point of view that he could. This time, however, he was somewhat forced to look at things from a subjective one. A selfish one.

He had to admit that a part of what humanity offered, stories about different worlds, was something that he valued greatly. It would be a shame if they disappeared.

One might think that the solution to this problem would be to save all of these stories somewhere, create a self-sufficient base in space and live there after wiping out humanity, slowly consuming all of these tales. However, one would be wrong. After all, new stories wouldn't be created anymore, neither would ongoing ones be continued or concluded.

Sure, young Isaac could always just write his own novels. He could also always roughly figure out the ending to a story before it actually happened. Still, sometimes there were surprises in store, even for him. He had never been able to predict every single exact detail of a story, ever. After all, an author's mentality, their development and practice would lead to a change that he couldn't reliably foresee without knowing them very well personally. Thanks to this, stories contained many fresh experiences that he would never be able to get from anywhere else. He could peek into many different worlds. Worlds that could potentially be interesting. If they were real.

With a wry and self-deprecating smile on his lips, he decided to spare humanity. For purely selfish reasons. In the end, he was also just a human. No matter how astonishingly different he was from everyone else, he was still a human. And to varying degrees, humans were inherently selfish. They were flawed - and so was he.

For a moment, the shadow of an idea flashed across young Isaac's mind - an idea that would finally give him a purpose. But at this current moment, he just barely missed grasping it.

If humanity had been aware that its novels had earned it a pardon from the death penalty, most humans would probably see authors in a different light. They wouldn't scorn them for trying to broaden other people's horizons as often. Still, all of that would only be temporary. As always, no matter what lessons the past taught them, humans would forget about all of it after a while. No matter how often they would spout righteous nonsense about 'learning from the past', they never would actually do so. All tragedies had happened before. And all lessons resulting from them had been forgotten.

Humans, in their core, never change. They don't improve. They don't get smarter. They just acc.u.mulate more knowledge.

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After the momentary feeling of disorientation had faded and Ais had snuggled even deeper into Isaac's warm and calming embrace, she thought about what she had just experienced, a happy smile playing across her lips.

She was relieved that, in the end, Isaac had decided against killing all of humanity. While she didn't like his old world at all, she hadn't wanted him to carry such a massive, soul-crushing burden. Also, she hadn't wanted him to die - even if his current status would then tell her that he somehow overcame death itself. After all, he was still alive.

During all of this, Ais had discovered something that, most likely, Isaac wasn't even aware of. Something that was buried deep within his subconsciousness. If she hadn't clearly known which of the things she felt originated from young Isaac and hadn't been able to even recognize his subconscious thoughts, she never would have noticed it.

No matter how detached he seemed. No matter how disconnected from his subordinates that he was and how much he treated them as his disposable minions within his heart, he always felt some kind of connection to them.

His secretary and his mercenaries, his trusty underlings… he wouldn't mind their deaths, if they were truly necessary. Still, he didn't wish for their deaths. He wasn't a deranged killer who took pleasure in the deaths of those who followed him.

All this while, these subconscious connections that he felt led him to search for something, anything… a reason to spare humanity. He truly didn't want to kill his subordinates, he was wholly appalled by the idea. While suicide was nothing much in his eyes, he wouldn't stain his hands with the blood of those that trusted him and followed his orders. But he didn't know that he had had these thoughts. Well, maybe he just didn't want to be aware of it. He didn't want to know that he was merciful. No matter how deeply hidden in his subconscious mind that it was, it was still a part of him. He cared.

He wasn't an irrationally warm person either, though. If other people were to kill his subordinates, he would lash out at them. The reason for this would be them taking away something that belonged to him, which would annoy him. But as for killing them himself, with his own hands… that was a taboo. Still, Ais was convinced that he was definitely not aware of this subconscious restriction.

With that in mind, she suddenly hugged Isaac's head and buried his face deep in her chest, beaming lovingly all the while.

'You're a far better person than you realize.'

While Isaac was fl.u.s.tered and not sure whether he should turn his head to get some air, Ais gently stroked his hair, eventually falling asleep while doing so.