The screen faded. He put on his robe and jabbed the hypodermic into his wrist. Then he knelt to pray.
He did not pray for power. Intelligence and hard work could give him that. He prayed for mercy, compassion, recognition of his own flawed nature. He prayed for courage and the end of fear.
The balls danced between his hands. He sang the Song of Praise, the love song to the world. Gloria mundi. Glory in the world, glory in the flesh, glory in the flow of life. Creation is a flow and man a bubble bouncing on the flow. Bubble that will burst but bubble that is. Bubble that feels, strives, blends with other bubbles.
Bubble that can fill Creation!
He roared at the walls of existence. His mind yawned and stretched and came awake. He prowled across the woods and parks. Gigantic, he gazed at the mortals who stumbled through the shaded tunnels of the world. These are such as me. These share my doomed existence.
And that one? That one lying in the brush with an axe? That one, preparing to kill, clawing since he was a baby at a world that torments him?
That also is me.
Smith rose to his knees and swung the axe. John Dyer crumpled with a severed spine. The axe swung twice and two men fell. The hunters dropped to their bellies. Rifles cracked. Bullets sang in the grass.
Now they knew they had to kill Smith or die. Now they felt no mercy.