4 The World From Above

I was floating over the city, looking down on the havoc that been created by flocks of fearless and murderous birds.

They were not covering the city completely like a blanket, but there were a number of flocks here and there moving from place to place on their own prerogative. One could only guess that they had no more humans to kill in the area, so they needed to move to the next location.

How did the nature of these birds change so much? There was only one thing that could have cause this, the monstrous eagle like bird looking down on the city from the highest perch it could find.

It had a very similar gaze as the metal hawk from before, but there was no doubt that this bird deserved the arrogance in its gaze.

There was nothing near that could challenge it.

I was strangely calm about the fact that my beliefs that there is no afterlife had just been proven wrong.

I guess almost anything is better than your consciousness ceasing to exist, so I was not up in arms about being proven wrong.

I had not really given any other consideration to all the other options because I thought that based on science there was no other explanation. I was guessing there were worse options than being an incorporeal being hovering over the place you died.

As I was considering if I would get bored to tears just floating here, I started to move against my will. It was as if a wind was blowing me away.

I started gliding over the building seeing the carnage. There were bodies of dead humans littering every road and sidewalk. Some had their eyes gouged out by either beak or talon. Some had their bodies mangled as strips of flesh had been peeled off and eaton by some carnivorous raptor, and some had even just slumped over in a pool of their own blood having bled out from hundreds of cuts made by countless birds.

The things that I saw were a true horror to behold. I wish I could've closed my eyes but of course I did not have eyes because I did not have a body. It was not only dead people left in the city there were countless panicking people in their cars protected from the disastrous flocks of birds by their windows and doors.

Traffic was even more dreadful as people stopped caring about traffic laws in an attempt to escape the plight of so many people around. There were probably even larger groups of people trying to's survive within the buildings but of course with my birds eye view I could only see the chaos on the streets.

I was also seeing humans fighting back. A group of police in swat gear were holding a flock of birds off from a school's entrance with their shields and guns. You could even hear the children screaming and cheering every time the two sides clashed.

I saw a mom swinging a stop sign around as if it was a bat, killing at least one bird with every swing. Her 4 year old child behind her crying from fear. It is said that if their child is in danger a mother can show extraordinary feats of strength in order to save their child. With the assistance of adrenaline and the willingness to ignore the pain of tearing muscles the strength that one person can bring to bear can be almost incomprehensible.

What this mother was displaying was far beyond a single act of heroics. This maintained strength boost could only be explained by an evolution.

It was good to know that I was not the only person to have started modifying my genetics in order to survive. I hoped that it helped her more than it helped me.

I saw I group of three teenage boys holding hands while chanting in a completely foreign sounding tongue surrounded by a tornado of flames.

As I saw this baffling display of power I realized my understanding of this new world was far from comprehensive. How could a simple manipulation of your genetic code allow you to control the elements around you? There must be other powers in play than just evolutionary modifications.

This thought of mine was further reinforced by what I saw next.

What came into my view next was what looked like a middle school girl shooting a laser rifle. This is clearly something that can only be found in science fiction. While I did not know for sure whether something like that gum had been invented in a secret lab somewhere. I did know that the chances of a young middle school girl having access to that top secret weapon was almost 0%.

There were countless people all over the city defending themselves and others, with standard means as well as extraordinary powers. It was not a one sided slaughter of humans, but a fight for the supremacy that we once took for granted.

As I floated there gazing down upon the world that I was no longer a part of my contemplated my impact on humanity and considered what alternatives I could've done.

While I was alive I spent almost my entire life in school. My entire life was spent learning information that I could hopefully use in the future to learn more information.

I had written a few articles about strange developments within the evolutionary lifecycle of the earth, these publications were so infrequent they might as well not have existed at all.

My entire existence had primarily been in the pursuit of knowledge to sate my own curiosity rather than better the society in which I developed. My goal in the long run was to become a professor. I would then do research part of the time to increase my own understanding, and part of the time I would lecture young academics striving students as they pursue their own desire to understand the world.

As I look down upon the earth that was undergoing a new form of desolation I realized my existence had almost no impact. How does one live their life in order to prepare for the rules of the world to change around them. I only know that humans have the most adaptive minds on the entire planet.

I was already contemplating how to survive and thrive based off the little information I knew about the world around me. I may have no longer been a part of the human race, but I still have the mind of an exceptionally intelligent person. There is no way to stop the contemplation once it has started.

While my mind was racing with strategies on how to adapt to this new world I kept floating along with the imaginary breeze, and slowly my pace started to pick up. I was floating past the suburbs and out into the surrounding countryside.

Everywhere that I passed there was conflict derived from the will to survive. It did not matter if it was a fight between humans and other animals, or a fight between different animals and even fights between different humans. Conflict was everywhere with no escape insight.

My mind kept spinning my own personal revelations.

I came to the conclusion that there was three types of people that arise in a post-apocalyptic world. I call it an apocalypse because that simply means the end of the world, and it is clear to me that the earth which had existed before has changed to the point of being a completely different planet.

The first of which is somebody that sees the devastation around and gives up on life because it is too horrifying to contemplate living in this world. These type of people are a minority because humans have a strong instinct to survive, also the most difficult to save because it is not easy to give somebody a meaning to their existence who do not even have the will to survive themselves.

The second type of person is somebody that when they realize that the social structure that has limited them in the past has collapsed it now allows them to be entirely selfish as long as they have enough power to take what they want. It is sad to say that this type of person is not a rarity in the world today. But they themselves are rather predictable because they always act within their own best interest. As long as you make it appear that what you want and what they want are the same thing you can count on them to strive for the same goals.

The third type of person is the most common but also the hardest to maintain. These type of people try to maintain or create a community that relies on each other and builds a safe place for all involved. This has always been instinct of the human race.

Humans are social animals that started out in packs or tribes on the wild plains of Africa. As time progressed it became clear that the larger your tribe was the more likely you were to succeed in your goals whether it is to hunt, to war, to migrate. This further evolved into towns and cities into city states and nations into governments and civilizations.

The larger the organization of people the more successful they became and this fact has been ingrained into humankind for thousands of years. It is hard to break away from something that has been endlessly successful.

The issue that these type of people face is that the larger the organization of people the more slowly it changes. At this instant the world is changing too fast for something like the current governments of the world to react. This means that a new society has to be built with the accelerated evolution of animals and people as one of the core building blocks moving forward. There is no way to modify any of the current social structures that existed before. This is no small task and should be intimidating for even the greatest of people.

As my mind spun with the ramifications of what was likely to happen to everybody on the ground. I kept floating past lakes, rivers, mountains, forest, deserts, and even oceans. I did not see a single place that was free of violence. I was not sure if this was simply the initial reaction to how the world had just changed or if there would never be safety and security guaranteed again.

I desperately wished that I was still among the living so that I can make my life have more meaning than just a simple student. I may not be one of the most extraordinary people but I was still someone with the skills and mind to have a true impact on the world around me.

I kept moving faster and faster with the world sliding by beneath me in a blur. When I got to the point that all I could see was a shifting array of colors as everything moved at such high speeds that there was no distinguishing anything. I suddenly felt like I had hit a solid mass stopping me completely.

My eyes shot open with a snap.