The Devourer

Devon had always wanted to save humanity. He dreamed of being a superhero, but never found a meteor or suffered an industrial accident. So, he chose science. With dogged brilliance, he developed technology to recycle all non-organic materials, so that even the mountains of detritus outside every city might be turned into limitless factories. Refashioning plastic was easy and making other precious metals, the kind you might find in a computer or smartphone, wasn’t so hard either. If he could scale up, without having to hand the reins over to greedy investors, he might save the world. Which meant he must be stopped.

Devon was too idealistic, so the Economic Engineers lobbied their Government lackeys, in the name of national security and financial hegemony, to steal this technology. Devon would not let his hard work fall into the wrong hands. Stepping inside the machine, already working to pull apart a pile of trash, he pushed and flipped every button and switch until it exploded.

With its limitations, the device could not pull Devon apart, but it transformed him. Trash embedded in his skin and surrounded by an impenetrable, sickly green energy field, he no longer needed to breathe or eat. His sustenance came from ripping away the electrons of anything he touched, leaving only dust. As the field grew stronger, tentacles stretched out to increase his ability to feed. If any hero tried to get in his way, then a blast powerful enough to burn away flesh was their reward.

Devon had a new plan. First, he would eliminate the machinery of war, then ravage human cities and their way of life. He’d been wrong all those years. The world needed saving, not people. So the Devourer would consume everything humanity loved until the world was safe.