Those that wish us dead.

You would think that having an enormous sum of wealth and resources would keep you out of trouble despite the state in which the world sleeps. We all did… and for a while, it actually worked. Keeping the rebellion at bay while we designed our own safe havens, locked away from insurrectionists and those willing to betray humanity for a better taste of life that wasn’t exactly denied to them.

We started out with a single goat. That goat was displayed on the cover of Times Magazine twice, once at the start of the miracle… and the beginning of the end. It was nice when it first began; being able to shrink something living down to the size of a speck of dust. The ability to have out goods transported in lighter loads even a pigeon could travel with. We tried that too; strapped a truckload of produce to a pigeon and had it fly across town. We even built machines to bring them back to full size.

It took a lot of trial and error, but when we finished… the miracle began. The world was being over populated at an alarming rate and the safe zones were shrinking like the goat. We needed to do something that a lot of the world was not okay with. That’s when the ones in power decided everyone's fates for them. Like a bad lottery, unless you had a skill or trade worth anything, you’d be shrunk down and relocated.

It didn’t take long after the beginning that we started to abuse this new power and start to shrink our enemies both foreign and domestic. We took what we wanted and gave nothing but sanctuary from the end. It wasn’t by choice and a lot of them had it coming. It started with a choice, but we all know that choices left to the masses usually end badly for the masses.

Whole civilizations began to be wiped from the face of the Earth overnight once the production lines began. Scientists fabricated new machines to speed up what was already too fast to handle. It was like watching a vacuum hose in a jello bowl.

I for one did not protest at first. I was one of the rich elite able to buy our way into a normal safe zone in the Uplands Districts where the rest of the social elites and highly skilled stayed and were protected. Even though I was rich, I was also one of the many scientists that created the holding facilities that we placed the people in. I not only had station but had a trade to give back. I was not meant to be placed into one of those contraptions. No.. I was an elite. I gave back more than those tiny molecules.

I sacrificed for this world so that we could all live. Some may have suffered from splitting their families up, placed for reproduction by design, designated to work their trade, or to be locked up and tossed into the shriveling ocean in the west. I was to make it to the end. I helped them design their “prisons” and I shall be the one to design their heavens.

It was going to be easy to rid the world of The Shade. We were to take back the world and release the people once we’ve cleansed it. The Shade became spotty and stopped growing after we took the people and animals from it. We were about to have a breakthrough. But some of the capsules malfunctioned from tampering. We had a rebellion on our doorstep led by those wishing to fight The Shade by other means. We were the villains in their story as we were saviors in ours.

They waved their flags and played their trumpets loud as they hit our facilities. To their dismay, they were empty. No longer at full capacity or even powered, the facilities that we used to shrink people, animals, produce, and everything in between were moved into our capsules for safe keeping. We moved our doctors, scientists, leaders, and all of the buildings we needed to create our salvation into the type of capsules those outside my door seeked to destroy.

I was given a single task in the end. To keep the last capsules made safe. The Shade stopped growing because it had taken over the entire world. There were no safe zones but the one we built underground. The one with a single panic room. My panic room. The panic room that I made it to before the rebels of The Shade, mutated beyond saving, flag waving, gun touting, fiends of the world could grab me.

It’s unfortunate that I lay here bleeding from the chest. The accomplishments will never be witnessed by those that care. My hands will never touch others unless those outside my door reach me… but it’ll be too late for them. I will be long dead from a bullet sliding deeper into my chest as I continue to clutch the last remaining doctors within a capsule placed in my heart-shaped locket.