He whispered the words not to some unlikely, unproven deity but to the only god he knew – the one he held within him, the god of his untapped and unaltered genius mind.

Strike a light, Novak Ramovich! It was over and all was still. Both he and the fortress he’d built were intact. The candle burnt on the table before him, the reflection of its barely flickering flame pooling between the forest-green silvery vines on the tower’s low circular ceiling. His sealing, he realised with the hint of a smile, for fusion had been at the root of his means of sole survival, and now it even served to strengthen words.

His fellow humans hadn’t believed him when he’d told them the end was nigh. When he’d tried to explain what would happen and when. Such simple, doubting fools! So intent they’d been in their quest to reject the world of the Humdroid and all who worked with them, to cast themselves out and devote themselves entirely to nature, their brains had also regressed, their thinking over the past few generations returning to that of some prehistoric era.

Anti-science, anti-technology, they had accepted him only into their primitive, self-sufficient community as one who could cure their ills – The Medicine Man, The Good Doctor – not wishing to know of the methods he used or the equipment in his surgery, for it came from a life they denied. Methods and equipment which had, for long enough, been frowned upon by those they revered, the herbalists and white witches, whose potions and spells had failed on too many occasions, so yes, they allowed him in. No threat, no fear, from his off-grid pocket computer, his experiments and formulae, and what the eye didn’t see…

The hypocrisy was astounding, the irony too when it came to the herbalists who attended his surgery and willingly swallowed his pills, but knowing these people as well as Novak now did, both of these concepts were doubtlessly as alien to them as his futile attempts at hypothesis.

‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘Your child draws a pattern on an egg, then places that egg in a microwave and sets the timer. It starts to cook, what happens then…?’

‘But that’s absurd,’ they would tell him. ‘Our children know better than to decorate eggs which haven’t been boiled or blown. And who amongst us owns such an electric monstrosity? You do know we only cook with fire?’

‘But say they did, and say you did? The egg would blow apart, would it not? The shell would be shattered, the pattern with it, and yet on those tiny fragments there might just remain something wonderful that your child has created, something worth saving. And that, my friends, shall be the fate of The Earth and all its surrounding planets. The second Big Bang is coming and coming soon. We must work on our designs, our means of salvation and protection.’

‘No, impossible!’ they’d cry. ‘The Good Doctor does have some crazy ideas. Children drawing on eggs, as if this could protect the world!’

Too late now, he thought. Too late to convince them. As fate would have it, the value of his discovery had been for Novak Ramovich alone. The infusion of the various chemical and natural compounds into the foundations of his dwelling which had seeped up the walls and over the roof to grow like titanium ivy, but at far greater speed, and with vines a million times stronger, had indeed proven their worth, just as all his years of study and experimentation had proven him right.

So here he was, the last human presence on Earth, or rather on what remained of it; his ivy-covered tower with its ever-decreasing circular rooms and the small patch of land surrounding it on which the vines had also taken root… ‘Ah!’ he cried into the flame. ‘If only the people had listened.’

His tower was well-equipped. He’d long-ensured he had the necessities; a water-storage system, filtration, air purification, and specially adapted soil in which to grow crops – the entire outer circle beyond the front door had been layered and shelved and reserved for this purpose as well as the storage of food.

He had what the people would have considered luxuries too – basic home comforts really – and had anyone seen fit to join him, he would have had room for three or four more at a push. In fact the whole community, if they’d had the sense, could have grown the ivy on their dwellings and survived. But alas it was not to be, and whilst he deplored them for their stupidity, he still couldn’t help but mourn their loss.

‘Grow ivy over our windows? Imprison ourselves as it barricades our doors? Is that what you’re suggesting? Seems to us you need to go sort your head out, Good Doctor. You’re getting madder by the minute. Or maybe we were wrong to trust you in the first place. Are you sure you’re not a Humdroid in disguise or one of their sympathizer spies?’

The people had met as one that day, and as one they’d decided to stop seeking treatment unless absolutely necessary, but still he’d held out hope.

The candle burned and flickered as Ivan thought of all that had happened since then. His last-ditch attempt to save the few human beings he knew could be saved. It was a doctor’s duty, after all, and with his skills and knowledge so much greater than those of a mere physician, or even a specialist surgeon, it was essential he try.

He’d delivered the compound himself, urged the families to use it. Even lied that after a time the vines would bear fruit, so where was the harm in letting it grow and climb? Rather some protection than none, he mused, and if the second Big Bang came with a warning, this might just give the community time to extend the growth sufficiently, and providing it covered the land between their homes, there was also the very real possibility that when the Earth shattered around them, and depending on the atmosphere, and where in the stratosphere they landed, life might even continue outside. Human life, pure and simple, no Humdroids, no bots, nothing artificial. The chance to start over, cleanly and naturally, wasn’t this what their hearts desired?

Oh, he put the arguments forth, both articulately and with relish, and one or two did hear him out because of it, but then the Herbalists got involved and inspected the vines on his tower, condemning the plant as nothing they’d seen before, too fast growing to be organic, too metallic a feel to its leaves and stems, and therefore worse than any invasive species, one which must have been developed, not in the doctor’s internal ‘greenhouse’ as he’d claimed, but in those dreaded Humdroid laboratories. A dangerous plant, they said. Most likely highly toxic. He’d lost the battle then and he knew it. But there was so much worse to come.

He got up from the chair and stretched as the candleflame cast eerie shadows on his nakedness. No reason at all for him to be sat like this other than his symbolic rebirth… We are born alone, we live alone, we die alone… Did Orson Welles not then think it fit that Man should approach the various stages unclothed? Still, the moment had passed, so what good would it do him now to wonder, let alone act as a neonate?

He crossed the room and opened the door which led to his private chambers. Ensuite, he thought mockingly as he threw on his black flaxen robe, for the toilet was a composter, and the washing facilities buckets. It was cold and dark here too; no sense in wasting candles or power reserves sourced as conscientiously as they had been from the wind and sun over the years, but it would be different in the next room, for this contained his laboratory – more important now than ever – so in here light and heat were essential.

He flicked the switch. And, thank goodness, all was as it should be. The white-walled semi-circle with its sterilized units and benches and their array of microscopes, test-tubes and jars, remained unaffected, as did what lay underneath; the great glass panel, inside of which the seeds of the new world were contained, all dormant at present, unpaired and unfertilized, bar one.

His patients who, for the most part, he’d attended on the opposite side of this particular section of the tower, rarely made it here, but there had been times – and those times, for all he’d known the risk, had proven vital. All had been unconscious when he’d wheeled them in, and all but one had remained that way as he’d harvested their eggs and sperm. A purely precautionary measure, he’d told himself the first time, for as yet he’d been unsure of the second big bang, but the more convinced he’d become of it happening, and the less likely it seemed that the people would agree to growing the ivy and saving themselves, the more desperate his need to continue this practice and so he’d stepped it up. Old world ethics be damned! Was it not more ethical in this situation to at least attempt to preserve and regrow the human race? And now – Ivan gazed through the panel to where the single embryo was forming – his own child would be the first. The loneliness he’d been destined to feel in the coming weeks and months at least wouldn’t last forever.

The people, for all they’d never discovered his secret, had at the end been aware of something. And he felt bad that they’d reacted as they had when all he’d ever wanted was to keep them from harm. The day before the Big Bang – was it only yesterday? – they’d arrived as a mob at his tower, pitchforks raised.

‘Call yourself a doctor, a healer? You’re evil.’

The ivy had all but covered his door by then, just enough of a gap remained for him to squeeze through.

‘Please,’ he’d implored them. ‘The herbalists have it wrong. These vines are designed to protect. Please go back to your homes and utilize the compound while you still have time. This is your only chance to save yourselves from destruction.’

‘You’re talking rot, Doc. And you’re rottener and more heinous and twisted than your ugly vines… Tell the people what you told me, boy.’

The man at the front of baying mob pushed the youth in question before him. He stood with his head bowed, cap in hand, ringing it as if it were sodden, too nervous and ashamed to show his face, but Novak knew exactly who he was. The only one of his patients who had woken prematurely during the harvesting procedure and who, up until this point, hadn’t said a word about this or anything else. Novak had been worried by his muteness at first, but had then assumed the lad had accepted his explanation that this was all quite normal when treating a hiatus hernia, and it wasn’t as if he’d ever spoken much before.

‘Well, if you’re not going to open your mouth, lad, I’ll do it for you,’ the man roared out and pointed an accusatory finger. ‘This man here, who we have allowed into our community and placed in a trusted position, is nothing more than a dirty abuser. A pervert, a deviant. What do you say we teach him a lesson he won’t forget?’

And so the charge began, a charge of which Novak remembered surprisingly little, although he must have been bludgeoned by something. He’d felt his head throb so badly he’d been near-convinced his skull had been cracked in two as he retreated into the tower, to seal himself in behind the vines from which he never again emerged. He further recalled disrobing and sinking into his chair, but nothing more until the shattering of the universe. Such a ghastly confusion, he thought, but then he considered the word ‘confusion’ and smiled.

***

‘So, what do you make of him, then, our latest subject?’ Bald Doctor Hubert Greenberg of the Humdroid Institute asked of his colleague with the holographic hair as their eyes lit up reflecting one another’s blue fibre optics.

‘An interesting mind, that’s for sure,’ Doctor Flora Gilbert replied with a scintillating femme-fatale-like swish as she nodded towards the wired-up brain in the box which belonged to the still of the man on the overhead screen. ‘Considers himself a genius, and perhaps he is. The fused ivy compound is certainly worth exploring, but since we’ve extracted the formula already, we can surely utilise this without the need for further input. As for the growing of human embryos, well that’s pretty old hat to say the least.’

‘Yes, from what I could gather, he sees himself as a bit of a guru, the saviour of the human race, but selfish too, not completely au fait with technological advancement, unless of course it benefits him and his kind in a way that suits him. Too dangerous a mind to keep hold of, do you think?

‘Hmm, perhaps, but none of the other brains we’ve extracted have coped so well in the given scenario. All have shown signs of weakness and heightened emotion during the simulation, extreme in most cases when it came to the actual destruction of the planets. This one’s practical resourcefulness and ability to rise above such debilitating sentiment whilst controlling his fear would be most advantageous… Is the prototype body ready?’

‘It is, but I’m not sure we should risk attaching at present.’

‘Or at all?’ Doctor Gilbert inclined her silicone head as Doctor Greenberg pondered.

‘Yes, yes, you’re right, of course. Best take no chances. More to lose than to gain. And besides, no matter the subject’s stance on our technology, who’d want the mind of one so intent on playing god at the heart of our new master race?’