NieR Automata: Life's Meaning

A pod, made of modified steel meant to endure for centuries, was imbedded into the wall of large empty chamber. Richard ran his hand across the pod's glass. Behind it an embryo floated in the center of the dark green liquid within. Said liquid carried all the nutrients the burgeoning life submerged within would need to survive while acting as a sort of preservative.

This was the future of humanity.

Project Gestalt, the replicants, and everything in between; the government was foolish to fund experiments that relied on foreign substances not of their world. It'd take extensive testing to figure out what sort of effects such things had on humans and that was without even considering long-term exposure. Testing that would take time. Time that was running out.

Richard scoffed.

Time was just a convenient excuse. The real reason they opted for such a reckless approach was because the short-sighted fools in power weren't interested in saving humanity unless it included a way to preserve their own lives. Faced with the very real possibility of extinction, they'd gamble on the very things that likely caused this mess, going as far as to play with human souls.

It was absurd but so very human.

Richard didn't care whether he lived or died. The small life in this pod would continue to grow long after he perished. And through it humanity would live on.

-Route A, No. 000-

A toddler, a baby boy with dark strands of hair, now floated within the pod. Visibly no different than any other his age, no one would've been able to tell he'd been grown within a simulated environment nor possess any inkling about his altered genome.

Another hand joined his on the pod's glass. A dainty one.

"I thought I'd find you down here." Lana said, gazing into the pod alongside him. "He's growing fast isn't he?" Richard hummed in agreement.

They'd been betrothed from a young age. A product of their respective parents' staunch traditionalism and friendship. Their marriage ceremony, honeymoon, and the decade of the anniversaries since then had been a loveless affair. After their parents were convinced all was sunshine and rainbow, the two of them lived according to their agreement.

To any onlookers, they were a happily married couple too busy with their respective careers to have children at this point in their lives. In reality, they were a pair of asocial workaholics that lived as roommates rather than a couple. They'd traded virginities to satisfy their baser curiosities on the night of their honeymoon then never so much as kissed afterwards.

Her hand moved over his, fingers locking between the spaces of his.

Had was the operative word in all of that. Disaster had a way of drawing people together as often as it ripped people away. It helped that it was their DNA that gave rise to the life within that pod.

He moved a little closer and-

Loud sirens filled the chamber, the baby within the pod thrashing about. Richard's hand shot to the panel on the pod and a flood of sedatives filled the pod, the baby lulled back to sleep and the sirens ceasing their screams.

This had been happening so often that they had set up sedatives to be dispersed within the pod at regularly scheduled intervals. For the issue to persist despite that meant the boy had built up a resistance to the drugs. A resistance that outclassed normal humans.

They'd have to create a new solution with more potent sedatives mixed in to keep him under for the foreseeable future.

An inconvenience sure, but Richard couldn't help but smile. That adaptability was just what humanity needed, not some questionable process only possible through materials and energy they didn't fully understand.

"That boy really is something." Lana said.

Of course he was. He'd be the best humanity had to offer and then some.

-Route A, No. 000-

Distant screams. Suppressed gunfire. Animalistic roars.

Placing his bloodied handgun on the wooden desk of his study, Richard clenched his side. Blood soaked his hand in an instant. He'd be lucky to survive the next few minutes. Bleeding out would be an easier death than what awaited those who had to deal with the chaos beyond this room.

Casting aside his fears and worries, even the ones about Lana who'd been caught in the initial attack, he reached for the keypad hidden beneath his desk.

The sub-testing rooms weren't ready, uncalibrated and the boy's abilities untested. But he had faith. Not in some god or higher power but in their hard work and his potential. That boy would survive any test thrown his way, carve his way back up to the surface, and carry on humanity's legacy. And if the surgery had been a success, he wouldn't be alone. Not completely.

Richard's shaky fingers input a code as the entire building shook, an icy presence taking hold of him. He defied it until the last button was pushed and the emergency procedure was activated. Whatever happened up here, that boy, their son, would survive.

Knowing that he finally allowed himself to sit back, all feeling draining out of him.

Project APEX would be a success. It had to be.